Every time I hear the words magic realism I want to reach for my revolver The Colombian government under the dictatorship of General Pinilla, unhappy with these and other revelations, closed El Espectador down. Much of M?uez's later writing would similarly mingle journalism with a creative immersion in the subject.There are many curious revelations here M?uez writes with music playing in the background. From his grandfather, Colonel Nicol?M?uez, Gabriel inherited a lifelong adoration for Sim?ol?r, the hero of South American independence and the subject of one of his finest books, The General in his Labyrinth. Throughout this memoir, M?uez insists on Colombia's Caribbean identity and celebrates its piquant foodstuffs, dialects and, above all, history. In 1816, Bol?r had raised an expedition from the Caribbean island of Haiti to liberate Venezuela from Spanish oppression. He was born in 1928 in an old Indian settlement due north of the capital of Bogota. His father worked for the United Fruit Company, which succeeded in reducing the Honduras to such a state of corruption that it earned the original title of "banana republic". The Boston-based company had interests in M?uez's native Aracataca, and the "illusion of a banana bonanza" was allowed to grow as the town sprawled across railroad tracks.According to family legend, the writer's antecedents came to Colombia from Spain by way of Venezuela in the early 19th century. Now in his mid-seventies, M?uez has withstood the vagaries of fashion remarkably well. Dustjacket blurbs often claim him as the only heir to the Argentine fabulist Jorge Luis Borges, yet M?uez has much more energy and emotion than Borges: his sensibility is less mandarin, considerably more robust, and he articulates very human emotions.Living to Tell the Tale, the engaging first volume of a projected three-part autobiography, is the story of how M?uez became a writer and his childhood on the east coast of Colombia. There was a deadpan tone and a calm acceptance of the horrific that recalled greater works by M?uez But they were hardly classics. One of his latter-day books told a real-life drama from Pinochet's Chile, another a kidnapping by Colombian cocaine traffickers in Medellin.
First published in 1967, the Colombian novel was celebrated for the episode (among others) where a woman ascends to heaven while hanging her washing on a line. In recent years, however, M?uez has concentrated on books of fictionalised journalism, realism without the magic. Perhaps he has grown weary of the fashionable example he set with One Hundred Years of Solitude. Every time I hear the words "magic realism" I want to reach for my revolver. Back in the 1970s, Britain was flooded with phantasmagoric novels by Colombians and Cubans. The authors - Casteneda, Carpentier, Cortazar - were fashionable but often overrated. One Hundred Years of Solitude, the glittery Latin saga by Gabriel Garc?M?uez that spawned the "magic" imitations, appeared in student bedsits more dependably than rising damp or Athena posters. Still, there's no denying that he has a range and perspicacity as an actor that's yet to be exploited. I look forward to seeing him in the West End again soon - but in a play written by someone else, please.'So Much Things To Say': Wyndham's Theatre, London WC2 (020 7369 1736), to 29 November. |
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