Channeling Garcia Marquez…
In Gabo’s novel Autumn of the Patriarch, he created an amalgam of the most ruthless dictators known to him. While eating your enemies isn’t quite so literal nowadays, current strongmen and those who want to be show many of the same characteristics: paranoia, narcissism, ruthless holding on to the reins of power, and so forth. In short, Gabo’s novel is an extreme example of an author satisfying Clancy’s maxim that fiction must seem real, even in Macondo.
Although I lived in Colombia for over a decade, Garcia Marquez lived in Mexico at the time, so I never met Colombia’s Nobel prize winner, but he’s also an example of advice I’ve often given in these pages: the best preparation a fiction writer can have, if one is necessary, is journalism. Novelists must make their fiction seem real, whether it’s magical realism or gritty realism. Journalists are immersed in real life and report on it. They see people in real situations and they deal with real settings. That’s a huge start for any storyteller.
Moreover, most despots hate journalists, so they get to experience what it means to be in the public spotlight under attack (everyone now knows US media isn’t immune to that). In fact, they often know what it means for their lives to be in danger. Translating that into a novel should be a piece of cake, and that same novel can become their protest against the despot.
Journalists are often minimalist writers too. Gabo wasn’t, but the verbosity in his books is more a reflection of his native tongue—most Latin-origin languages are verbose. No hard-boiled mysteries there. I once served as a translator when a Scottish physicist visited Colombia. I would translate my colleagues’ Spanish into English, and he asked a few times, “Is that all he said?” I smiled and said more than once, “Essentially.” I was cutting out the extraneous material and giving him the minimalist version. (As a humorous note, in Sing a Zamba Galactica, the AI translating the old ET storyteller’s buzzwords does the same thing!)
But even in Colombian, Italian, German, and Russian newspapers, the column structure forces journalists to use minimalist writing. ‘Zines can allow a bit more verbosity, but those few still published in paper version must be more to the point. That’s excellent training for any writer.
I don’t know if Gabo is the only ex-journalist who received a Nobel prize in literature, but many journalists have become prolific fiction writers. Journalism is one way to make some good money writing too, which doesn’t happen all that often for novelists. Something to think about….
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Comments are always welcome.
Soldiers of God. In this sci-fi thriller, FBI agent Caitlin Murphy is the handler for Father Juan Pablo Gomez, who’s working undercover in a fanatical religious group. Her main problem? She’s in love with the priest! They work together to thwart the group’s plans to attack famous sites in the Washington DC area. But is that group only part of a broader conspiracy with a bigger agenda? Available in .mobi (Kindle) ebook format on Amazon, and in all ebook formats on Smashwords (for my email newsletter subcribers, on sale through March) and at all the latter’s affiliated retailers (iBooks, B&N, Kobo, etc.) and library and lending services (Scribd, Overdrive, Baker & Taylor, Gardners, etc.) An “evergreen book” as current today as when it was published, if not more so.
Around the world and to the stars! In libris libertas!
