Críticas Magazine

Adriana V. Lopez

Gabo: A Life...and that long awaited biography
October 29, 2008

The British professor Gerald Martin just published his long awaited biography, Gabriel Garcia Marquez: A Life with the U.K.’s Bloomsbury.  It’s being called a Gabo biography as a rags-to-riches tale - more magical than realistic. Martin proposes from the start of his 664 page, extremely-researched book that took him 17 years to write, that Gabo is the only novelist of the late 20th century to enjoy the status of earlier literary gods like Joyce or Kafka. He talks about how when Gabo won the Nobel, even common (supposedly "low brow folks") like the cab drivers honked in the streets all over Colombia celebrating their literary hero.

Martin, a close friend of Gabo’s (even more reason for the delay and his wanting to get it right) was a former professor in the Department of Languages and Hispanic Literature at the University of Pittsburgh. According to the London’s Times, “Martin's all but unqualified admiration for every aspect of Garcia Marquez helps make his narrative consistently engaging and sympathetic, but also stirs occasional feelings of rebellious skepticism. Gabo might indeed, as one critic recently said, be Latin America's Homer; but as every schoolchild used to know, even Homer lost the plot sometimes.”

Can’t wait to get my hands on this. Anybody know about U.S.rights?

Posted by Adriana V. Lopez on October 29, 2008 | Comments (0)