March 26, 2007
Gabriel García Márquez remarks at the Fourth Congress of Language in Cartagena
Ni in the most delirious of my dreams, the days when he was writing One Hundred Years of Solitude, I imagine that could attend this event to support the publication of a million copies. Thinking that a million people could read something written in the solitude of my room with 28 letters of the alphabet and two fingers as all arsenal, all lights seem insane.
Today language academies do so with a gesture toward a novel that has passed before the eyes of fifty times a million readers, and to a craftsman, insomniac like me who does not conceal his surprise at all that has happened.
But it is not and can not be a recognition of a writer. This miracle is irrefutable proof that there is a huge amount of people willing to read stories in English, and therefore a million copies of One Hundred Years of Solitude is not a million tributes to writer now receives, blushing, the first book of this huge circulation. It demonstrates that there are millions of readers of texts in English waiting, hungry for this food.
I do not know what time it happened. I only know that since I was 17 years and until this morning, I have done something different to get up early every day, sitting at a keyboard, to fill a blank page or a blank screen of the computer, with the sole mission writing a story is not told by anyone that makes you happier life to a reader lacking.
In my routine of writing, I've changed from then. I've never seen anything other than my two index fingers tapping, one by one and a good pace, unchanged 28 letters of the alphabet that I had before my eyes during those seventy-odd years.
Today I had to lift his head to attend this tribute, I am grateful, and I can not help but stop and think what has happened to me. What I see is that the reader does not exist in my blank page, is now a huge crowd, hungry for reading text in English.
readers Hundred Years of Solitude are today a community that if you lived in the same piece of land, is one of the twenty most populous countries the world.
is not a boastful statement. Instead, I just show that there is a huge number of people who have demonstrated their reading habits have a soul open to be filled with messages in Castilian.
The challenge is for all writers, all poets, storytellers and educators of our language, to feed that thirst and multiply this crowd, very raison d'être of our profession and, of course, ourselves.
My 38 years old and already published four books since I was 20, I sat at the typewriter and began: "Many years later, he faced the firing squad, Colonel Aureliano Buendia was to remember that distant afternoon when his father took him to discover ice. "
I had no idea of \u200b\u200bthe meaning or origin of the phrase or where would lead me. What we now know is that I stopped writing for a single day for 18 months, until I finished the book.
seem incredible, but one of my most pressing problems was the role for the typewriter. He had the bad manners to believe that typing errors, language or grammar errors were in fact created, and every time detected broke the blade and threw it into the trash basket to start again.
With the pace he had acquired in a year of practice, I figured it would cost me about six months to complete daily morning. Hope
Araiza, the unforgettable Pera, was a typist for poets and filmmakers who had a clean past great works of Mexican writers, among them "The Air Is Clear" by Carlos Fuentes, "Pedro Páramo" by Juan Rulfo , and several original scripts for Luis Buñuel.
When I offered to take me out to clean the final version, the novel was shot comp of patches, first in black ink and then in red ink, to avoid confusion. But that was nothing for a woman accustomed to everything in a loony bin.
few years later, Pera told me that when I took home the latest version corrected by me, slipped while exiting the bus, with a downpour diluvial, and sheets hung in the mire of the street. The collected, soaked and almost illegible, with the help of other passengers, and dried at home, leaf by leaf, with a clothes iron.
What could be the subject of another book better, would be how to survive Mercedes and I with our two children, during that time did not win a single penny for anything. Did not even know how Mercedes during these months to not miss a day of food in the house.
We resisted the temptation of loans with interest, until we tie up the heart and started our first forays into the Monte de Piedad.
After the fleeting relief to certain small things, had to use the jewelry that Mercedes had received from his family over the years. The expert examined them with a surgeon's rigor, went and checked with his magical eye earrings diamonds, emeralds necklace, the rubies of the rings, and finally returned to us with a long speedwell truant: "This is pure glass."
In moments of greatest difficulty, Mercedes made its astral accounts and told his patient's home, without the slightest tremor in his voice: "We can pay all together in six months."
"Excuse me sir," replied the owner, "you realize that it is then a huge sum?".
"I realize," said Mercedes, impassive, but then we'll have it all figured out, be calm. "
The good lawyer, who was a senior State official and one of the most elegant and patients who had known her voice trembled not to answer: "Well, ma'am, your word is enough for me." And drew his deadly accounts: "The hope on September 7 (sic)."
Finally, in early August 1966, Mercedes and I went to the post office in Mexico City, Buenos Aires to send the finished version of One Hundred Years of Solitude, a package of 590 pages written machine, double-spaced on plain paper and addressed to Francisco Porrua, editorial director of the South American literature.
The postal employee brought the package in the balance, made his calculations mental and said: "There are 82 pesos." Mercedes
counted the bills and loose change left in your wallet, and faced reality: "We only have 53."
Open the package, divided into two equal parts and send one to Buenos Aires, without even asking how we would get the money to send the rest. Only after we realized that we had not sent the first but the last part. But before we got the money to send, and Paco Porrúa, our man in the South American publisher, eager to read the first half of the book, we anticipated that we could send money. And was born again into our lives today.
Thank you. "
(Fin)
0 comments:
Post a Comment