The magic of Gabo

Remember how the “most handsome and well-mannered” Italian blond Pietro Crespi died in Cien años de soledad? Basically very little magic and a lot of hard work is involved … I never have done any carpentry but it’s the job I admire most, especially because you can never find anyone to do it for you.” While recollecting his father’s memory, Rodrigo Garcia wrote that Gabo woke up every morning fearful of losing his path in the treacherous terrain of a novel and by breakfast he worried that “if today doesn’t go well, the whole novel might be a bust. She would say, “Every time this man came around, he would leave the house full of butterflies.” The electrician later emerged as Mauricio Babilonia in One Hundred Years of Solitude. García Márquez’s career as a writer, which began from the cheap rooms of a brothel and ended up on the prestigious stage of the Royal Swedish Academy of Letters, History and Antiquities, will inspire generations to come and will work as a mirror, reflecting the society for eons, but to sustain his works we need to develop a certain degree of intellectual acumen, so that we can decipher the reality, at times the brutal realities of South America, encoded behind the magic. Gabo himself argued for this reality in his Nobel Prize lecture and Salman Rushdie argued by pointing out the ‘reality’ while delivering a talk on Gabriel García Márquez at Harry Ransom Center.