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Because it’s the book I always wanted to write, and it’s where I’ve gone furthest in my personal confessions.
    MENDOZA : Duly camouflaged, of course.
    GARCÍA MÁRQUEZ : Of course.
    MENDOZA : It was also the book which took you longest to write.
    GARCÍA MÁRQUEZ : Seventeen years in all. And I abandoned two versions before hitting on the right one.
    MENDOZA : So it’s your best book?
    GARCÍA MÁRQUEZ : Before I wrote
Chronicle of a Death Foretold
, I used to say my best novel was
Nobody Writes to the Colonel
. I rewrote it nine times and it seemed the least vulnerable of my works to me.
    MENDOZA : But you think
Chronicle of a Death Foretold
is even better.
    GARCÍA MÁRQUEZ : Yes.
    MENDOZA : In which sense?
    GARCÍA MÁRQUEZ : In the sense that I did exactly what I wanted to do with it. This had never happened before. In my other books the story took over, the characters took on a life of their own and did whatever they fancied.
    MENDOZA : That’s one of the most extraordinary things about literary creation …
    GARCÍA MÁRQUEZ : But I felt I needed to write a book over which I could exercise strict control, and I think I did it in
Chronicle of a Death Foretold
. The theme demanded the precise structure of a detective story.
    MENDOZA : It’s very odd that you never mention
One Hundred Years of Solitude
among your best books when many critics consider it is unsurpassable. Do you really feel so bitter about it?
    GARCÍA MÁRQUEZ : Yes, I do. It nearly ruined my life. Nothing was ever the same again after it was published.
    MENDOZA : Why?
    GARCÍA MÁRQUEZ : Because fame unsettles your sense of reality, almost as much as power perhaps, and it continually threatens your private life. Unfortunately, nobody believes this until they have to put up with it.
    MENDOZA : Is it that you feel the success of
One Hundred Years of Solitude
is unfair to the rest of your work?
    GARCÍA MÁRQUEZ : Yes, it’s unfair.
The Autumn of the Patriarch
is a much more important literary achievement. But whereas it is about the solitude of power,
One Hundred Years of Solitude
is about the solitude of everyday life. It’s everybody’s life story. Also, it’s written in a simple, flowing, linear, and, I’d even say (I’ve said it before), superficial way.
    MENDOZA : You seem to despise it.
    GARCÍA MÁRQUEZ : No, but since I knew it was written with all the tricks and artifices under the sun, I knew I could do better even before I wrote it.
    MENDOZA : That you could beat it.
    GARCÍA MÁRQUEZ : Yes, that I could beat it.

A STAMP USED ONLY FOR LOVE LETTERS
    TWO INTERVIEWS BY DAVID STREITFELD
    MEXICO CITY AND WASHINGTON, D.C .
    1993 AND 1997
    Â 
    My first interview with Gabriel García Márquez took place in late 1993 at his house in Mexico City. He was just finishing
Del amor y otros demonios,
a minor but charming work published in Spanish the next year and in English as
Of Love and Other Demons
in 1995, and was beginning to conceive a multivolume autobiography, the first and only volume of which was published in 2002. He was recovering from his first bout with cancer, a situation that fed his hypochondria and melancholy. The conversation, spread over two days, took place in a bungalow adjacent to the main house. Pleasant but not ostentatious, it was at once library, office and man-cave. It was very well heated
.
    GARCÍA MÁRQUEZ : (
Points to the tape-recorder
.) Do we really have to use that? I’m an enemy of the tape-recorder. It has an ear but no heart. You could take notes.
    STREITFELD : I write very slowly. So I’m afraid we must use it. Otherwise, this interview would last until next week.
    GARCÍA MÁRQUEZ : Okay, then. I’m sorry I don’t speak English.The biggest mistake I ever made in my life was not learning how to speak English perfectly. (
Gestures in surrender
.) Ask me what you will.
    STREITFELD : You recently