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Authors: Gabriel García Márquez
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had a brush with lung cancer.
GARCÃA MÃRQUEZ : Yes. My prognosis is good. The tumor was benign. Well, it was malign but it had not spread. The doctors give me lots of optimism. I always said that if something like this were to happen, I wanted them to lie to me. So now they give me an impression that everything will be okay and I donât know if itâs the truth or not. The check-ups remain terrifying. They might find something else. I recently had an appointment scheduled for Wednesday. On Saturday I was anxious. On Sunday, I thought I was going to die.
STREITFELD : What happened on Monday?
GARCÃA MÃRQUEZ : I moved the appointment up.
STREITFELD : Has the cancer affected your work?
GARCÃA MÃRQUEZ : Iâm in more of a hurry. I used to say, âI can do this in twenty or thirty years.â Now I know there might not be another thirty years. But I try to get over this when I sit down to work. Hurriedness in creative expression is immediately noticed. In any case, using a computer is changing me more than the cancer. The first novel I wrote on a computer was âLove in the Time of Cholera.â I suspect it was the first novel written in Spanish on a computer by anyone.
On a typewriter I used to finish a draft and then give it to the typist, who would make a clean copy. It was a happy thing to see the new draft but the whole process would take a while. Now, with a computer, I just keep rewriting and rewriting. On a computer, a novel is infinitely correctible. Itâs so easy. You go on endlessly. But in the end itâs faster. The proof is I used to put out a novel every seven years, now itâs every two years.
STREITFELD : And yet you still have time for journalism.
GARCÃA MÃRQUEZ : Journalism is my true vocation. It keeps my feet on the ground. Otherwise Iâm like a balloon, I float off. Journalism keeps me nailed to reality. Curiously, as time goes on, I find the professions of fiction and journalism merging. The essence of literature and of journalism is the credibility they create. People are convinced by details. They say, âThatâs it, itâs rightââeven if itâs wrong. My new novel, which takes place in Cartagena, is about a legend but itâs filled with reportage. I look for details. Once Iâve found them, everything starts to happen.
STREITFELD : You are famous both for the amount of research you do, and for not letting it show.
GARCÃA MÃRQUEZ : I am still looking for some sources that will tell me what kind of a job someone would have had in the Vatican library, and there are some points of medieval medicine I need to double-check. Thatâs why I have all these books. When I saw Hemingwayâs library in Cuba, I could tellimmediately what his profession was. A novelist has to be able to consult everything.
STREITFELD : And reveal nothing.
GARCÃA MÃRQUEZ : And reveal nothing. When you finish the novel, you should destroy all your notes and drafts. Magicians never show how the trick was done. A writer should be the same.
STREITFELD : (
Beginning to perspire
.) You like it warm in here, eh?
GARCÃA MÃRQUEZ : I canât think in the cold. Besides this house, I have an apartment in Bogotá, an apartment in Cartagena, a house in Cuernavaca, a house in Paris and a house in Barcelona. My friends laugh at me because theyâre all the same: white. I have the exact same computer everywhere, and the same temperature settingâthe temperature of the Caribbean. Tomorrow, if I have to go to Barcelona or Bogotá, I just grab my diskette and put it in my pocket.
STREITFELD : Why white and not, say, blue?
GARCÃA MÃRQUEZ : When visitors see itâs a white carpet, they immediately start to clean their feet on the mat. If it werenât white, they wouldnât bother.
STREITFELD : You were born in 1927âalthough some sources say 1928.
GARCÃA MÃRQUEZ : In my town, there were no civic
GARCÃA MÃRQUEZ : Yes. My prognosis is good. The tumor was benign. Well, it was malign but it had not spread. The doctors give me lots of optimism. I always said that if something like this were to happen, I wanted them to lie to me. So now they give me an impression that everything will be okay and I donât know if itâs the truth or not. The check-ups remain terrifying. They might find something else. I recently had an appointment scheduled for Wednesday. On Saturday I was anxious. On Sunday, I thought I was going to die.
STREITFELD : What happened on Monday?
GARCÃA MÃRQUEZ : I moved the appointment up.
STREITFELD : Has the cancer affected your work?
GARCÃA MÃRQUEZ : Iâm in more of a hurry. I used to say, âI can do this in twenty or thirty years.â Now I know there might not be another thirty years. But I try to get over this when I sit down to work. Hurriedness in creative expression is immediately noticed. In any case, using a computer is changing me more than the cancer. The first novel I wrote on a computer was âLove in the Time of Cholera.â I suspect it was the first novel written in Spanish on a computer by anyone.
On a typewriter I used to finish a draft and then give it to the typist, who would make a clean copy. It was a happy thing to see the new draft but the whole process would take a while. Now, with a computer, I just keep rewriting and rewriting. On a computer, a novel is infinitely correctible. Itâs so easy. You go on endlessly. But in the end itâs faster. The proof is I used to put out a novel every seven years, now itâs every two years.
STREITFELD : And yet you still have time for journalism.
GARCÃA MÃRQUEZ : Journalism is my true vocation. It keeps my feet on the ground. Otherwise Iâm like a balloon, I float off. Journalism keeps me nailed to reality. Curiously, as time goes on, I find the professions of fiction and journalism merging. The essence of literature and of journalism is the credibility they create. People are convinced by details. They say, âThatâs it, itâs rightââeven if itâs wrong. My new novel, which takes place in Cartagena, is about a legend but itâs filled with reportage. I look for details. Once Iâve found them, everything starts to happen.
STREITFELD : You are famous both for the amount of research you do, and for not letting it show.
GARCÃA MÃRQUEZ : I am still looking for some sources that will tell me what kind of a job someone would have had in the Vatican library, and there are some points of medieval medicine I need to double-check. Thatâs why I have all these books. When I saw Hemingwayâs library in Cuba, I could tellimmediately what his profession was. A novelist has to be able to consult everything.
STREITFELD : And reveal nothing.
GARCÃA MÃRQUEZ : And reveal nothing. When you finish the novel, you should destroy all your notes and drafts. Magicians never show how the trick was done. A writer should be the same.
STREITFELD : (
Beginning to perspire
.) You like it warm in here, eh?
GARCÃA MÃRQUEZ : I canât think in the cold. Besides this house, I have an apartment in Bogotá, an apartment in Cartagena, a house in Cuernavaca, a house in Paris and a house in Barcelona. My friends laugh at me because theyâre all the same: white. I have the exact same computer everywhere, and the same temperature settingâthe temperature of the Caribbean. Tomorrow, if I have to go to Barcelona or Bogotá, I just grab my diskette and put it in my pocket.
STREITFELD : Why white and not, say, blue?
GARCÃA MÃRQUEZ : When visitors see itâs a white carpet, they immediately start to clean their feet on the mat. If it werenât white, they wouldnât bother.
STREITFELD : You were born in 1927âalthough some sources say 1928.
GARCÃA MÃRQUEZ : In my town, there were no civic
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