J M Coetzee on Gabriel Garcia Marquez

J M Coetzee's inner workings (essays 2000-20005) is a book I recently picked up on a rainy morning, wet to my skin.



Of the 21 essays, I selected the one on GGM's Memories of my Melancholy Whores.



In most part, Coetzee quotes from the novella and outlines the plot of MOMMW.



Then he turns to comparison. Seems that not only Marquez's latest offering based on the basic structure of his previous work (Love In the Times of Cholera), there are other writers who have explored the theme of old age and paedophilia like Japanese writer Kawabata. But Coetzee is quick to point that "Marquez not so much imitates Kawabata as respond to it'.



Then Coetzee mentions the influences of Marquez like Sophocoles and Faulkner. As per Coetzee Marquez is the true successor, legatee of Faulkner and Sophocles's influence ? Well here is a funny story- his first book LeafStorm when read by his friend left the latter shocked. Its resemblance to Antigone was so palpable that GGM felt embarrassed at his 'subconscious' plagiarsm and made many changes to it to redeem himself from the public embarrassment of plagiarism though unable to privately hide his pride about the coincidence of thought in good faith.



Then he makes a controversial point: Is Garcia, the very Czar of Magic Realism at all one?



Now run a quick google search on the genre Magic Realism and the search engine will most probably throw GGM in all the metatags.



However Coetzee, a recent Nobel Laureate commenting on another, feels GGM more fits the description of Psychological Realist.



Coming back to the theme of paedophilia, Marquez has touched but not elaborately commented on it in Love In the Times of Cholera, described as an "autumnal comedy" by Coetzee.



Coetzee makes the point that what we outsiders consider 'magic realism' is perhaps commonplace if not real in the Spanish literature. Cervantes' Don Quixote is as much a fantasy married to reality with fuzzy boundaries.



Now this means the next post is about Magic Realism and that surely means Midnight's Children revisited.



Ciao