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4.14 AVERAGE
4.14 AVERAGE
This is one of those collections where the sum of the whole is greater than its parts. Because the stories are pretty much in chronological order, you experience the evolution of the writing. I love Marquez’s descriptions of the places he inhabits and the other authors and artists he so respects. A fresh look for me at an author who I previously only knew through his fiction.
In journalism, the routine affairs are the most boring ones to cover, especially the annual ritual-like ones. But in the hands of Marquez, even these can be turned into magical prose, making connections to seemingly unconnected events, to bring out some unique perspective. 'The Scandal of the Century and other writings', a collection of some of his journalistic writings from the 1950s to early 80s, have quite a few of these.
For instance, the piece written in 1955 for 'El Espectador' on the then Pope going on vacation. It is an annual affair, wherein the Pope heads out from his Holy office to the Castel Gandolfo Palace, located twenty miles from Rome. In the initial parts of the piece, he writes in detail about the drive and the quiet entry to Castel Gandolfo.
He weaves in the magic in the last part, when he juxtaposes the annual visit, and its almost one-month delay, with the news of the decapitated body of a woman appearing on the shores of Lake Albano in Castel Gandolfo. He leaves us with this brilliant last paragraph - "Tomorrow, on his first day of vacation, the pope will lean out the window of his summer palace to contemplate the blue surface of Castel Gandolfo's beautiful lake. And even if we have no news that His Holiness takes an interest in the bountiful and scandalous crime pages of the Rome newspapers, he might not be able to avoid the sight of the police boats and divers. And he might just be the only person who can observe- from a window that overlooks the whole surface of the lake - what all Romans are desperate to see: the head, that sooner or later, the divers will recover from the waters of Castel Gandolfo".
But then, it is Marquez and he has the liberty for such juxtapositions and getting away with. It is unlikely that a lowly reporter, even if he or she comes up with something like that, would be able to get it printed on paper. Right from the earlier writings, one can see how he always had an eye for the unusual, like the one on the cemetery of lost letters, the office for unclaimed letters, where several letters without claimants end up. He writes on a letter where the addressee as well as the sender has shifted addresses, a situation which looks more Borgesian than Marquezian.
Some elements of style and structure of his later fiction can be seen in some of these earlier writings. There is even a chapter titled 'Buendia family house', which forms the first notes for 'One Hundred Years of Solitude', which he would write many years later. Having worked extensively across several countries across Latin America as well as Europe as a journalist, one gets to see his pieces from the ground at key points in history, like the despatch from Cuba when Batista was still in power and a young Castro was building up a revolution.
In another piece from Venezuela, written in 1958, right after the dictator General Marcos Perez Jimenez was deposed and forced to flee the country, he writes -"Since then and the whole of 1958, Venezuela was the freest country in the entire world". He writes in meticulous detail about the planning that goes behind the take over of a Government facility in Nicaragua by a small band of Sandinista revolutionaries during the years of the Somoza dictatorship. During his days in Paris, at the heights of the Algerian revolution, he was regularly picked up by the French police with the other Algerians, due to his facial features, making him write that "the Algerian revolution was the only one for which I was imprisoned".
'Nostalgia is the same as it ever was', written a week after Lennon's murder, shows the Beatles fan boy in Marquez, who writes eloquently about how the band's music appeals across generations and age groups, about how him and the grand children can enjoy it at the same time. Perhaps the most moving piece is the story of Maria who ends up in a mental asylum by accident, by the most bizarre of circumstances.
Some of his recollections appear multiple times in different articles, like the one about the Cuban poet Nicolas Guillen who used to live in the Latin Quarter in Paris and used to shout out the news from Latin America for the other dissidents from various countries living there. One morning, he shouted "the man has fallen" and everyone assumed that the fallen general was from their own country, since most Latin American nations at that time had a dictator in power.
'Scandal of the century', the one long piece which anchors this collection, is a detailed account of a crime investigation, after a woman's body is found at a beach. Over a series of columns, he examines the excruciating details of the case, the post-mortem examination and her own background quite clinically that what emerges is quite different from the assumptions in the beginning.
This is a collection that would be of interest to those who have exhausted all the Marquez fiction in their collection as well as for those who are fresh to the world of Marquez. One is left with the realisation that there is hardly any difference in how he approaches fiction and journalism, except for the facts part.
For instance, the piece written in 1955 for 'El Espectador' on the then Pope going on vacation. It is an annual affair, wherein the Pope heads out from his Holy office to the Castel Gandolfo Palace, located twenty miles from Rome. In the initial parts of the piece, he writes in detail about the drive and the quiet entry to Castel Gandolfo.
He weaves in the magic in the last part, when he juxtaposes the annual visit, and its almost one-month delay, with the news of the decapitated body of a woman appearing on the shores of Lake Albano in Castel Gandolfo. He leaves us with this brilliant last paragraph - "Tomorrow, on his first day of vacation, the pope will lean out the window of his summer palace to contemplate the blue surface of Castel Gandolfo's beautiful lake. And even if we have no news that His Holiness takes an interest in the bountiful and scandalous crime pages of the Rome newspapers, he might not be able to avoid the sight of the police boats and divers. And he might just be the only person who can observe- from a window that overlooks the whole surface of the lake - what all Romans are desperate to see: the head, that sooner or later, the divers will recover from the waters of Castel Gandolfo".
But then, it is Marquez and he has the liberty for such juxtapositions and getting away with. It is unlikely that a lowly reporter, even if he or she comes up with something like that, would be able to get it printed on paper. Right from the earlier writings, one can see how he always had an eye for the unusual, like the one on the cemetery of lost letters, the office for unclaimed letters, where several letters without claimants end up. He writes on a letter where the addressee as well as the sender has shifted addresses, a situation which looks more Borgesian than Marquezian.
Some elements of style and structure of his later fiction can be seen in some of these earlier writings. There is even a chapter titled 'Buendia family house', which forms the first notes for 'One Hundred Years of Solitude', which he would write many years later. Having worked extensively across several countries across Latin America as well as Europe as a journalist, one gets to see his pieces from the ground at key points in history, like the despatch from Cuba when Batista was still in power and a young Castro was building up a revolution.
In another piece from Venezuela, written in 1958, right after the dictator General Marcos Perez Jimenez was deposed and forced to flee the country, he writes -"Since then and the whole of 1958, Venezuela was the freest country in the entire world". He writes in meticulous detail about the planning that goes behind the take over of a Government facility in Nicaragua by a small band of Sandinista revolutionaries during the years of the Somoza dictatorship. During his days in Paris, at the heights of the Algerian revolution, he was regularly picked up by the French police with the other Algerians, due to his facial features, making him write that "the Algerian revolution was the only one for which I was imprisoned".
'Nostalgia is the same as it ever was', written a week after Lennon's murder, shows the Beatles fan boy in Marquez, who writes eloquently about how the band's music appeals across generations and age groups, about how him and the grand children can enjoy it at the same time. Perhaps the most moving piece is the story of Maria who ends up in a mental asylum by accident, by the most bizarre of circumstances.
Some of his recollections appear multiple times in different articles, like the one about the Cuban poet Nicolas Guillen who used to live in the Latin Quarter in Paris and used to shout out the news from Latin America for the other dissidents from various countries living there. One morning, he shouted "the man has fallen" and everyone assumed that the fallen general was from their own country, since most Latin American nations at that time had a dictator in power.
'Scandal of the century', the one long piece which anchors this collection, is a detailed account of a crime investigation, after a woman's body is found at a beach. Over a series of columns, he examines the excruciating details of the case, the post-mortem examination and her own background quite clinically that what emerges is quite different from the assumptions in the beginning.
This is a collection that would be of interest to those who have exhausted all the Marquez fiction in their collection as well as for those who are fresh to the world of Marquez. One is left with the realisation that there is hardly any difference in how he approaches fiction and journalism, except for the facts part.
dark
mysterious
medium-paced
funny
informative
mysterious
tense
medium-paced
funny
informative
lighthearted
reflective
fast-paced
I think Gabriel Garcia Marquez was the first good writer (ie, not Stephen King or Dean Koontz) that I obsessed over. Sometime in 2005 or '06 I read something by him, and then spent the next few months or years reading everything of his that I could get my hand on. Not everything was great, but a lot were, and even the not great ones were better than just about anything else I had read. Scandal was collected and published in 2019 and is a collection of writing from Marquez's time as a journalist.
Gabriel the novel writer and Gabriel the journalist have pretty much the same style. He reported stories with the same easy, magical style with which he wrote One Hundred Years of Solitude or Love in the Time of Cholera, and it made me long for the days of newspapers. Though none of the columnists I remember reading when I was a kid could hold a candle to Gabo.
About half of these columns are from before he became famous and the other half are from after; he took a pretty long break to write a bunch of world-changing novels. The pre-famous writing still has his unique style, but he's doing what a regular journalist does, and reporting on stories. After he became famous though, he seemed more comfortable telling stories from the past about adventures he had been on or famous people he had known. Neither part of the book is better than the other, it's just interesting to see the change.
I don't know if this book would interest many people. I don't know if it would have interested me if it hadn't been written by who it was written by, but it was a nice, quick, light read; something that I really feel like I needed.
challenging
informative
inspiring
reflective
slow-paced
emotional
funny
informative
inspiring
lighthearted
reflective
fast-paced
funny
informative
reflective
relaxing
medium-paced