(Almost) Meeting García Márquez, Part 2
A meandering reflection on my quest to meet one of the great writers.
…My first near-miss-meeting with García Márquez happened at Gonzalo’s. It was a long time ago now, and the details are fuzzy, but I remember a large party, one of those parties where you get nudged and squeezed into places, pulled into some conversations you can’t wait to leave, overhearing other conversations you want to find a way into nearby. And because it’s Mexico, Cuba Libres were being consumed at a steady clip, the smoke of strong cigarettes hovering in the air. I spoke little Spanish at the time, and through the barrage of alcohol-fueled faster and slangier than normal Mexican Spanish I was working hard just to pluck certain words and expressions out of the air, to connect these to other words being spoken, to the general tone and emotion of the moment, to try to grasp, at least in a general way, what was being said. Eventually, I found myself amidst several people my age who looked oddly familiar and who were happy to shift to English when I was found out.
“Yes, I’m Dwyn’s friend…no I’ve never been to Mexico before. I’m hoping to go to graduate school in writing soon.”
“But can you really teach that, do you think? Didn’t all the great writers become writers through living?”
“That’s certainly true of many great writers, though I think that’s changing. Do you know Flannery O’Connor, Yes? She attended the MFA program at Iowa, you know…”
“And tell us what you think of your cowboy president (Regan)? And who do you read? What contemporary US writers are worth the time? Do you know about Remedios Varo? I think you would like her very much…”— these are not exact words, not precise memories, but rather an amalgam of many social events over the years in Mexico, with me always amazed at the level of discourse, the seriousness of it, the sincerity, the intellectual curiosity.
During the pandemic a good friend’s son, Eric, asked me if I would be a virtual guest for his book club. They would read a Hemingway story. I’d talk through it with them via video chat, answering questions, pointing to things I find worthwhile to consider…. Eric and his friends, all in their late 20s, engaged me in a thoroughly enjoyable and challenging discussion of (sometimes defense of) my understanding of the story, “The End of Something.” Like so many encounters in Mexico, I was left feeling that I had engaged in something more real, somehow deeper but all at once natural—a genuine desire to probe and unravel and make sense of something through spirited debate and engagement. I think of Plato’s Socrates saying that all truth begins with two—meaning that in dialogue with others we find our way toward meaning (and hence Plato never “said” anything, but left it all to his depiction of Socrates engaged in spirited discussion with his opponents)….
After the party at Gonzalo’s two things were revealed to me. First, the group of people I ended up talking with extensively throughout the evening consisted of some of the cast of the film Like Water for Chocolate (Como aqua para chocolate), which explains why they looked so familiar, as I had recently seen that film. And secondly, that Gonzalo’s father had made a brief appearance but had remained in the kitchen, just around the corner from where I was.
Oddly, or not so oddly, neither revelation had the kind of impact you might expect, as I was—as I so often have been in Mexico—enthralled with the whole, dizzying allure of the evening, a full Cuba always appearing in my hand, conversations moving freely in and out of Spanish, English, heartfelt emotional proclamations—“he is a fascist, absolutely, that’s just the only word for it, fascismo!” “The most important thing for a writer is to live not to sit in a classroom and have a teacher tell them how to do it!”
There were several times during visits where I twisted my wife’s arm to call Gonzalo or Gabo, himself, to see if he were in town, if we might be able to stop by, which she sometimes reluctantly did, and each time it was not to be. He was in Colombia, was spending more time there lately with things improving so much. He was preparing for an interview. He had just left town for a few days. Too bad you didn’t call yesterday….
Many years later, I was in Mexico alone en route to a literature conference, without my now wife, staying with her old friend Silvia, who once dated García Márquez’s other son, the now renowned filmmaker, Rodrigo García, and so, of course, I asked her. She called, and I heard a deep, animated voice on the other end, plucked out certain words from her conversation, “Dwynwen’s husband, remember Dwyn?, he’s a professor in the U.S….he has always wanted to meet you….”
He was home. He would be delighted to meet me. He’s going to the dentist soon, but would be back in a few hours. Come by then.
My heart rose. I was giddy with excitement and could barely focus on the edits I needed to do to the paper I would deliver for an American Literature Association conference in Cabo San Lucas a few days later. Soon we were driving through the always loud, frantic rush of Mexico City traffic, then into an older quieter colonial neighborhood, then standing at a large, wooden front door. I was struck that it was such a humble house, not ostentatious in any way, nothing to give away the kind of literary superstar who lived there. The door opened, the maid letting us in, and there in the foyer was a large painting of Hemingway.
Soon his wife Mercedes, the woman all of his novels are dedicated to, joined us, gave kisses on each cheek, and we settled down in the living room for some cold drinks. I asked about the Hemingway painting (by this time I had become an avid Hemingwayista and was about to deliver a paper on him). She responded, “es una de sus manias” (he’s one of his obsessions). My admiration for him ticked up a notch. Above the couch was a painting, a Goya maybe? Mercedes pointed out a hole in the canvas. It was a bullet hole from the revolution.
Mercedes asked if I’d like to see his writing studio. As I remember, it was out through the garden in a separate building, his desk covered in papers, books everywhere, a typewriter, all the typical trappings of a writer, but to me they were so much more, this the space where such remarkable art had found its way into existence. He was at that moment hard at work on Love in the Time of Cholera. Ricardo, another high school friend of my wife later told me a story about that novel, how Gabo had asked everyone he knew to send along love stories they were familiar with, and Ricardo had recommended the film Syd and Nancy, and he had loved it, seeing it as just the kind of classic love story he wanted to immerse himself in as he wrote the novel.
Eventually, the phone rang, and I could hear from across the room that same deep voice, Mercedes’s, “ah, que lastima,” how sad, “quería conocerte,” he wanted to meet you.
There was so much traffic, the dentist had run late, he would meet her at their dinner engagement rather than come home first, tell him how sorry I am, another time….
There wouldn’t be another time. When teaching him, I would often, boastingly tell the stories of how close I had come to meeting him, that one day I surely would, but more and more, I am utterly content in having not met him, in having only ever nearly met him. What would I have said? I love your work. You mean a lot to me as a person and as a writer. It’s such an honor….
None of these expressions would have changed anything in my life, given me anything more than what his art has already given me. More and more I see that by almost meeting him, by having the event never come to full fruition seems fitting.
I’m reminded of his story “A Very Old Man with Enormous Wings,” in which a very old man with enormous wings washes up on a beach in a small seaside village one day. He has sea lice growing on him, seems old and frail and speaks a language no one understands, and though utterly uninteresting in every way, there are those wings…. It is a short story and easy to find, and I highly recommend it. In the story (spoilers ahead), there is no final resolution, no explanation given as to who the creature is, where he comes from, and eventually even the priest who wants to believe he is a fallen angel loses interest in him. It ends with these words: “…But he did manage to gain altitude. Elisenda let out a sigh of relief, for herself and for him, when she watched him pass over the last houses, holding himself up in some way with the risky flapping of a senile vulture. She kept watching him even when she was through cutting the onions and she kept on watching until it was no longer possible for her to see him, because then he was no longer an annoyance in her life but an imaginary dot on the horizon of the sea.”
My quest to meet García Márquez remained always a kind of imaginary dot on a horizon I continue to look toward. In many ways I feel fortunate that it remained always just beyond my reach, just as his many powerful works of fiction remain always visible and known, yet mysterious and beyond our full grasp—like that very old man, familiar yet remarkable, canny and uncanny all at once.
*apologies for missing a post last week, See HERE for the reason.
Find books referenced in this post at my Bookshop.org affiliate page: One Hundred Years of Solitude, Labyrinths
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