the possibilities of the novel itself are unlimited...

I am determined to finish The Autumn of the Patriarch and Gerald Martin's biography of Gabo, Gabriel Garcia Marquez, a Life. But The Autumn of the Patriarch is not an easy read and the biography is thick.

Right now Marquez is in Mexico. He's been working in the news, advertising and movie industries. But it seems his soul yearns for its primary language...literature...

I always thought that the cinema, through its tremendous visual power, was the perfect means of expression. All my books before One Hundred Years of Solitude are hampered by that uncertainty. There is an immoderate desire for the visualization of character and scene, a millimetric account of the time of dialogue and action and an obsession with indicating point of view and frame. While actually working in cinema, however, I came to realize not only what could be done but also what couldn't be done; I saw that the predominance of the image over the other narrative elements was certainly an advantage but also a limitation and this was for me a startling discovery because only then did I become aware of the fact that the possibilities of the novel itself are unlimited.

I just about salivate over these words, because I understand, and I agree that "the possibilities of the novel itself are unlimited."

That is why we keep reading, that is why we keep searching. That is why the shelves of ereaders all over the world are bursting with books.

The human mind thrives on novelty...we will always crave new stories...and the possibilities are unlimited.

Ah. The master has spoken.

Who Would Sell a Sea?

There are things that I have learned along the way. One is: No one else can tell the truth of your life. It's because we all have filters, and see things in our own way. So, whenever someone says she did this because of that or when that happened, it may or may not be true. Because they don't really know, do they?

Given that truth, a biography, read with an appropriate sense of caution, can be a fascinating thing.

From Gabriel Garcia Marquez, A Life by Gerald Martin ...

... he began to collect the details which would eventually make a dictator of his own come to life, fleshing out the obsessions with power and authority, impotence and solitude ... Mendoza recalls that his tireless friend spent a lot of time in those days reading about Latin America's seemingly interminable list of tyrants ... gradually developing a profile of boys without fathers, men with an unhealthy dependence on their mothers and an immense lust for taking possession of the earth ...

and then we get this ... in The Autumn of the Patriarch ...

... it was thought that he was a man of the upland plains because of his immense appetite for power, the nature of his government, his mournful bearing, the inconceivable evil of a heart which had sold the sea to a foreign power and condemned us to live facing this limitless plain of harsh lunar dust where the bottomless sunsets pain us in our souls.

I mean ... WTF.
Who would sell a sea?

Six Pages, One Long Line...

I am reading Gabriel Garcia Marquez, A Life by Gerald Martin. It's a slow road. There's not a lot of poetry. There are lots of facts, and names, and places. But it's a biography, and it's thorough.

I love the passages that speak directly to Gabo's writing, even better when he's quoted:

There's not a line in any of my books which I can't connect to a real experience. There is always a reference to concrete reality.

This is an important insight to another writer. Maybe to a reader, too. But the first time I read it, it flies right over my head like a startled bird. I drop the book in my lap and laugh.

Because I have just finished reading The Last Voyage of The Ghost Ship... six pages, one long line.

That Gabo, he's got a wicked sense of humor.