Maaya in Marquez - I

Its time that I write about Gabriel Garcia Marquez again.(Or do I write because of him.)

‘Memories of my melancholy whores’ is Marguez’s first work of fiction in the last ten years…That’s what the introductory blurb to the book says. The previous book by him had been ‘Living to tell the tale’. Orthodox literary reviews suggest concrete autobiographical attributes to that book. In fact it has been accepted as an autobiography.

I have read them both, proudly enough within a month of their publication. The result has always been the same, an irresistible urge to fall in love. May be with words, or with that old woman announcing her presence at five in the morning through my deserted alley.

I have been seeing her for the last thirty years or so, with a basket atop her head carrying bundled sticks to brush our teeth that she barters for a handful of rice. Her skin seems far to meager to contain her body and the wrinkles identify with dunes of a great desert. Every so often I think what sounds would wake my alley up after she dies. But isn't she more than dead, walking twenty kilometers for almost a century, challenging the MNC’s like Colgate, HLL, etc. with her brush-sticks she collects in the jungle to earn a little rice; or is it life?

Garcia Marquez and the old lady raise certain simple questions. In this writing, I want to put up few points regarding the much structured definitions of Fiction and Non-fiction as two distinct genres, specifically in the case of Marquez.

Before I get into my thesis, here are a few humble and honest confessions.
This writing is purely non-academic, drawing from an organic point that it pens from someone holed up in an obscure place in semi-urban India without a scholarly attitude but a genuine interest to read and get inspired to write.
This is not a book review either.
Finally I would like to title this piece as ‘Maya in Marquez’

On his ninetieth birthday, a man decides to gift himself with a night full of wild passion with an adolescent virgin. The encounter spurs his nostalgia. He recounts and relives his past libertine excesses, only to console himself with an unavoidable truth that sex is a helpless substitute for love. This agony guides him to his solitary escape as a writer. He writes about his love in his weekly newspaper column and in turn becomes the most famous man in the town. That’s the story for us. Fiction; one may call it.

To the earlier book now- ‘Living to tell the tale’. In the first page itself, Marquez receives his mother who wants him to accompany her to sell their ancestral house. Subsequently we learn about their bizarre journey to Aracataca. Re-unions with bygone familiarities. We get informed of the author’s passion to become a writer despite considerable domestic resistance. His education. His politics. Women. Life. Music. And success. The narrative is nonlinear and is structured in concentric spirals of tense. Non-fiction; one may term it.

After reading ‘Living to tell the tale’ I realised that almost all I have read of him have had their embryos in his real life. In a sense, his writings do have a strong autobiographical basis. But the point is, whatever the case may be, autobiographical resources contrived with imagery or pure fancy interweaved with factual events, it makes a little difference. Because what ends up are printed pages bound in a book, and the grind of creating it is a different realm. It can never be comprehended by structured conceptions of the real an unreal. Just the way, one cant comprehend life in conceptions.

Art and only art has this power to transcend reality in order to comprehend it. Marquez does it by telling tales and the old lady by selling her stcks.

To be contd.