Carlos Fuentes wondered whether Gabriel García Márquez was the best writer in Spanish since Cervantes.
It’s a fair question, and a remarkable one. I don’t recall anyone wondering whether a contemporary writer in English was the best since Shakespeare. Do you?
García Márquez was born on March 6, 1927 in Aracataca, Columbia. I’m guessing that people who remember him on his birthday will mention the great novels, One Hundred Years of Solitude and Love in the Time of Cholera. That seems off to me. I’ll let García Márquez explain why:
I thought that the story and novel not only were different literary genres but two organisms with natures so diverse it would be fatal to confuse them. Today I still believe that, and I am convinced more than ever of the supremacy of the short story over the novel.
If you are looking for a sample of his short stories, consider “María dos Prezares,” a story about a 76-year-old prostitute who dreams she is going to die. She makes elaborate preparations, only to find she was mistaken in interpreting the dream.
She is not about to die. She is about to fall in love. Even in a life filled with sadness, there are moments worth living for.
Among the story’s many wonders — and there are many — is María’s habit of reciting her will from memory. As she became well to do, she’d collected nice things. She planned to give each item to a certain person, and so the recitations. “When it was over, she did not feel very convinced that she had been fair, but she was certain that she had not forgotten anyone who did not deserve it.”
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