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Gabo was... simply... a higher being.

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Every time you read one of Gabo's books,

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you feel like you want
to read more from him.

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His charm. His special way
of looking at life.

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The most famous writer to come out
of South America and the whole world.

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He is our greatest pride, the greatest
that we, Cataqueños, could ever have.

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The literary world

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is in mourning this afternoon,

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as Colombian Nobel prize winner
Gabriel García Márquez

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has just passed away in Mexico City.

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...we, fable weavers,
who believe everything,

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feel entitled to believe
that it is not too late

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to undertake the creation
of the opposite utopia.

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A new and sweeping utopia of life,

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where there is no one to decide
for others, down to the way they die,

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where love is really true
and happiness is possible,

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and where the families condemned
to live one hundred years of solitude

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will have, at last and forever,

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a second chance on earth.

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García Márquez was the first
contemporary classic I read.

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And One Hundred Years of Solitude
was one of the novels

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that made me realize that this was
what I wanted to do with my life.

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No one can be a writer if
they're completely satisfied.

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All of literature is born from a
certain dissatisfaction

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with life, with one's life story,
with the world as it is,

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and writing is an attempt to
correct these deficiencies.

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How on earth did a boy who came from
a small town on the Caribbean coast

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end up writing a book that transformed

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twentieth century Western literature?

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First, one must look for the answers
in his childhood.

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Gerald Martin has spent two decades
researching the details of his life.

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It was a small town of between
five and ten thousand inhabitants.

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It was unknown to the world
and it still is.

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At the same time, it was going
through its most important moment.

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The United Fruit Company
was everywhere in northern Colombia.

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There were Gringos, Jamaicans,
people from all over the Caribbean

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coming to work in Aracataca.

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So obviously, as it was a booming town,
there were a lot of quarrels, fights,

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a lot of alcohol, brothels,
and plenty of violence.

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It was a town
where lots of things happened.

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Macondo, the magical world in his books,

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was inspired by Aracataca, where he spent
the first nine years of his life.

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"Many years later,
as he faced the firing squad,

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Colonel Aureliano Buendía
was to remember that distant afternoon

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when his father took him to discover ice.

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Macondo was a village
of twenty adobe houses back then,

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built on the bank of a
river of clear water

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that rushed along
a bed of massive, white

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polished stones
that looked like prehistoric eggs.

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The world was so new
that many things did not have a name,

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and, in order to mention them,
it was necessary to point at them."

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He was born in his grandfather's house.

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His mother and her husband,
Gabriel Eligio, had been banished.

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Her family was one of the wealthiest
in Aracataca and they did not approve

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of her marriage to someone who was from
a "grim" area of northern Colombia.

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He was an adventurer, a romantic.

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When the boy turned one year,

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his parents, Luisa Santiaga
and Gabriel Eligio moved to Barranquilla.

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She had had another child
and took that child with her,

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leaving Gabriel behind.

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What was that child bound to think?

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That he had been, "abandoned."

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"It's a recurring dream
which persists even now.

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What is more, every single day of my
life I wake up with the feeling,

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real or imaginary, that I have dreamt
of myself in that house.

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It is not that I have returned to it,
but I am there all the same.

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My age is unknown and I have
no particular reason to be there.

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It is as though I had never left
that big, old house."

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It was the greatest of joys,
because when you're a child,

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you love big spaces to run,
jump and do whatever you want.

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Even more so when we knew
it was our grandparents' house,

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where we could do anything we wanted

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because nothing was forbidden there.

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When his family moved out,
at that moment they left...

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They went to work elsewhere, I obviously
don't remember exactly where.

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Little Gabo was then left under the care
of his grandfather and grandmother.

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To his grandfather,

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he was his little Napoleon,
as he called him,

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and little Gabo spent
a lot of time with him.

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My grandfather was a
very considerate person,

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perhaps due to his lifestyle
and his earnest nature.

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My grandparents were somewhat cultured,

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even without having had a formal
university education or anything.

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Grandma was superstitious.

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She would instill fear
in us about everything.

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We were all cowardly
and easily-frightened.

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If anyone suddenly opened
an umbrella inside the house,

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she would tell them to close it
or someone would die.

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Little Gabo would ask her why
and the question scared her.

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He was the darling of the house.

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In the afternoon, you would hear

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frogs croaking in the garden

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and she would tell them:
"Come by tomorrow and I'll give you salt."

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Because she believed
that they were witches.

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To me, it was a very strange life.

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The women who lived before my grandmother

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lived in a supernatural world.

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A fantasy world where anything
was possible.

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Where the most wonderful things
were commonplace,

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but Grandpa was probably

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the most concrete person
that I've ever met.

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And he told me stories
about the Civil War.

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The vicissitudes of politics.

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He spoke to me as if I were an adult.

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So my life was divided
between these two worlds.

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García Márquez's grandfather,

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Colonel Márquez, played a crucial role
in the Thousand Days' War,

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the civil war between
conservatives and liberals,

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in the early twentieth century.

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It left an incredibly
negative legacy in Colombia.

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On festivities,

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when Gypsies arrived and the fruit
vendor, the candy vendor arrived,

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the circus would come.

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I remember that magician doing
prestidigitation things.

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He did all these magic tricks
that fascinated little Gabriel.

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On the one hand, there was fascination
for the intense life of the people,

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on the other, there were fears and
experiences that were hard to explain.

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My thesis is that
García Márquez thought...

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he was buried in his grandfather's house.

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Living in a house of elderly people.

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A grandfather who talked
about death all the time,

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a grandmother, who was
an extraordinary, superstitious woman,

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and, according to whom,
there were ghosts everywhere.

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It was an eerie, magical childhood,
with all those things he made up.

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But at the same time,
it was also a very bleak childhood.

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When he was nine years old, his
father came looking for him.

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García Márquez went off to live
with his parents for the first time.

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If Aracataca is Macondo,
Sucre is the darker,

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more sinister town
of his other early works.

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My dad, I think, was a regular guy,

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he had a license to practice homeopathy,

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so he combined this trade
with a pharmacy he owned,

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and in this way he was more or
less capable of supporting the family.

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Gabito used to say that he held
some sort of suspicion

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because my dad was a strong guy.

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His father was sometimes
away for months

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and left the family
incredibly impoverished.

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García Márquez was his mother's rock.

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My mom always liked us
to use the right word,

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she read us stories from the Sunday paper.

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We got to primary school,
already knowing how to read

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because she had taught us.

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When he was a child in Sucre,

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I think he was quite innocent.

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His father was very different
from the Colonel.

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His attitude towards sex
and relationships with women...

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was more typical of what
you would expect from the coast.

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Isidro Álvarez is a writer from Sucre
who shows me around the key places,

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and I worried a bit about

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the possible rift between fiction

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and the reality that I was about to see.

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Here in this space, just
outside the village,

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was the location of La Hora,

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the brothel where all young
men in this town lost their virginity.

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García Márquez was also initiated there,
when he was barely twelve years old,

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by one of the girls who worked
at the place.

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In most of his interviews,

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he says it was a wonderful thing,

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and that he discovered sex and
that somehow... "Thanks dad", and so on.

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However, there is an interview...

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that he later confirmed with me,

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where he says it was the scariest
thing that ever happened in his life.

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Later he had many other far more positive
experiences in his teenage years.

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Shortly after this radical
change in his life,

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he heard of the death of his grandfather.

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Its impact further strengthened
his perpetual horror of death.

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I think that was the breaking point,
because he later states

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that after his grandfather's death,
nothing seems to be of interest to him.

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When Grandpa died, the world was over,
it was completely over,

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but the memory of Grandpa,
who supported me the most

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so that I could do what I most wanted,

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which was to express myself.
That was Grandpa's memory.

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It's hard to forget
a grandfather like that.

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It would take García Márquez many years

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to transform the reality of
his childhood into fiction.

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The diverse themes
and atmospheres in his books,

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the war stories,
his grandmother's ghosts,

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the world, sex, the fear of incest,

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all of that is rooted here.

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It is very difficult to imagine

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what Colombia was like in 1943.

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I was in a house

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where a sibling was born every year.

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Then I realized that leaving
was the only possible alternative,

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so I decided to go
from Barranquilla to Bogota,

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to sit for a scholarship exam.

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I went on a boat that crossed
the Magdalena River.

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It normally took eight days
to get there,

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but if the boat broke down,
depending on the time of year,

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it could take up to fifteen or sixteen.
You never knew.

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Besides, you didn't mind
if the boat broke down. It was a party.

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That boat was at times a two-week party,

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where you danced,
where García Márquez sang

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all the songs he knew by heart, non-stop.

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Gabito was a born musician,

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I was convinced he had become a singer.

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The Magdalena River quickly
became a metaphor,

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because it was the route he took
to get from his culture, his family,

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to the distant, cold, remote places
of the Colombian capital and its environs.

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The coldness and remoteness were not only
geographical, they were also existential.

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I arrived alone in Bogota, in 1943,

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at four in the afternoon,
at Savannah Station,

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and found a gray city, an ashen town,

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with rain, with trams

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that would throw sparks
when they touched corners

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and in which everyone held tight,
while standing up.

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All men were dressed in black
and wore hats,

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and there wasn't a single woman
in sight.

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The first thing García Márquez noted,
was the deep despair

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he felt upon arriving
in this icy, rainy city,

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then seeing a line of people that went
around the block and bursting into tears

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at the realization of his loneliness
in this hostile place,

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where he didn't know anyone.

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The first days of his new life
were marked by drizzle and cold.

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He was surrounded
by people he didn't know.

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These things combined
lead García Márquez to two revelations

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that I consider crucial, in order
to understand his literary vocation.

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These revelations are
solitude and nostalgia.

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I had written, perhaps,
not one but two stories.

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I put them in an envelope

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and sent them to El Espectador.

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00:18:07,480 --> 00:18:12,440
The following Saturday, I went outside,

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00:18:13,480 --> 00:18:17,080
went into a café on Seventh Street

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and saw a guy who had opened the
literary supplement of El Espectador.

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It showcased the title of my story,
covering the width of eight columns.

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It was published in Eduardo Zalamea's
section "The City and the World",

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with a note

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in which he stated that he hoped
the supplement's readers had realized

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that a new writer had been featured,
a writer they'd never heard of.

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00:18:55,000 --> 00:18:59,360
And he paid a great
a deal of compliments to this writer,

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And my thought at that moment

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was that I'd got into a hell of a mess,

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00:19:05,960 --> 00:19:07,880
because there was no way back,

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00:19:08,120 --> 00:19:11,480
so I had to remain a writer
for the rest of my life.

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"He was in his coffin, ready to be buried,
and yet he knew he was not dead.

238
00:19:24,520 --> 00:19:28,480
He knew that if he tried to get up,
he would be able to do so with ease,

239
00:19:28,600 --> 00:19:30,280
at least spiritually,

240
00:19:30,480 --> 00:19:34,120
but it wasn't worth it, it was
better to let himself die there,

241
00:19:34,240 --> 00:19:37,880
dying of death, which was his illness."

242
00:19:45,160 --> 00:19:49,760
This meeting must have taken place
around 1947.

243
00:19:50,360 --> 00:19:54,800
It was at a café, in Bogota. Back then
downtown Bogota was full of cafés.

244
00:19:56,000 --> 00:20:02,080
I was to meet up with an old friend
who had been a fellow student at school

245
00:20:02,280 --> 00:20:08,640
and who had been in university
with García Márquez.

246
00:20:09,120 --> 00:20:11,480
I was talking to her when Gabo,

247
00:20:11,560 --> 00:20:13,280
as we now call him, walked in.

248
00:20:13,880 --> 00:20:16,800
He was the typical guy from the Caribbean.

249
00:20:17,000 --> 00:20:21,320
He was too exotic for Bogota back then.

250
00:20:22,160 --> 00:20:24,680
He was flirting with the waitress too,

251
00:20:24,760 --> 00:20:28,240
and I started to stare at him in horror.

252
00:20:28,440 --> 00:20:30,000
He was there for a while and then left.

253
00:20:30,160 --> 00:20:32,680
I think he had a beer or something.
He paid and left.

254
00:20:33,320 --> 00:20:38,160
Then my friend told me, "Look,
that boy is in university with me,

255
00:20:38,320 --> 00:20:41,600
but he's a lousy, lousy student.

256
00:20:41,880 --> 00:20:46,960
His life is totally crazy,
he lives around here in a student home,

257
00:20:47,480 --> 00:20:49,280
he drinks booze" and so on.

258
00:20:49,560 --> 00:20:51,880
"It's a pity", was our conclusion.

259
00:20:51,960 --> 00:20:54,960
He's got talent, but he's a lost cause.

260
00:20:59,520 --> 00:21:01,720
He returned to Sucre during the holidays.

261
00:21:01,880 --> 00:21:05,960
The ambitions of the family,
which had eleven children by then,

262
00:21:06,120 --> 00:21:09,800
were all focused
on his career in Bogota,

263
00:21:10,440 --> 00:21:13,920
Meanwhile, he had fallen in love
with a local girl.

264
00:21:16,120 --> 00:21:17,760
What was here Isidro?

265
00:21:18,160 --> 00:21:20,840
It was the home of the Barcha Pardos.

266
00:21:20,920 --> 00:21:23,920
Mercedes Barcha lived in Sucre,
right in this house.

267
00:21:24,080 --> 00:21:26,920
It was a pharmacy owned by Demetrio,

268
00:21:27,000 --> 00:21:30,400
and García Márquez
went there to talk to Demetrio.

269
00:21:30,480 --> 00:21:33,760
It was as if he was more in love with
Demetrio Barcha than with Mercedes.

270
00:21:34,680 --> 00:21:39,560
He fell in love with Mercedes when
she was nine and he was fourteen.

271
00:21:39,680 --> 00:21:46,480
He would walk around
the pharmacy where Mercedes worked

272
00:21:46,560 --> 00:21:49,360
because he did not dare to talk to her.

273
00:21:49,600 --> 00:21:54,000
Mercedes was in those days
an archetype to him.

274
00:21:55,760 --> 00:21:57,760
She ignored me.

275
00:21:58,040 --> 00:21:59,880
Men really go for that, for being ignored.

276
00:22:00,160 --> 00:22:05,480
Pieces of Mercedes have been scattered
throughout my books, pieces everywhere,

277
00:22:05,560 --> 00:22:07,640
entire characters

278
00:22:07,720 --> 00:22:10,920
who appear in One Hundred Years of
Solitude, one even bearing her name.

279
00:22:20,720 --> 00:22:23,120
García Márquez always knows

280
00:22:23,240 --> 00:22:26,320
where to be
when things are happening.

281
00:22:28,200 --> 00:22:30,840
Gaitán was a great popular leader.

282
00:22:31,760 --> 00:22:34,360
As a journalist, I knew

283
00:22:35,120 --> 00:22:38,920
Castro's rallies, also Peron's,

284
00:22:39,360 --> 00:22:43,160
and they cannot compare with the passion

285
00:22:43,240 --> 00:22:45,840
elicited by Jorge Eliecer Gaitán.

286
00:22:49,240 --> 00:22:50,880
He was a different type of liberal.

287
00:22:51,160 --> 00:22:54,440
Everyone thought
that he was two or three months

288
00:22:54,520 --> 00:22:57,440
away from becoming President.

289
00:22:58,800 --> 00:23:01,000
He was killed while I was
walking with my father.

290
00:23:01,840 --> 00:23:04,840
I was there. We heard the three shots.

291
00:23:05,080 --> 00:23:08,120
I went down,
and got there before everyone else

292
00:23:08,240 --> 00:23:11,160
because they had just caught the murderer

293
00:23:11,280 --> 00:23:14,480
and I was left kneeling
in front of Gaitán's body.

294
00:23:15,280 --> 00:23:20,920
García Márquez, was at his student house,
some 330 yards away from the scene.

295
00:23:22,680 --> 00:23:27,240
He could go out,
see the body, see the crowd.

296
00:23:27,840 --> 00:23:32,560
Gaitán's supporters could not
accept what had happened.

297
00:23:33,720 --> 00:23:35,800
They burned the whole city center,

298
00:23:35,920 --> 00:23:38,200
burned García Márquez's student house.

299
00:23:38,320 --> 00:23:39,760
They burned everything.

300
00:23:44,960 --> 00:23:47,600
Not only did this split
Colombia's history in two,

301
00:23:47,680 --> 00:23:49,520
it also divided Colombia's
literature in two,

302
00:23:49,960 --> 00:23:54,960
because a whole literary phenomenon
began to emerge from there,

303
00:23:55,040 --> 00:23:59,400
it was called "the novel of violence".
This concerns García Márquez directly

304
00:23:59,800 --> 00:24:03,840
because narrating the violence

305
00:24:04,400 --> 00:24:08,920
had also become an obsession to him.

306
00:24:10,560 --> 00:24:12,760
He would try to do this,
departing from the theory that

307
00:24:12,920 --> 00:24:17,720
what matters in the novel of violence
is not the dead,

308
00:24:18,640 --> 00:24:22,680
but the living who are left
in a cold sweat, in their hiding places,

309
00:24:23,120 --> 00:24:25,680
waiting for the moment
when death will finally catch them.

310
00:24:27,040 --> 00:24:29,120
He fled to the coast, but not to his home.

311
00:24:29,320 --> 00:24:30,680
He went to Cartagena,

312
00:24:31,400 --> 00:24:34,120
and arrived with nothing,
no possessions, no money.

313
00:24:34,840 --> 00:24:36,920
He went looking for work.

314
00:24:53,160 --> 00:24:57,520
García Márquez moved from Bogota
to Cartagena in a state of despair,

315
00:24:57,600 --> 00:25:00,640
not knowing where he'd sleep,
where he'd live, where he'd work.

316
00:25:01,040 --> 00:25:03,960
A few months earlier,
on the 8th of March of that year,

317
00:25:04,160 --> 00:25:07,600
the newspaper El Universal
had just been launched.

318
00:25:07,800 --> 00:25:11,320
Clemente Manuel Zabala greets
the young García Márquez.

319
00:25:11,520 --> 00:25:15,200
Zabala got excited when he asked:
"what is the young man's name"?

320
00:25:15,480 --> 00:25:17,440
and heard: "Gabriel García Márquez."

321
00:25:17,600 --> 00:25:20,720
He said, "are you the one
who published some stories

322
00:25:20,840 --> 00:25:24,280
on the Saturday supplement?
I liked them very much.

323
00:25:24,560 --> 00:25:29,760
And the following day, García Márquez's
first piece was published.

324
00:25:32,320 --> 00:25:34,560
It was about the oppressive state

325
00:25:34,640 --> 00:25:36,680
in a militarized Cartagena.

326
00:25:37,480 --> 00:25:39,800
"We, city dwellers,
had already become used

327
00:25:39,880 --> 00:25:43,240
to the brass throat announcing the curfew.

328
00:25:45,000 --> 00:25:46,560
The clock at the mouth of the bridge,

329
00:25:47,080 --> 00:25:48,960
looming again over the city,

330
00:25:49,040 --> 00:25:52,280
with its clean, whitewashed convalescence,

331
00:25:52,400 --> 00:25:55,040
had lost its standing as a familiar thing,

332
00:25:55,360 --> 00:25:58,360
its irreplaceable place
as a domestic animal..."

333
00:25:59,200 --> 00:26:00,520
It's really good...

334
00:26:04,920 --> 00:26:07,600
Journalism soon lead him to Barranquilla,

335
00:26:07,720 --> 00:26:10,520
a much more open and cosmopolitan city,

336
00:26:10,760 --> 00:26:13,440
where he made friends
who would change his life.

337
00:26:13,640 --> 00:26:17,240
García Márquez met a group of people,

338
00:26:17,360 --> 00:26:22,600
journalists, writers, sculptors,
painters, hunters, fishermen,

339
00:26:23,000 --> 00:26:25,920
a very mixed bag... bohemians.

340
00:26:27,360 --> 00:26:29,760
The Barranquilla group is one
of the most important things

341
00:26:29,840 --> 00:26:31,400
that happened to García Márquez.

342
00:26:33,040 --> 00:26:35,280
It was a group of people
that devoured the world

343
00:26:35,400 --> 00:26:37,960
through literature, through painting.

344
00:26:38,880 --> 00:26:42,120
A group of people that held literature
as the most important thing in life,

345
00:26:42,240 --> 00:26:44,480
but it was not something that
had to be taken seriously.

346
00:26:46,280 --> 00:26:50,240
Ramón Vinyes, a Catalonian
expatriate, and a bit of an adventurer,

347
00:26:50,600 --> 00:26:54,440
who had come to Barranquilla at
the turn of the century,

348
00:26:54,560 --> 00:26:59,280
introduced them to authors, and
transmitted a notion of literature,

349
00:26:59,360 --> 00:27:03,240
which I believe, defined in more
than one way, García Márquez's vocation.

350
00:27:06,560 --> 00:27:12,440
It's that whole idea of
never letting others read one's drafts,

351
00:27:13,400 --> 00:27:16,880
yet constantly telling them the story
one is writing.

352
00:27:16,960 --> 00:27:20,520
Telling it to friends, telling it to
the wife, telling it to the people.

353
00:27:21,040 --> 00:27:22,440
To García Márquez, literature

354
00:27:22,600 --> 00:27:25,760
was never something that could be
understood without friendship.

355
00:27:29,040 --> 00:27:31,840
His mother went to Barranquilla,
looking for him,

356
00:27:31,960 --> 00:27:34,440
asking him to go with her
to Aracataca, for the first time,

357
00:27:34,560 --> 00:27:38,320
ever since he had left as a child,
so that they could sell the house.

358
00:27:38,520 --> 00:27:43,040
He has said many times that he
had an epiphany at that moment.

359
00:27:43,160 --> 00:27:46,520
Upon going to Aracataca and seeing
for the first time, after so long,

360
00:27:46,640 --> 00:27:49,960
the dusty streets, the broken houses.

361
00:27:50,320 --> 00:27:53,480
Upon witnessing thus the passing of time,

362
00:27:53,920 --> 00:27:58,960
he became aware, for the first time,
of the value of his own experience.

363
00:28:01,200 --> 00:28:07,720
After several drafts, he
finally had a novel

364
00:28:07,800 --> 00:28:11,520
of which he was relatively proud.
He sent it to Argentina,

365
00:28:12,000 --> 00:28:13,840
to a publishing house, Editorial Losada,

366
00:28:14,560 --> 00:28:19,040
and Guillermo de Torre,
Borges' brother-in-law,

367
00:28:19,360 --> 00:28:22,960
not only rejected the novel,
but also advised him in a note

368
00:28:24,680 --> 00:28:26,360
to find something else to do.

369
00:28:27,000 --> 00:28:29,640
"Literature is not for you."

370
00:28:30,320 --> 00:28:33,080
It was obviously devastating.

371
00:28:33,160 --> 00:28:37,160
Leaf Storm, which was the
novel, is undoubtedly...

372
00:28:37,240 --> 00:28:40,280
nobody says it, but I state it
right here and right now,

373
00:28:40,400 --> 00:28:46,040
is one of the first major
avant-garde works in Latin America.

374
00:28:46,120 --> 00:28:48,080
It is an extraordinary thing.

375
00:28:48,160 --> 00:28:50,840
For a young man of 22 or 23 years of age,

376
00:28:50,960 --> 00:28:52,160
it was almost a miracle.

377
00:29:02,480 --> 00:29:04,480
He then returned to Bogota

378
00:29:04,560 --> 00:29:06,320
and with the help of a friend,
Alvaro Mutis,

379
00:29:06,440 --> 00:29:08,920
he got a job
in the El Espectador newspaper.

380
00:29:25,120 --> 00:29:28,240
Gabo came to El Espectador and
the first impression he had,

381
00:29:28,320 --> 00:29:31,120
according to others,
I got to meet Gabo later...

382
00:29:31,200 --> 00:29:34,480
This man showed up
in these colorful shirts...

383
00:29:34,720 --> 00:29:36,880
and everybody went "who is this nut?".

384
00:29:37,000 --> 00:29:40,440
His native Caribbean flair emerged,
even in his behavior.

385
00:29:40,640 --> 00:29:43,800
Throughout his life, Gabo gradually
changed those colors.

386
00:29:43,920 --> 00:29:49,040
But esthetically speaking, he wanted
to be very different from us,

387
00:29:49,160 --> 00:29:51,520
folks who lived in Bogota.

388
00:29:52,320 --> 00:29:58,040
He wrote film reviews and enjoyed it,
but eventually got a bit bored of it.

389
00:29:58,640 --> 00:30:00,720
He wanted to be a reporter.

390
00:30:01,520 --> 00:30:03,840
He ceased to be the typical

391
00:30:03,960 --> 00:30:06,520
Latin American chronicler,

392
00:30:06,600 --> 00:30:11,240
who writes inventive, imaginative things.

393
00:30:11,640 --> 00:30:18,160
García Márquez started writing articles
that were simultaneously literary works.

394
00:30:22,720 --> 00:30:25,440
"The Story of a Shipwrecked
Sailor" is impressive

395
00:30:25,520 --> 00:30:27,840
because this is a story that appeared

396
00:30:27,920 --> 00:30:30,040
in all of the papers, all of them.

397
00:30:30,160 --> 00:30:32,720
After working a month and
a half on "The Shipwrecked Sailor",

398
00:30:32,840 --> 00:30:36,520
he sat down, he went back,
he traced the story back

399
00:30:36,600 --> 00:30:38,560
and began to write it
as if it were a novel.

400
00:30:39,120 --> 00:30:41,800
Well, El Espectador's sales soared.

401
00:30:41,880 --> 00:30:43,960
People were buying
El Espectador just to read

402
00:30:44,320 --> 00:30:46,680
the next chronicle García Márquez
would publish,

403
00:30:46,800 --> 00:30:50,080
regarding a story that
everyone had already told.

404
00:30:50,320 --> 00:30:54,800
This was clear proof of how
García Márquez was learning

405
00:30:54,920 --> 00:30:57,960
to transform a reality
that had been told a thousand times

406
00:30:58,160 --> 00:30:59,880
into something new.

407
00:31:00,480 --> 00:31:03,240
At that moment, he already
had, like a magician,

408
00:31:03,360 --> 00:31:05,240
the technique to fascinate the public.

409
00:31:05,360 --> 00:31:08,560
He would still need some time to learn

410
00:31:08,640 --> 00:31:13,200
how to use it in his own stories,
with the material from his own biography.

411
00:31:14,560 --> 00:31:18,920
El Espectador sent its star reporter
to Europe, as a correspondent.

412
00:31:20,680 --> 00:31:25,040
The first dream of my life
finally came true.

413
00:31:25,840 --> 00:31:28,600
This dream was to be able
to sit down and write,

414
00:31:28,760 --> 00:31:30,800
without anyone bothering me.

415
00:31:33,760 --> 00:31:36,800
And I sat down to write No
One Writes to the Colonel.

416
00:31:38,640 --> 00:31:41,000
I knew the story of my grandfather,

417
00:31:42,160 --> 00:31:45,720
who waited his whole life for his pension,

418
00:31:45,800 --> 00:31:48,440
as a veteran of the civil war,

419
00:31:49,200 --> 00:31:50,920
but this pension never came.

420
00:31:53,720 --> 00:31:58,440
I met up with friends who were
Colombian poets and writers

421
00:31:58,640 --> 00:32:02,080
and we talked a lot about literature.
When Gabo showed up at that café,

422
00:32:02,400 --> 00:32:05,360
I had already received the book
Leaf Storm, his first novel.

423
00:32:05,480 --> 00:32:08,600
I was very interested
and we started talking,

424
00:32:09,520 --> 00:32:13,800
but we had read the reviews
and thought that Colombian critics

425
00:32:13,920 --> 00:32:16,480
exaggerated when they compared it
to Proust and stuff like that,

426
00:32:16,600 --> 00:32:18,360
so we criticized the novel.

427
00:32:18,440 --> 00:32:21,120
We said it was strongly
influenced by Faulkner.

428
00:32:22,600 --> 00:32:25,520
We found him a little presumptuous.

429
00:32:26,040 --> 00:32:27,480
He had changed completely.

430
00:32:27,560 --> 00:32:33,360
He no was no longer the boy from the coast
but a formally dressed guy.

431
00:32:34,520 --> 00:32:36,560
He was somewhat distant.

432
00:32:38,000 --> 00:32:40,320
He had been heavily influenced
by the world of Bogota.

433
00:32:41,960 --> 00:32:45,560
Two days later, I invited him to dinner
and it started snowing.

434
00:32:45,880 --> 00:32:50,880
When we left the restaurant,
Gabo looked at Boulevard Saint-Michel.

435
00:32:51,040 --> 00:32:54,880
It was completely white.
White trees, white cars,

436
00:32:55,960 --> 00:32:58,640
and then he shivered.

437
00:32:58,840 --> 00:33:01,720
He had never seen snow, ever,

438
00:33:01,840 --> 00:33:04,680
he'd read a lot of stories about it,
but had never seen it.

439
00:33:05,320 --> 00:33:08,040
His face trembled and he said "shit"

440
00:33:08,560 --> 00:33:10,800
and ran off,

441
00:33:10,880 --> 00:33:13,400
like footballers when they score
a goal, exactly like that.

442
00:33:13,480 --> 00:33:16,000
He would run and raise his arms,
and fall down.

443
00:33:16,480 --> 00:33:18,400
We then became friends.

444
00:33:27,440 --> 00:33:31,120
I had invited a friend
to one of my poetry recitals,

445
00:33:31,240 --> 00:33:32,800
he was a very nice Portuguese guy,

446
00:33:32,880 --> 00:33:36,800
who had met Gabriel
at the Geneva Conference.

447
00:33:36,960 --> 00:33:39,000
Gabriel says he told him,

448
00:33:39,120 --> 00:33:43,200
"a lady reciting poetry
is the most boring thing ever.

449
00:33:43,480 --> 00:33:45,680
No way, I'll wait at the café."

450
00:33:46,440 --> 00:33:48,080
The Mabillon Café.

451
00:33:48,320 --> 00:33:51,800
We actually went down there
and I met him there.

452
00:33:53,880 --> 00:33:56,520
He was kind of...
he looked just like an Arab.

453
00:33:56,680 --> 00:33:58,080
He looked Algerian,

454
00:33:58,160 --> 00:34:02,240
because he had that big mustache,
like Arabs always do,

455
00:34:02,360 --> 00:34:05,000
he had curly hair, he was this thin.

456
00:34:05,120 --> 00:34:07,920
He was not my type at all. Not at all.

457
00:34:15,920 --> 00:34:20,000
From the very start, I was fascinated
by the way he spoke.

458
00:34:20,239 --> 00:34:23,639
He spoke with such magical images.

459
00:34:23,760 --> 00:34:27,360
I would say, "what a wonderful twilight"

460
00:34:27,480 --> 00:34:29,400
and he would say "it's my gift to you."

461
00:34:29,600 --> 00:34:33,560
He was very tender.
The word is tenderness,

462
00:34:33,880 --> 00:34:35,960
a great tenderness.

463
00:34:37,120 --> 00:34:39,480
Poets are almost always prophets.

464
00:34:39,800 --> 00:34:44,159
Gabriel himself was a bit
of a sorcerer, a bit of a prophet.

465
00:34:48,320 --> 00:34:52,360
He was with me and we walked down
Boulevard Saint-Michel.

466
00:34:52,440 --> 00:34:54,199
It suddenly occurred to me to buy Le Monde

467
00:34:55,520 --> 00:34:58,200
and I read the news about
El Espectador closing down.

468
00:34:58,320 --> 00:35:00,520
I said, "look, they closed
your newspaper".

469
00:35:01,080 --> 00:35:02,960
He wasn't able to pay the hotel.

470
00:35:03,120 --> 00:35:06,160
Madame La Croix, the owner,
an exceptional woman,

471
00:35:06,280 --> 00:35:10,360
didn't throw him out. She put him
up, in an attic, on the top floor,

472
00:35:10,520 --> 00:35:13,280
and he lived there, writing.

473
00:35:13,480 --> 00:35:15,520
Problems began to arise there,

474
00:35:16,400 --> 00:35:20,160
because I could not see myself working,

475
00:35:20,240 --> 00:35:22,560
and going to and fro,
trying to make a living,

476
00:35:22,720 --> 00:35:24,880
while he did nothing but write.

477
00:35:26,320 --> 00:35:28,480
Write and write and write.

478
00:35:28,560 --> 00:35:33,720
And I would often say to him,

479
00:35:33,800 --> 00:35:36,320
"that's not possible,
you have to do something".

480
00:35:37,760 --> 00:35:41,360
And he didn't know how.
He only knew how to write.

481
00:35:43,160 --> 00:35:45,120
The hardest thing began then, yes.

482
00:35:45,240 --> 00:35:50,360
Because this story, I don't know.
I've never wanted to talk about this.

483
00:35:51,920 --> 00:35:55,480
Having a child was impossible,
absolutely impossible.

484
00:35:56,120 --> 00:35:59,200
I did my best not to have it.

485
00:35:59,440 --> 00:36:04,080
There was no reaction from him.
He was totally devoted to me.

486
00:36:05,120 --> 00:36:08,400
I mean, anything I'd wanted
could have happened.

487
00:36:10,200 --> 00:36:13,640
At that very instant,
I finally decided to leave,

488
00:36:14,800 --> 00:36:19,080
and that is when he said goodbye
at the station.

489
00:36:19,400 --> 00:36:22,400
He followed the train for a little while,
like that, you know what happens,

490
00:36:22,480 --> 00:36:25,280
the train starts off slowly and then
goes straight off and that's it.

491
00:36:27,560 --> 00:36:31,520
We were sad, because, in spite of it all,

492
00:36:31,640 --> 00:36:36,040
there was this strong bond
between us all the same.

493
00:36:36,920 --> 00:36:39,320
We stayed friends, in spite of it all.

494
00:36:41,560 --> 00:36:46,760
"The woman continued in a
smooth, fluent, merciless tone.

495
00:36:47,560 --> 00:36:51,040
'Everybody will win
with the rooster, except us.

496
00:36:51,600 --> 00:36:55,480
We're the only ones who
don't have a cent to bet.'

497
00:36:57,120 --> 00:37:00,840
'The owner of the rooster is
entitled to twenty percent.'

498
00:37:01,720 --> 00:37:04,840
'You were also entitled to get a position

499
00:37:05,160 --> 00:37:08,280
when they made you break
your back for them in the elections,'

500
00:37:08,800 --> 00:37:10,360
the woman replied.

501
00:37:10,840 --> 00:37:13,440
'You were also entitled
to a veteran's pension

502
00:37:13,680 --> 00:37:16,640
after risking your neck in the civil war.

503
00:37:17,240 --> 00:37:22,520
Now everybody has their future assured
and you're dying of hunger,

504
00:37:22,600 --> 00:37:24,400
completely alone.'

505
00:37:25,320 --> 00:37:28,640
'I'm not alone, ' the Colonel said..."

506
00:37:30,320 --> 00:37:32,480
He wouldn't give up writing,

507
00:37:32,560 --> 00:37:37,240
he wouldn't, and finally, he gave me...
I was one of the first readers...

508
00:37:37,320 --> 00:37:39,040
of No One Writes to the Colonel.

509
00:37:39,120 --> 00:37:44,440
I had always thought
that this story would suit a comedy,

510
00:37:45,760 --> 00:37:50,480
but when I was in Paris, I would take
some money from the nightstand,

511
00:37:50,560 --> 00:37:52,800
I'd go downstairs,
eat at the corner and go back up

512
00:37:52,880 --> 00:37:54,800
until the day I no longer had
a single penny.

513
00:37:55,320 --> 00:37:58,680
I started sending an S.O.S. to friends.

514
00:37:58,840 --> 00:38:01,240
This was the seventh floor, no elevator,

515
00:38:02,960 --> 00:38:06,400
and I would go down,
I'd see there were no letters for me,

516
00:38:06,960 --> 00:38:10,680
and I would then go back up
and add one more page.

517
00:38:11,200 --> 00:38:14,600
Then there was a moment when the story,

518
00:38:14,680 --> 00:38:18,360
what I was writing, matched reality.

519
00:38:19,760 --> 00:38:24,280
and that is why I think,
against the opinion of all the critics,

520
00:38:25,200 --> 00:38:27,440
that the best book I've written,

521
00:38:29,920 --> 00:38:32,440
I mean, if I've ever written
a masterpiece,

522
00:38:32,600 --> 00:38:37,640
said masterpiece is
No One Writes to the Colonel.

523
00:38:39,640 --> 00:38:43,560
He had a very hard time getting
No One Writes to the Colonel published.

524
00:38:43,680 --> 00:38:45,680
García Márquez went back to journalism.

525
00:38:45,760 --> 00:38:48,640
But first, he traveled around
Eastern Europe with his friend, Plinio.

526
00:38:50,160 --> 00:38:53,000
They had a close look at Soviet Socialism
and experienced it first hand.

527
00:38:53,120 --> 00:38:58,040
They suffered, in various ways and
degrees, something akin to disappointment.

528
00:39:06,160 --> 00:39:07,960
García Márquez returned to Latin America

529
00:39:08,080 --> 00:39:10,720
to work with Plinio and,
three months later,

530
00:39:11,280 --> 00:39:13,760
he married Mercedes, in Barranquilla.

531
00:39:14,760 --> 00:39:19,680
She was a woman
who was absolutely allergic to excess,

532
00:39:19,840 --> 00:39:23,320
an organized woman, discreet.

533
00:39:23,520 --> 00:39:26,520
From the start, he chose a woman,

534
00:39:26,600 --> 00:39:32,120
who was simultaneously elegant,
somehow superior, intelligent,

535
00:39:32,920 --> 00:39:37,680
but who was also local.
She was from the coast.

536
00:39:48,520 --> 00:39:51,120
"A socialism that can be
touched with the hands

537
00:39:51,280 --> 00:39:52,920
is the type of socialism that Cubans

538
00:39:53,000 --> 00:39:55,800
are building, according to their
needs and possibilities,

539
00:39:56,440 --> 00:39:59,400
with exemplary passion and seriousness,

540
00:39:59,520 --> 00:40:06,400
but always laughing and putting into each
of their acts that deep spark of madness

541
00:40:07,160 --> 00:40:11,120
that is perhaps their most ancient
and fruitful virtue."

542
00:40:30,880 --> 00:40:33,320
We were there
when Fidel arrived in Havana,

543
00:40:33,440 --> 00:40:35,160
but as Venezuelan journalists.

544
00:40:35,520 --> 00:40:39,600
We were there, in Cuba, and
we saw the arrival of Fidel,

545
00:40:39,840 --> 00:40:42,680
heard his first speech there,
in the square.

546
00:40:42,840 --> 00:40:45,720
We had a wonderful impression of Cuba.

547
00:40:46,160 --> 00:40:51,280
The Cuban revolution
was an apotheosis in Latin America,

548
00:40:51,680 --> 00:40:54,200
a revolution of the young,
it was very sexy.

549
00:40:54,320 --> 00:41:00,320
In 1959, Cuba was the place to go
if you were a young Latin American.

550
00:41:00,760 --> 00:41:05,760
Gabo found this atmosphere
and tried to stay.

551
00:41:05,920 --> 00:41:09,320
García Márquez was already in love

552
00:41:09,440 --> 00:41:12,200
with the figure of Fidel
Castro from the very start.

553
00:41:12,360 --> 00:41:13,800
García Márquez was in Cuba.

554
00:41:14,000 --> 00:41:18,400
He and Plinio went there right away.
They wanted to see what was going on.

555
00:41:18,720 --> 00:41:22,560
Both remained convinced
socialist revolutionaries.

556
00:41:23,760 --> 00:41:29,440
They soon had the chance to be
in Prensa Latina, the new Cuban agency.

557
00:41:29,640 --> 00:41:31,920
Both accepted right away.

558
00:41:33,040 --> 00:41:34,840
We became great friends with Masetti,

559
00:41:35,000 --> 00:41:37,040
the General Director of Prensa Latina.

560
00:41:37,200 --> 00:41:40,440
He was a very strong,
very firm Argentinian guy,

561
00:41:40,680 --> 00:41:42,800
and he discovered there was a problem

562
00:41:42,880 --> 00:41:46,680
within the agency: the communist
journalists would gather aside

563
00:41:46,760 --> 00:41:50,560
and would plot to gain control
over the agency.

564
00:41:50,640 --> 00:41:52,680
That did not sit well with
Masetti, who would say,

565
00:41:52,760 --> 00:41:56,240
"we're all with the revolution,
there's no need to meet separately."

566
00:41:56,360 --> 00:41:58,040
He fired them from the agency,

567
00:41:58,160 --> 00:42:01,120
convinced that Fidel
supported his decision.

568
00:42:01,520 --> 00:42:04,120
And suddenly, I was at the
apartment with Masetti,

569
00:42:04,200 --> 00:42:06,440
when news arrived that the agency

570
00:42:06,560 --> 00:42:08,760
had appointed a new director,

571
00:42:08,840 --> 00:42:11,280
and that the communist group

572
00:42:11,400 --> 00:42:13,600
had completely taken over.

573
00:42:14,440 --> 00:42:18,920
So, I submitted my resignation,
I went looking for Gabo,

574
00:42:19,760 --> 00:42:21,880
who was in Prensa Latina, in New York,

575
00:42:21,960 --> 00:42:24,200
highly threatened by Cuban exiles.

576
00:42:24,920 --> 00:42:27,080
Mercedes waited for me at the airport,

577
00:42:27,200 --> 00:42:30,840
with my godson Rodrigo, and told me,
"Gabo has also resigned."

578
00:42:31,720 --> 00:42:34,640
When he left Prensa Latina, in 1961,

579
00:42:35,000 --> 00:42:37,800
his relationship with Cuba
was very difficult.

580
00:42:38,000 --> 00:42:41,040
While all Latin American writers,

581
00:42:41,120 --> 00:42:43,560
even the more or less liberal,
borderline conservatives ones,

582
00:42:43,640 --> 00:42:47,240
made the pilgrimage to Cuba,
García Márquez did not go.

583
00:42:48,160 --> 00:42:52,480
That story about García Márquez
having a close relationship

584
00:42:52,680 --> 00:42:56,480
with Cuba, in the 60's, is false.

585
00:42:57,200 --> 00:42:59,480
He said to me, "I'm going
to Mexico, no matter what.

586
00:42:59,560 --> 00:43:02,600
I have no money to go by plane,

587
00:43:02,960 --> 00:43:05,920
I'll go by bus with
Mercedes and your godson,

588
00:43:06,200 --> 00:43:07,880
you'll send me what you can."

589
00:43:08,480 --> 00:43:10,960
And all I could send him were 150 dollars.

590
00:43:11,080 --> 00:43:12,760
He got to Mexico with 20 dollars.

591
00:43:13,080 --> 00:43:17,680
Gabo would have his main home
in Mexico for the rest of his life.

592
00:43:18,880 --> 00:43:22,080
After getting married, he surprised
everyone who knew him.

593
00:43:22,240 --> 00:43:24,920
A surprisingly responsible man.

594
00:43:27,560 --> 00:43:30,840
García Márquez gradually got to the point
where he never did what he wanted.

595
00:43:30,960 --> 00:43:34,440
He was always frustrated,
yet always successful.

596
00:43:34,520 --> 00:43:37,440
He worked in advertising, worked in film.

597
00:43:37,640 --> 00:43:42,000
He didn't do what he wanted,
but was a successful screenwriter,

598
00:43:42,160 --> 00:43:45,480
with a very nice house, a car,

599
00:43:45,560 --> 00:43:49,360
clothes for him, for his
wife, for his family.

600
00:43:49,480 --> 00:43:53,960
He went to to the poshest parties
in Mexico City.

601
00:43:56,000 --> 00:44:00,200
Carlos Fuentes was about 35
years old when they met.

602
00:44:00,560 --> 00:44:02,760
They couldn't be any more different.

603
00:44:02,880 --> 00:44:06,680
García Márquez was a guy who had spent
the past 15 years in literature

604
00:44:06,760 --> 00:44:08,560
and still had nothing to show,

605
00:44:08,960 --> 00:44:13,800
while Carlos Fuentes had written
in 1958 the first great novel

606
00:44:13,920 --> 00:44:17,000
that preceded the arrival
of the Latin American boom generation.

607
00:44:17,160 --> 00:44:20,080
He knew everybody,
he moved with incredible ease

608
00:44:20,160 --> 00:44:23,120
between worlds, Mexican, Latin American...

609
00:44:23,240 --> 00:44:28,360
Additionally, his intellectual
and vital generosity had no bounds.

610
00:44:29,040 --> 00:44:34,480
He suddenly got
what he had long been waiting for.

611
00:44:34,760 --> 00:44:40,160
This gentrified, alienated,
but seemingly happy

612
00:44:40,320 --> 00:44:42,600
García Márquez traveled
to Acapulco with his family,

613
00:44:42,720 --> 00:44:44,640
driving their white Opel,

614
00:44:45,040 --> 00:44:50,240
when he suddenly saw the novel
he had tried to write for over 20 years.

615
00:44:50,600 --> 00:44:53,960
He would say, "I'm going to write
a very dangerous novel

616
00:44:54,120 --> 00:45:00,840
because it is not a safe novel,
but a novel that has... magical things.

617
00:45:01,160 --> 00:45:04,640
I'm going to tell things
the way my grandmother did."

618
00:45:05,360 --> 00:45:08,560
The tone, the first paragraph of
One Hundred Years of Solitude,

619
00:45:08,640 --> 00:45:10,760
came to him almost like an apparition.

620
00:45:11,240 --> 00:45:16,360
He said to Mercedes:
"Look, I'm sick of it all,

621
00:45:17,360 --> 00:45:22,440
I can no longer do what we're doing,
you know my ambitions,

622
00:45:22,520 --> 00:45:24,880
I know it's a huge risk,

623
00:45:24,960 --> 00:45:31,120
but I want to be devoted to writing.
What do you say?"

624
00:45:31,600 --> 00:45:33,720
I remember we were halfway,

625
00:45:36,040 --> 00:45:40,560
when the owner of the house
called Mercedes and said,

626
00:45:43,240 --> 00:45:47,560
"Madam you owe three months' rent"

627
00:45:48,520 --> 00:45:51,640
and Mercedes covered the phone
and asked me:

628
00:45:52,600 --> 00:45:55,000
"how much longer
until you finish the book?"

629
00:45:55,080 --> 00:45:56,800
I told her "about six months."

630
00:45:57,320 --> 00:46:01,080
She then said, "look sir,
not only do we owe three months,

631
00:46:01,200 --> 00:46:03,120
we're going to owe you six more."

632
00:46:05,320 --> 00:46:07,080
And then the guy told her,

633
00:46:08,560 --> 00:46:11,800
"and you'll pay it all within seven."
And she said, "yes, all of it."

634
00:46:11,960 --> 00:46:15,080
And he said, "if you give me your word,

635
00:46:17,000 --> 00:46:18,960
I have no problem waiting."

636
00:46:19,040 --> 00:46:20,480
She covered the phone and whispered,

637
00:46:20,560 --> 00:46:26,560
"word, I gave my word."
Then she said, "word of honor."

638
00:46:28,160 --> 00:46:31,440
This is the creation that is
known as magical realism.

639
00:46:32,840 --> 00:46:37,480
That perfect structure, describing
a whole world from its birth to its death

640
00:46:37,600 --> 00:46:41,280
in 20 chapters, all of them
with the same number of pages.

641
00:46:43,960 --> 00:46:48,160
One Hundred Years of Solitude
is the story of a town called Macondo,

642
00:46:48,280 --> 00:46:53,040
through the vicissitudes of a
single family, the Buendía family.

643
00:46:53,160 --> 00:46:58,440
The world is understood in such a way
that the line between the supernatural,

644
00:46:58,600 --> 00:47:04,080
the legends, the superstitions
and the real, everyday world

645
00:47:04,160 --> 00:47:06,400
is practically invisible.

646
00:47:06,680 --> 00:47:11,480
On the other hand, normal events
are narrated in a supernatural fashion.

647
00:47:11,640 --> 00:47:15,600
These are the absolute essentials
of what we call magical realism.

648
00:47:18,640 --> 00:47:23,560
It began to become aware of the continent
and of its own Latin American identity.

649
00:47:24,840 --> 00:47:28,680
Macondo then ceased to be

650
00:47:28,760 --> 00:47:31,720
a transposition of Aracataca,

651
00:47:31,880 --> 00:47:35,360
and became a metaphor
for all of Latin America.

652
00:47:37,160 --> 00:47:38,680
It had immediate effect.

653
00:47:38,840 --> 00:47:42,600
Back then, press runs were of 500 copies.

654
00:47:42,720 --> 00:47:46,720
With García Márquez, even at the start,
they printed five or six thousand copies,

655
00:47:46,840 --> 00:47:49,400
because they had the vision, they knew.

656
00:47:49,560 --> 00:47:52,680
That's when García Márquez became

657
00:47:52,920 --> 00:47:59,440
the biggest selling author
in the history of Latin America.

658
00:48:51,400 --> 00:48:55,360
"When they woke up,
with the sun already high in the sky,

659
00:48:55,440 --> 00:48:57,680
they were speechless with fascination.

660
00:48:58,320 --> 00:49:01,920
Before them, surrounded
by ferns and palm trees,

661
00:49:02,040 --> 00:49:06,040
white and powdery in the
silent morning light,

662
00:49:06,680 --> 00:49:09,200
was an enormous Spanish galleon."

663
00:49:09,840 --> 00:49:12,760
In one of the first public readings
he made,

664
00:49:13,200 --> 00:49:18,320
as he stepped down after reading,
he found Mercedes crying

665
00:49:18,560 --> 00:49:22,440
and the whole audience
was nearly levitating,

666
00:49:22,720 --> 00:49:24,520
entranced by the magic effect
of the reading.

667
00:49:24,840 --> 00:49:27,200
García Márquez instantly knew
he had found something.

668
00:49:27,520 --> 00:49:31,320
He realized that he told stories
that had never been told in Spanish.

669
00:49:50,920 --> 00:49:53,160
García Márquez always remembers
the years in Barcelona

670
00:49:53,240 --> 00:49:55,440
as one of the happiest periods
of his life.

671
00:49:56,120 --> 00:49:59,240
He came here with his wife,
Mercedes Barcha, and their two sons,

672
00:49:59,320 --> 00:50:00,400
Rodrigo and Gonzalo.

673
00:50:05,360 --> 00:50:11,800
He experienced in Barcelona the biggest
metamorphosis a writer can go through.

674
00:50:12,720 --> 00:50:17,360
He went from having financial
problems to being a rich writer.

675
00:50:17,560 --> 00:50:20,720
He was spellbound, he told this to his
friends as if he couldn't believe it,

676
00:50:20,800 --> 00:50:24,160
I live off the income generated
by my book, it's amazing isn't it?

677
00:50:32,400 --> 00:50:34,480
He was a genius, no doubt,

678
00:50:34,680 --> 00:50:39,080
so with a genius you can
set up a political party,

679
00:50:39,200 --> 00:50:42,840
a religion, or a revolution,

680
00:50:42,960 --> 00:50:46,120
and I replied that I chose the revolution,

681
00:50:46,640 --> 00:50:48,880
because thanks to García Márquez,

682
00:50:49,360 --> 00:50:52,200
I brought about revolution
in the publishing world.

683
00:50:52,600 --> 00:50:55,880
Carmen Balcells revolutionized
the global literary market,

684
00:50:55,960 --> 00:51:00,120
while staying a mother figure
to her writers.

685
00:51:00,640 --> 00:51:04,480
One Hundred Years of Solitude is the
big bang of literature in Spanish.

686
00:51:04,600 --> 00:51:07,480
Every reader of that book

687
00:51:07,560 --> 00:51:10,200
immediately felt an urgent need

688
00:51:10,280 --> 00:51:13,280
to share it with two, three, five people.

689
00:51:13,520 --> 00:51:16,160
The impact was absolute and decisive.

690
00:51:16,240 --> 00:51:18,480
It was a readers' phenomenon.

691
00:51:19,160 --> 00:51:22,040
That great metamorphosis that
García Márquez went through in Barcelona,

692
00:51:22,160 --> 00:51:26,000
from being an unknown author to becoming
the world's most famous writer,

693
00:51:26,280 --> 00:51:28,400
deeply transformed him.

694
00:51:28,680 --> 00:51:31,120
He was terribly shy.
His friends in Barcelona

695
00:51:31,240 --> 00:51:33,160
said he couldn't speak in public.

696
00:51:33,640 --> 00:51:36,520
He had to learn here about
coping with fame,

697
00:51:36,640 --> 00:51:40,560
and the interest of the media.
He acquired sophistication.

698
00:51:40,960 --> 00:51:42,440
Another close friendship came about

699
00:51:42,560 --> 00:51:45,120
with another future Nobel laureate,
Mario Vargas Llosa.

700
00:51:45,680 --> 00:51:48,360
These were also years
of growing political tension

701
00:51:48,440 --> 00:51:52,120
between Latin American intellectuals,
regarding the situation in Cuba.

702
00:51:53,400 --> 00:51:59,040
Heriberto Padilla was a poet,
he was openly critical of the revolution.

703
00:51:59,440 --> 00:52:02,040
He was soon arrested by state security.

704
00:52:02,880 --> 00:52:07,960
And he was eventually given the chance
to confess in public.

705
00:52:08,080 --> 00:52:10,600
It was a demeaning spectacle

706
00:52:10,960 --> 00:52:15,280
in which someone vilified himself.

707
00:52:18,240 --> 00:52:22,480
Mario Vargas Llosa proposed to draft
a letter, not a critical one just yet,

708
00:52:22,680 --> 00:52:26,400
but a letter to let Fidel know

709
00:52:26,560 --> 00:52:28,360
about our concerns regarding this arrest,

710
00:52:28,440 --> 00:52:30,520
and to highlight the importance
of his intervention.

711
00:52:30,600 --> 00:52:32,920
Everybody signed, Cortázar,
everyone, everyone.

712
00:52:33,160 --> 00:52:34,440
We just needed Gabo's signature.

713
00:52:35,120 --> 00:52:38,200
I wasn't able to find Gabo
and inform him over the phone.

714
00:52:38,360 --> 00:52:42,240
But I came into the office one day
and said, "we have to add Gabo's name,

715
00:52:42,320 --> 00:52:43,560
I assume all responsibility.

716
00:52:43,640 --> 00:52:45,840
Let's add Gabo's name,
because that's what he thinks."

717
00:52:47,480 --> 00:52:50,160
Vargas Llosa was one of the great leaders

718
00:52:50,240 --> 00:52:54,160
of the anti-Cuban, anti-Fidel movement.

719
00:52:54,240 --> 00:52:59,120
García Márquez refused to sign.
Plinio signed for him.

720
00:52:59,280 --> 00:53:05,200
As García Márquez later said, "he signed
for me, but I would not have done it."

721
00:53:05,320 --> 00:53:06,760
Gabo didn't sign.

722
00:53:07,240 --> 00:53:09,600
The letter appeared everywhere.

723
00:53:09,840 --> 00:53:14,040
We already began to think
very differently about Cuba.

724
00:53:15,400 --> 00:53:20,080
An unexpected change in the life
of García Márquez was about to occur.

725
00:53:20,280 --> 00:53:23,080
The paradox is that his enormous fame

726
00:53:23,440 --> 00:53:25,640
would make him retire from literature
for a while.

727
00:53:27,400 --> 00:53:29,320
The new novel,
The Autumn of the Patriarch,

728
00:53:29,440 --> 00:53:31,960
was a commercial failure.

729
00:53:32,160 --> 00:53:38,040
It was the story of a lonely,
obsessive, all-powerful dictator.

730
00:53:38,160 --> 00:53:41,360
Many have seen in it a reflection
on the new life of García Márquez.

731
00:53:41,440 --> 00:53:44,040
A life inside that horrible thing
called fame.

732
00:53:45,160 --> 00:53:49,000
I think this is an excellent example

733
00:53:49,400 --> 00:53:51,840
of critics' stupidity.

734
00:53:53,280 --> 00:53:55,680
"The book is not likable,
the book falls halfway."

735
00:53:55,760 --> 00:53:57,200
It is a frustrated book,

736
00:53:57,280 --> 00:54:00,600
It is a book written entirely

737
00:54:00,680 --> 00:54:03,560
from personal experience,
which is encrypted in the story.

738
00:54:03,720 --> 00:54:06,560
If someone is curious enough

739
00:54:07,960 --> 00:54:09,960
to read it with a different key,

740
00:54:11,720 --> 00:54:14,960
and, instead of thinking of a dictator,

741
00:54:16,440 --> 00:54:18,560
they think of a famous writer,

742
00:54:21,160 --> 00:54:23,960
then the book will probably
be easier to understand.

743
00:54:28,360 --> 00:54:33,000
"Useful idiot at your service.
Political and personal friends overseas

744
00:54:33,120 --> 00:54:35,480
wonder how we explain the paradox

745
00:54:35,600 --> 00:54:38,640
of this magazine stating that there is
no freedom of the press in Colombia,

746
00:54:38,760 --> 00:54:42,600
when this sole printed statement
is proof that there is.

747
00:54:42,800 --> 00:54:46,240
They basically wonder
what sort of country this is,

748
00:54:46,360 --> 00:54:49,720
where such things can still happen,

749
00:54:49,840 --> 00:54:52,760
while the rest of the continent
is a jungle of gorillas."

750
00:54:55,000 --> 00:54:59,120
It was a time of political turmoil
and social upheaval.

751
00:54:59,800 --> 00:55:03,560
That was the period when
I became friends with García Márquez.

752
00:55:04,560 --> 00:55:07,040
Following the Pinochet coup
against Allende,

753
00:55:07,440 --> 00:55:10,640
Gabo openly declared his famous
break-up with literature.

754
00:55:10,720 --> 00:55:12,920
His literary strike was
a refusal to ever write again

755
00:55:13,040 --> 00:55:14,720
unless Pinochet fell.

756
00:55:16,240 --> 00:55:18,560
These quotes from Gabo,
they are fantastic aren't they?

757
00:55:18,840 --> 00:55:21,640
"I am sick of García Márquez."

758
00:55:21,760 --> 00:55:23,480
I couldn't believe
he spoke ill of himself.

759
00:55:25,880 --> 00:55:29,400
He said things, such as:
"I'll spend my fame on politics."

760
00:55:29,640 --> 00:55:32,640
Gabo was perhaps
at his most radical moment.

761
00:55:33,160 --> 00:55:36,200
Che died in 1967.
Many of the guerrilla attempts

762
00:55:36,280 --> 00:55:40,720
from the 1960's were introduced,
got established and eventually failed.

763
00:55:40,960 --> 00:55:42,240
Many people died.

764
00:55:42,920 --> 00:55:46,800
From 1973 onwards,
there was a shift to the far right

765
00:55:46,920 --> 00:55:48,720
in many countries in Latin America.

766
00:55:48,960 --> 00:55:52,640
There was a violent outbreak
of repression.

767
00:55:53,360 --> 00:55:56,400
García Márquez wanted to
know to whom he could donate

768
00:55:56,520 --> 00:56:00,440
a $10,000 dollar literary prize that
the University of Arizona had granted him.

769
00:56:00,920 --> 00:56:02,160
He called me and said,

770
00:56:02,400 --> 00:56:06,480
"Well, I need a good human rights
committee to hand in this award".

771
00:56:06,600 --> 00:56:09,360
I said: "Gabo there are no
human rights committees here."

772
00:56:09,840 --> 00:56:13,680
So he said:
"Hell, make one up! Found it, damn it!"

773
00:56:14,880 --> 00:56:18,480
Later, along with a group of friends
from different political persuasions,

774
00:56:18,600 --> 00:56:20,000
we wanted to start a magazine.

775
00:56:20,160 --> 00:56:21,640
A leftist magazine in Colombia.

776
00:56:21,880 --> 00:56:24,760
We already had a name for it: Alternativa.

777
00:56:25,320 --> 00:56:27,400
I said, well, Gabo owes me one.

778
00:56:27,600 --> 00:56:30,640
I called him and pitched it,
and Gabo went "no, no, no,"

779
00:56:31,080 --> 00:56:32,760
but I put a lot pressure on him.

780
00:56:33,160 --> 00:56:36,160
Gabo got into
a political-journalistic project,

781
00:56:36,240 --> 00:56:39,240
this gave way to the development
of militant journalism.

782
00:56:39,320 --> 00:56:43,480
He wrote articles every month, which
were additionally world exclusives.

783
00:56:43,840 --> 00:56:49,080
They were looking for the lost dream
of the Latin American revolution.

784
00:56:49,760 --> 00:56:55,120
In the magazine we sympathized, if you
will, with the armed struggle in general.

785
00:56:55,720 --> 00:57:01,040
The M19 was the first group to ever
mention national dialog and peace.

786
00:57:01,560 --> 00:57:05,080
The M19 represented something new.

787
00:57:05,480 --> 00:57:08,320
A group of intellectuals from universities

788
00:57:08,520 --> 00:57:11,600
who were coming to replace

789
00:57:11,680 --> 00:57:15,400
a series of guerrillas that had been,
until then, almost exclusively rural.

790
00:57:16,800 --> 00:57:20,080
So Gabo's interest was piqued
by M19 because,

791
00:57:20,360 --> 00:57:23,840
after such a spectacular appearance,
and massive success,

792
00:57:23,960 --> 00:57:26,760
its discourse dealt with stopping
the armed struggle and making peace.

793
00:57:26,960 --> 00:57:30,920
So that's where Gabo began
supporting peace initiatives.

794
00:57:32,880 --> 00:57:37,800
During the 1970's, García Márquez
became aware of his power.

795
00:57:38,120 --> 00:57:41,480
He gradually began to approach Cuba.

796
00:57:42,520 --> 00:57:45,800
He thought that Fidel was, perhaps,

797
00:57:45,960 --> 00:57:49,200
a prisoner of the communist hardliners.

798
00:57:51,360 --> 00:57:56,160
Just imagine, Fidel had completely
isolated himself

799
00:57:56,280 --> 00:57:58,200
from the intellectual, cultural world.

800
00:57:58,480 --> 00:58:01,600
With a few exceptions,
everyone in the Cuban revolution

801
00:58:01,680 --> 00:58:03,560
had severed

802
00:58:03,960 --> 00:58:07,440
from the progressive intellectuals
of the 1960's.

803
00:58:07,760 --> 00:58:13,120
The return of a figure
like García Márquez was crucial.

804
00:58:14,360 --> 00:58:17,320
He had an intellectual
and literary fascination

805
00:58:17,400 --> 00:58:18,600
with the phenomenon of power,

806
00:58:18,680 --> 00:58:21,880
particularly with Latin American
caudillos and dictators.

807
00:58:22,080 --> 00:58:26,000
I think Fidel later came to embody,
in part, that fascination.

808
00:58:26,440 --> 00:58:28,600
Leaving aside any allegiance

809
00:58:28,720 --> 00:58:31,640
with the Cuban revolution,
any possible political affinity

810
00:58:32,080 --> 00:58:34,440
or the fact that both men were
Caribbean personalities,

811
00:58:34,840 --> 00:58:36,840
everything had been set up to establish

812
00:58:37,520 --> 00:58:40,320
some sort of mutual attraction
by the time they finally met.

813
00:58:40,440 --> 00:58:43,320
Some might say a fatal attraction, right?

814
00:58:43,760 --> 00:58:47,360
But it's not like Gabo was issuing
pro-Cuba manifestos all the time.

815
00:58:47,520 --> 00:58:50,200
He simply did not join
those who condemned Cuba.

816
00:58:50,360 --> 00:58:54,640
He used to say, "I don't want to be used.
So any criticism I make

817
00:58:54,720 --> 00:58:59,200
will be used by Americans
and imperialists and so on to...

818
00:58:59,360 --> 00:59:01,000
I don't want to join that chorus.

819
00:59:02,200 --> 00:59:03,600
Next week,

820
00:59:03,960 --> 00:59:07,000
the New Latin American Cinema Foundation

821
00:59:07,120 --> 00:59:10,160
will receive a donation
from the Cuban government

822
00:59:10,520 --> 00:59:13,600
and we will never cease
to feel grateful for it,

823
00:59:14,120 --> 00:59:18,920
due to the unprecedented generosity
as well as the timeliness,

824
00:59:19,600 --> 00:59:22,760
and the personal dedication put into it

825
00:59:23,080 --> 00:59:25,760
by the world's least known filmmaker:

826
00:59:25,840 --> 00:59:27,400
Fidel Castro.

827
00:59:30,720 --> 00:59:35,680
His relationship with Fidel
is one of the most controversial

828
00:59:35,800 --> 00:59:37,360
things about his life.

829
00:59:37,480 --> 00:59:38,680
He has a great sense of humor,

830
00:59:38,760 --> 00:59:43,080
but I think he's very cautious with jokes
because sometimes

831
00:59:43,160 --> 00:59:47,000
he goes a little overboard
and immediately says, "I'm only joking."

832
00:59:47,200 --> 00:59:49,840
He thanks President Castro for
his invitation to lunch today.

833
00:59:52,200 --> 00:59:55,040
We were discussing how you
are the new Hemingway.

834
00:59:56,040 --> 00:59:58,320
I hope to be the old Hemingway!

835
00:59:58,960 --> 01:00:01,800
No, no, you cannot accuse García
Márquez of being a communist.

836
01:00:03,280 --> 01:00:07,640
He's been trying to persuade me
for 30 years, but hasn't been able to.

837
01:00:10,080 --> 01:00:14,320
The richer he becomes,
the harder to persuade him.

838
01:00:17,560 --> 01:00:19,560
Give up everything you own and follow me.

839
01:00:21,520 --> 01:00:24,720
That was what Christ said, give up
everything you own and follow me.

840
01:00:24,800 --> 01:00:27,520
But it is better to follow you,
without giving up everything I own.

841
01:00:29,480 --> 01:00:31,160
We'll go with everything I have.

842
01:00:35,200 --> 01:00:41,120
I questioned him myself
and he insisted that they were friends,

843
01:00:41,480 --> 01:00:47,320
but he additionally used this friendship
for the benefit of other people.

844
01:00:47,480 --> 01:00:48,480
They were friends.

845
01:00:48,560 --> 01:00:54,080
They went on yacht trips, they went
diving, they drank wine together. Yes.

846
01:00:54,600 --> 01:00:58,160
And at the same time, Fidel kept people
imprisoned in the island.

847
01:00:58,320 --> 01:01:03,160
Gabo insisted that he used his friendship

848
01:01:03,240 --> 01:01:04,760
to get them out of jail.

849
01:01:05,760 --> 01:01:08,440
And that this did not affect
his friendship with Fidel.

850
01:01:09,560 --> 01:01:11,480
This intrigues us all,

851
01:01:11,560 --> 01:01:15,080
but he insisted
that things were indeed like that.

852
01:01:15,240 --> 01:01:17,440
I think that the fundamental elements

853
01:01:19,480 --> 01:01:24,560
about Cuba are its resistance

854
01:01:26,360 --> 01:01:31,040
and its permanent
and firm defense of sovereignty,

855
01:01:32,800 --> 01:01:35,440
in the face of a blockade
that has been on for over 30 years.

856
01:01:36,000 --> 01:01:41,760
I think that this hurt García Márquez.
It hurt his image,

857
01:01:42,640 --> 01:01:46,040
his credibility as an intellectual,
as an author.

858
01:01:46,600 --> 01:01:51,200
He came across as someone
who glossed over or avoided criticizing

859
01:01:51,320 --> 01:01:54,960
the obvious human rights
abuses and violations in Cuba.

860
01:01:55,680 --> 01:01:57,080
I used to tell him,

861
01:01:57,160 --> 01:01:59,960
"Are you still hanging out
with that bearded guy?

862
01:02:00,040 --> 01:02:01,520
What are you doing with that man?"

863
01:02:01,760 --> 01:02:02,960
And he said,

864
01:02:03,040 --> 01:02:05,840
"And you turned rightwing
when you were a lefty".

865
01:02:05,920 --> 01:02:08,960
And so on and so forth,
but they were all jokes.

866
01:02:09,040 --> 01:02:10,440
So we took it like that.

867
01:02:10,920 --> 01:02:13,920
But the important bit is,
whenever I was asked

868
01:02:14,000 --> 01:02:17,440
to sign a letter to see if Padilla
or Norberto Fuentes,

869
01:02:17,520 --> 01:02:19,280
or any other Cuban writer
could be released,

870
01:02:19,360 --> 01:02:23,520
I said, "Wait,
if you want to help this writer,

871
01:02:23,640 --> 01:02:28,960
I have a much more powerful resource
than a signed letter.

872
01:02:29,760 --> 01:02:31,760
I then called Gabo and said,
"Help me, Gabo."

873
01:02:32,160 --> 01:02:35,800
And we freed many poets.
We freed many poets and writers.

874
01:02:35,920 --> 01:02:38,880
He became a very useful person.

875
01:02:39,000 --> 01:02:42,160
He never changed his position,
regarding the communist world,

876
01:02:42,280 --> 01:02:43,920
nor was he a communist. Not at all.

877
01:02:44,080 --> 01:02:46,440
But he was friends with Fidel, he was.

878
01:02:47,000 --> 01:02:51,120
Gabo's political position
always sparked in Colombia,

879
01:02:51,720 --> 01:02:54,000
a lot of controversy.

880
01:02:54,080 --> 01:02:58,840
This is a rightwing country, deeply so,
because of the war.

881
01:02:59,200 --> 01:03:03,280
And Gabo was convinced that this country
had to achieve peace.

882
01:03:03,920 --> 01:03:08,840
He became obsessed with it,
that provoked a reaction from the right,

883
01:03:09,160 --> 01:03:13,360
to the point where he was practically
deemed a guerrilla supporter.

884
01:03:14,280 --> 01:03:19,200
Military intelligence services
began to build some sort of file

885
01:03:19,360 --> 01:03:22,640
to implicate him
as an accessory to subversion,

886
01:03:22,800 --> 01:03:24,400
as a collaborator of M19.

887
01:03:24,640 --> 01:03:27,440
Gabo obviously knew
they would take him to trial,

888
01:03:28,040 --> 01:03:30,800
and that's when he decided to seek
asylum in the Mexican Embassy.

889
01:03:31,160 --> 01:03:36,000
I really preferred to return
to Mexico in the safest possible way,

890
01:03:36,080 --> 01:03:37,480
which was through the embassy.

891
01:03:38,360 --> 01:03:40,200
I have nothing to hide.

892
01:03:42,200 --> 01:03:46,520
Never in my life
have I fired a weapon,

893
01:03:47,040 --> 01:03:48,480
other than the typewriter.

894
01:03:50,000 --> 01:03:54,840
But I really could not tolerate
that the Colombian government,

895
01:03:55,120 --> 01:03:59,240
or rather, some sectors of the
Colombian government

896
01:04:00,040 --> 01:04:04,640
pulled a publicity stunt to detain me,

897
01:04:04,760 --> 01:04:07,920
even if it was just for questioning.

898
01:04:08,240 --> 01:04:13,040
But, was there really
a warrant for your detention,

899
01:04:13,240 --> 01:04:14,920
according to the reports
that you received?

900
01:04:15,000 --> 01:04:17,680
I cannot possibly know.
The thing is,

901
01:04:18,480 --> 01:04:24,440
I received three different
versions from different sources,

902
01:04:24,920 --> 01:04:26,640
as well as an anonymous call.

903
01:04:27,400 --> 01:04:31,400
And frankly, I preferred to save my skin,

904
01:04:31,760 --> 01:04:35,640
than give my wife, my children
and my family

905
01:04:35,840 --> 01:04:39,080
the opportunity to receive
the deepest sympathies

906
01:04:39,240 --> 01:04:43,760
and the funeral wreaths
from the presidents of the Republic.

907
01:04:48,640 --> 01:04:50,480
"On the day they were going to kill him,

908
01:04:50,560 --> 01:04:53,440
Santiago Nasar got up at five-thirty
in the morning

909
01:04:53,520 --> 01:04:55,960
to wait for the boat
on which the Bishop would arrive.

910
01:04:57,560 --> 01:04:59,880
He had dreamt he was going
through a grove of timber trees,

911
01:05:00,000 --> 01:05:01,760
where a gentle drizzle was falling,

912
01:05:01,880 --> 01:05:04,400
and for an instant he
was happy in his dream,

913
01:05:04,480 --> 01:05:09,280
but when he awoke he felt completely
spattered with bird shit.

914
01:05:10,600 --> 01:05:12,040
'He always dreamt of trees,'

915
01:05:12,160 --> 01:05:16,360
told me Plácida Linero, his mother,
twenty-seven years later,

916
01:05:16,440 --> 01:05:18,640
recalling the details
of that fatal Monday."

917
01:05:19,920 --> 01:05:23,720
It was very curious that his next novel,
Chronicle of a Death Foretold

918
01:05:23,920 --> 01:05:27,200
was about a private, family matter,

919
01:05:27,720 --> 01:05:32,000
30 years earlier, and that it is devoid
of political references.

920
01:05:33,280 --> 01:05:36,040
It is a novel narrated by a man,

921
01:05:36,120 --> 01:05:38,080
whom we immediately
identify as García Márquez

922
01:05:38,280 --> 01:05:42,160
and who acts as the chronicler
of the story he is trying to tell.

923
01:05:42,280 --> 01:05:46,200
He asks questions, investigates,
reports and thus sets up

924
01:05:46,320 --> 01:05:50,040
a false chronicle, a fictional chronicle.

925
01:05:51,080 --> 01:05:53,520
It was a major publishing milestone.

926
01:05:54,320 --> 01:05:56,960
It was the first million copy edition.

927
01:06:01,720 --> 01:06:04,560
García Márquez had been
thinking of the Nobel prize

928
01:06:04,640 --> 01:06:05,840
since he was 20 years old.

929
01:06:06,160 --> 01:06:08,160
It's surprising but true.

930
01:06:08,480 --> 01:06:11,800
He perfectly knew
that he deserved the Nobel prize,

931
01:06:11,920 --> 01:06:13,960
but he also knew that

932
01:06:14,080 --> 01:06:21,000
those who prepare the ground properly,
often reap the important things.

933
01:06:22,760 --> 01:06:27,120
To what extent was his
literary ambition a calculated matter?

934
01:06:27,760 --> 01:06:33,880
I think there's a high degree
of intuition there.

935
01:06:34,800 --> 01:06:38,440
His books were stories that he had been
brewing in his head for 20 or 30 years.

936
01:06:38,560 --> 01:06:42,120
He never wrote a book less than 20 years
after having first thought about it.

937
01:06:42,320 --> 01:06:45,320
But something unconscious
pointed to him the right time

938
01:06:45,440 --> 01:06:48,400
to sit down and write this book.
It was that fantastic intuition

939
01:06:48,480 --> 01:06:51,000
he had of his place in the world,
for every moment of his life.

940
01:06:51,080 --> 01:06:51,920
Extra!

941
01:06:52,040 --> 01:06:56,680
Gabriel García Márquez has just won
the Nobel Prize in Literature!

942
01:06:56,800 --> 01:06:58,840
I repeat! Gabriel García Márquez,

943
01:06:58,960 --> 01:07:00,680
Nobel Prize in Literature.

944
01:07:06,560 --> 01:07:10,520
Now that we see you on this plane,
you don't seem to be afraid of flying.

945
01:07:10,600 --> 01:07:13,160
It's because it is the first time
I fly as a Nobel prize winner.

946
01:07:13,320 --> 01:07:15,840
This gives me a certain confidence.

947
01:07:30,560 --> 01:07:33,400
The Nobel was a general joy.

948
01:07:34,760 --> 01:07:36,200
When they invited us,

949
01:07:36,320 --> 01:07:39,840
Mercedes and I went out to buy clothes.

950
01:07:40,000 --> 01:07:43,520
Everyone should be here for the picture,
come here, everyone.

951
01:07:47,920 --> 01:07:49,440
Can we take a bath later?

952
01:07:49,680 --> 01:07:51,280
Gabriel was so happy.

953
01:07:51,600 --> 01:07:57,000
He was like a little boy,
like a little boy who'd won the lottery.

954
01:08:02,160 --> 01:08:04,400
Is this the most important
moment of your life?

955
01:08:04,480 --> 01:08:07,080
No, the most important moment
of my life was when I was born.

956
01:08:08,640 --> 01:08:10,800
But I am very happy anyway.

957
01:08:11,160 --> 01:08:15,400
The party was wild,
like nothing you've seen before.

958
01:08:45,399 --> 01:08:50,080
Gabriel told me that the queen,
who was sitting beside him,

959
01:08:51,080 --> 01:08:54,800
said that she loved the cumbia because
all these women had come down

960
01:08:54,880 --> 01:08:56,600
going "ta, ta,ta" with their skirts.

961
01:08:58,120 --> 01:08:59,560
And he said he told her:

962
01:09:00,200 --> 01:09:04,200
"Look, this literature thing
is only a hobby,

963
01:09:04,439 --> 01:09:07,640
I am, in reality, a cumbia master."

964
01:09:10,000 --> 01:09:14,080
That's what he said, it was
one of those silly things he loved saying.

965
01:09:14,800 --> 01:09:16,920
Gabriel García Márquez
has already garnered

966
01:09:17,040 --> 01:09:19,080
every single success
in the literary world.

967
01:09:19,880 --> 01:09:23,520
Does García Márquez expect
to become a politician?

968
01:09:24,399 --> 01:09:27,439
No, my biggest dream
is to write a great novel.

969
01:09:27,880 --> 01:09:29,520
Haven't you written a great novel yet?

970
01:09:30,080 --> 01:09:33,000
You always think that the next one
will be the best one.

971
01:09:33,359 --> 01:09:37,359
And the day I stop thinking that,
I will cease to be a good writer.

972
01:09:37,640 --> 01:09:39,880
Is García Márquez writing right now?

973
01:09:41,560 --> 01:09:42,439
Not today, no.

974
01:09:43,279 --> 01:09:44,080
I mean,

975
01:09:44,359 --> 01:09:50,319
when they asked me how I'd feel
if I won the Nobel prize,

976
01:09:50,439 --> 01:09:54,520
I always said I would be
as delighted as any other writer,

977
01:09:54,920 --> 01:10:00,880
but that it would also be,
in my perspective, a personal tragedy.

978
01:10:01,480 --> 01:10:04,240
And it has been true in the sense
that it has disorganized my life.

979
01:10:04,440 --> 01:10:07,280
It has even interrupted
the novel I was writing.

980
01:10:07,440 --> 01:10:10,000
It has upset my private life.

981
01:10:10,200 --> 01:10:13,320
And my goal, once I return from Stockholm,

982
01:10:13,680 --> 01:10:17,840
is to declare the pleasant

983
01:10:18,080 --> 01:10:20,880
and somewhat confusing episode
of the Nobel prize a closed chapter.

984
01:10:21,160 --> 01:10:23,360
And I will try to be a good writer.

985
01:10:23,880 --> 01:10:25,400
He was very aware of the Nobel myth

986
01:10:25,520 --> 01:10:28,080
and had even written several columns
on the subject.

987
01:10:29,960 --> 01:10:33,600
According to this myth,

988
01:10:33,720 --> 01:10:36,560
no Nobel laureate has written anything
of value after winning the prize.

989
01:10:37,520 --> 01:10:39,640
The book he wanted to write at the time

990
01:10:40,000 --> 01:10:43,840
was some sort of
personal family challenge

991
01:10:43,960 --> 01:10:47,720
because it involved getting
close to his father.

992
01:10:48,000 --> 01:10:50,560
García Márquez always forgave everyone

993
01:10:50,640 --> 01:10:54,960
and the person who was
the hardest for him to forgive

994
01:10:55,080 --> 01:10:58,600
was his dad. He finally managed to do it.

995
01:10:58,880 --> 01:11:01,840
I was very afraid of him.
He scared me as much as my teacher.

996
01:11:01,960 --> 01:11:02,840
Was he very strict?

997
01:11:03,520 --> 01:11:08,360
No, no. The thing is,
he had a sense of authority

998
01:11:08,440 --> 01:11:11,640
that I never managed to understand.

999
01:11:11,760 --> 01:11:13,040
I understand him much better

1000
01:11:13,160 --> 01:11:16,520
now, that I myself am a father
and especially now that I am a teacher.

1001
01:11:20,160 --> 01:11:25,160
Love in the Time of Cholera
is the meticulous biography

1002
01:11:25,240 --> 01:11:26,560
of his parents' love.

1003
01:11:27,240 --> 01:11:30,120
A love that is at first challenged,

1004
01:11:30,200 --> 01:11:31,520
a topic García Márquez favored,

1005
01:11:31,640 --> 01:11:34,400
but then overcomes all obstacles
in the end.

1006
01:11:35,840 --> 01:11:38,840
The entire geography in the novel
is authentic.

1007
01:11:39,600 --> 01:11:41,040
I wrote it here, in Cartagena.

1008
01:11:41,440 --> 01:11:43,200
I used to work all morning.

1009
01:11:43,480 --> 01:11:45,880
In the afternoon I would take a walk

1010
01:11:46,000 --> 01:11:49,440
around the portico of the sweet vendors,
just to hear phrases, to hear words.

1011
01:11:49,560 --> 01:11:52,160
I would wander, looking
for the places where my characters lived.

1012
01:11:52,240 --> 01:11:56,120
I worked by locations,
as if I were making a film,

1013
01:11:57,080 --> 01:12:00,200
and I would invariably end up
at my parents' home

1014
01:12:00,320 --> 01:12:03,160
every afternoon, in order to ask them
about their love story,

1015
01:12:03,760 --> 01:12:06,640
I would ask him first,
then I'd ask my mother some other times.

1016
01:12:06,720 --> 01:12:10,720
I always did this separately, otherwise,
it was hard to get the real information.

1017
01:12:11,120 --> 01:12:13,160
All of the information they gave me,

1018
01:12:13,520 --> 01:12:15,840
the less metaphorical one,

1019
01:12:16,920 --> 01:12:20,800
the less poetically transposed,

1020
01:12:21,240 --> 01:12:22,480
is the account of their love.

1021
01:12:22,560 --> 01:12:25,960
Because I wanted them
to be exactly verbatim.

1022
01:12:26,160 --> 01:12:28,600
Everything, how they met exactly,

1023
01:12:28,680 --> 01:12:31,160
how they were separated.
The journey she made.

1024
01:12:31,520 --> 01:12:33,320
The way he communicated with her,

1025
01:12:33,440 --> 01:12:39,440
by pegging all of the telegraph offices

1026
01:12:40,280 --> 01:12:44,160
in the region of Magdalena,
in the region of Valledupar.

1027
01:12:44,640 --> 01:12:46,880
All of my novels are about love.

1028
01:12:46,960 --> 01:12:49,960
You see that, even if I try to conceal it.
All of them are romance novels.

1029
01:12:50,640 --> 01:12:53,280
It is the great book
of their reconciliations.

1030
01:12:53,440 --> 01:12:58,800
It's a soap opera, but it's a soap opera
written by Flaubert.

1031
01:12:59,680 --> 01:13:02,120
It's as if Love in the Time of Cholera
were the flipside

1032
01:13:02,200 --> 01:13:04,360
of One Hundred Years of Solitude.

1033
01:13:04,680 --> 01:13:07,680
One Hundred Years of Solitude
is a novel in which

1034
01:13:08,040 --> 01:13:11,360
all the forces of love, sex
and passion combined

1035
01:13:11,440 --> 01:13:14,040
are insufficient to prevent the
ultimate destruction of the world.

1036
01:13:14,160 --> 01:13:15,640
In Love in the Time of Cholera,

1037
01:13:15,760 --> 01:13:17,400
love accomplishes its ultimate goals.

1038
01:13:17,480 --> 01:13:19,560
Love is the ultimate redemption.

1039
01:13:19,640 --> 01:13:21,000
It is what saves us.

1040
01:13:22,560 --> 01:13:27,280
It is a terribly risky book because
it is a love story with a happy ending.

1041
01:13:27,880 --> 01:13:31,080
Around the time he was writing
the novel, he used to say

1042
01:13:31,240 --> 01:13:33,880
on interviews: "I'm going
to make happiness fashionable."

1043
01:13:34,760 --> 01:13:36,960
He set out to do that and succeeded.

1044
01:13:41,800 --> 01:13:46,760
We began to discover a story that we never
thought would reach the places it reached.

1045
01:13:48,120 --> 01:13:53,400
It wasn't only the guerrillas, there was
something bigger we didn't know of.

1046
01:13:54,680 --> 01:13:57,080
It turned out to be drug trafficking.

1047
01:13:59,120 --> 01:14:02,240
In 1976, Pablo Escobar
was in jail for drugs.

1048
01:14:02,600 --> 01:14:04,640
Guillermo Cano was the first journalist

1049
01:14:04,720 --> 01:14:08,080
who realized what was happening
in this country.

1050
01:14:10,640 --> 01:14:14,440
Gabo grew professionally at El Espectador.
Gabo loved the newspaper.

1051
01:14:15,440 --> 01:14:18,000
Gabo was a close friend of Guillermo Cano.

1052
01:14:20,160 --> 01:14:23,160
Guillermo sent me to the
Havana film festival.

1053
01:14:23,240 --> 01:14:29,080
"Tell Gabo I want him to write an article,

1054
01:14:29,160 --> 01:14:31,640
a speech, a few words

1055
01:14:32,240 --> 01:14:33,840
on the seventy years of El Espectador."

1056
01:14:34,080 --> 01:14:35,400
And I got there.

1057
01:14:36,120 --> 01:14:39,840
Gabo told me, "I don't want
to write anything about Colombia.

1058
01:14:40,000 --> 01:14:43,480
I love El Espectador, but I'm not
writing anything about Colombia."

1059
01:14:43,600 --> 01:14:45,680
He said, "I won't write anything
about that country.

1060
01:14:45,760 --> 01:14:47,440
If you write something, they kill you."

1061
01:14:47,520 --> 01:14:51,960
I told Gabo he was exaggerating.
"Don't be a liar. It's not that bad."

1062
01:14:52,440 --> 01:14:55,760
This revealed the pain that Gabo felt,

1063
01:14:55,840 --> 01:14:58,720
after half Colombia had said
all sorts of things about him.

1064
01:14:59,760 --> 01:15:02,920
And around the third day,
I was coming out of the cinema

1065
01:15:03,400 --> 01:15:06,560
when someone said,
"García Márquez is looking for you."

1066
01:15:10,160 --> 01:15:13,920
And I found Gabo and Gaba
on the verge of tears.

1067
01:15:15,680 --> 01:15:19,600
And Gabo said, "See? I told you!
That fucking country!

1068
01:15:20,080 --> 01:15:21,640
That country is not worth anything.

1069
01:15:21,800 --> 01:15:23,880
They killed my friend, Guillermo Cano."

1070
01:15:47,480 --> 01:15:49,840
Gabo was very upset.

1071
01:15:51,240 --> 01:15:55,000
He found death
difficult to handle.

1072
01:15:58,240 --> 01:16:02,960
But Gabo's most impressive gesture
was to send the article,

1073
01:16:03,280 --> 01:16:07,520
and he wrote a piece on Guillermo Cano
that was so spectacular,

1074
01:16:07,640 --> 01:16:09,480
I cried every time I read it.

1075
01:16:09,600 --> 01:16:13,320
"President Fidel Castro
was telling me a gripping story,

1076
01:16:13,440 --> 01:16:15,240
at a party, among friends,

1077
01:16:15,400 --> 01:16:18,400
when I heard Mercedes'
tremulous voice, nearly whispering:

1078
01:16:18,680 --> 01:16:20,640
'Guillermo Cano has been killed.'

1079
01:16:21,120 --> 01:16:23,400
The murder had taken place
fifteen minutes earlier

1080
01:16:23,480 --> 01:16:26,920
and someone had rushed to the
phone to give us a very brief account.

1081
01:16:27,480 --> 01:16:31,240
Teary-eyed, I barely had the strength
to wait for the end

1082
01:16:31,360 --> 01:16:33,160
of Fidel Castro's phrase.

1083
01:16:33,800 --> 01:16:37,280
Bewildered by grief as I was,
the only thing in my mind

1084
01:16:37,480 --> 01:16:41,920
was the usual impulse
to call Guillermo Cano,

1085
01:16:42,040 --> 01:16:44,000
so that he would tell me the full story

1086
01:16:44,160 --> 01:16:48,400
and then we could share together
the anger and pain of his death."

1087
01:16:56,520 --> 01:16:58,920
It was a very challenging phenomenon.

1088
01:17:01,440 --> 01:17:05,400
And the bombs that exploded back then,
exploded all across the country.

1089
01:17:08,280 --> 01:17:11,480
Even Peru's Shining Path in its heyday

1090
01:17:11,840 --> 01:17:17,520
would pale, compared to Escobar's actions
during that period.

1091
01:17:17,640 --> 01:17:20,280
I don't think there's been
a period of terrorism quite like it.

1092
01:17:20,400 --> 01:17:25,400
In Medellin, at the start of 1989,

1093
01:17:25,560 --> 01:17:28,800
he began to pay for the
death of all policemen

1094
01:17:28,960 --> 01:17:33,880
and killed, one by one, some 400 policemen
in just a couple of months.

1095
01:17:39,360 --> 01:17:42,880
"Two men opened Maruja's door
and another two opened Beatriz's.

1096
01:17:43,040 --> 01:17:45,840
The fifth man shot the driver
in the head, through the glass,

1097
01:17:46,240 --> 01:17:49,320
but the silencer made it
sound no louder than a sigh.

1098
01:17:49,600 --> 01:17:52,040
Then he opened the door, pulled him out,

1099
01:17:52,160 --> 01:17:54,360
and shot him three more times
as he lay on the ground.

1100
01:17:54,520 --> 01:17:55,760
It was another man's destiny:

1101
01:17:56,000 --> 01:17:59,800
Angel María Roa had been
Maruja's driver for only three days,

1102
01:18:00,200 --> 01:18:03,440
and he was displaying for the first time
his new dignity, with the dark suit,

1103
01:18:03,600 --> 01:18:07,280
the starched shirt and black tie,
the trademarks of a minister's chauffeur."

1104
01:18:07,680 --> 01:18:10,320
News of a Kidnapping
is a return to his country.

1105
01:18:10,640 --> 01:18:16,000
It is also a return to the elite
who has gone

1106
01:18:16,120 --> 01:18:20,560
through the terrible ordeal of kidnapping

1107
01:18:20,880 --> 01:18:22,880
in Pablo Escobar's heyday.

1108
01:18:27,360 --> 01:18:30,240
Gabo returned to journalism at some point.

1109
01:18:30,360 --> 01:18:34,920
He returned several times,
in his attempts to launch magazines,

1110
01:18:35,200 --> 01:18:39,440
creating the New Journalism Foundation
in the mid 90's.

1111
01:18:40,240 --> 01:18:42,160
We're a group of journalists

1112
01:18:42,280 --> 01:18:46,160
who thought there was an opportunity
to become independent

1113
01:18:46,240 --> 01:18:49,400
and make a proposal to make
a television news show

1114
01:18:49,520 --> 01:18:51,360
created exclusively by journalists.

1115
01:18:52,000 --> 01:18:55,880
We wanted to start with people
with no habits, freshly out of college.

1116
01:18:55,960 --> 01:18:59,160
We practically started a kindergarten.

1117
01:18:59,760 --> 01:19:04,040
It was nice to see him sitting beside
the trainee journalists.

1118
01:19:04,160 --> 01:19:09,600
They really learned, sitting next to him.
He was unpretentious, devoid of arrogance.

1119
01:19:09,920 --> 01:19:13,520
If you speak to any of the journalists
who worked at QAP

1120
01:19:13,640 --> 01:19:17,720
you'll hear nothing but admiration

1121
01:19:19,760 --> 01:19:20,880
and a profound love.

1122
01:19:21,040 --> 01:19:24,680
In many Latin American countries,
journalists are just messengers.

1123
01:19:25,760 --> 01:19:28,040
Or advertising salespeople.

1124
01:19:28,440 --> 01:19:30,920
He wanted to raise the bar,

1125
01:19:31,040 --> 01:19:34,760
so that journalists honored

1126
01:19:34,920 --> 01:19:39,480
his definition of the profession,
as the best in the world.

1127
01:19:39,640 --> 01:19:44,240
That effort to be respected as
a journalist by journalists

1128
01:19:44,400 --> 01:19:45,680
in News of a Kidnapping.

1129
01:19:45,800 --> 01:19:47,160
To do things right.

1130
01:19:48,120 --> 01:19:51,400
To reconstruct what seems
an impartial truth

1131
01:19:51,560 --> 01:19:53,840
and leave it impartially on the page.

1132
01:19:54,080 --> 01:19:59,240
News of a Kidnapping. When the
first version is produced,

1133
01:19:59,400 --> 01:20:04,760
he grabs the book, grabs a
normal postal box and writes,

1134
01:20:04,960 --> 01:20:08,400
"Bill Clinton, White House, Washington."

1135
01:20:31,680 --> 01:20:33,880
I was invited to a State Dinner

1136
01:20:34,040 --> 01:20:35,960
and when I was in the greeting line,

1137
01:20:36,080 --> 01:20:38,160
President Clinton says
to me "I read the book".

1138
01:20:39,280 --> 01:20:42,080
What was the President of the
United States telling me?

1139
01:20:42,160 --> 01:20:43,640
What book could he be talking about?

1140
01:20:43,880 --> 01:20:46,520
He was a little distressed
because the book obviously shows

1141
01:20:46,640 --> 01:20:48,520
the complexities of Colombia.

1142
01:20:48,760 --> 01:20:52,200
The complexity of the drug
trafficking problem in Colombia.

1143
01:20:52,480 --> 01:20:56,400
The threats, the kidnappings.
The terrorism.

1144
01:21:20,800 --> 01:21:23,600
Gabo's message through literature,

1145
01:21:26,680 --> 01:21:29,360
clearly establishes his moral conscience.

1146
01:21:29,600 --> 01:21:34,000
It is a strong humanist argument.

1147
01:21:46,840 --> 01:21:51,560
It's not that he approached all the
presidents and all leaders, no.

1148
01:21:51,640 --> 01:21:55,600
There had to be a certain compatibility
with him and his way of thinking.

1149
01:22:34,680 --> 01:22:37,800
I think that, if things had
been a little different,

1150
01:22:37,880 --> 01:22:44,400
we could be here talking
about how Gabo and Clinton

1151
01:22:44,840 --> 01:22:48,960
managed to put an end the U.S.
blockade of Cuba.

1152
01:22:49,120 --> 01:22:50,000
It didn't happen,

1153
01:22:50,160 --> 01:22:53,880
but it came pretty close, and it
came pretty close, thanks to Gabo.

1154
01:23:21,200 --> 01:23:24,480
"The truth is, every time I return
to the town of Reality

1155
01:23:24,720 --> 01:23:27,240
I find it looks less
like the town of Fiction

1156
01:23:28,440 --> 01:23:31,520
The trees from the towns tend to live
longer than human beings

1157
01:23:31,720 --> 01:23:34,640
and I have always suspected
that they remember us too,

1158
01:23:35,040 --> 01:23:38,400
perhaps better than we remember them."

1159
01:23:45,080 --> 01:23:46,120
The setting is Sucre.

1160
01:23:47,720 --> 01:23:51,440
Chronicle of a Death Foretold
is a masterpiece by García Márquez.

1161
01:23:52,280 --> 01:23:54,920
The language it uses is deeply its own,

1162
01:23:55,040 --> 01:23:58,680
and it enriches reality, magnifies it.

1163
01:23:59,120 --> 01:24:02,760
One notices the magic of García Márquez,

1164
01:24:03,840 --> 01:24:05,880
in the struggle of Santiago Nasar,

1165
01:24:06,040 --> 01:24:08,880
who was, in real life, Cayetano Gentile,
one of his great friends,

1166
01:24:09,000 --> 01:24:12,360
against a verdict that has been passed

1167
01:24:12,440 --> 01:24:15,240
in a realm he does not understand.

1168
01:24:15,440 --> 01:24:16,800
The struggle of the murderers,

1169
01:24:16,880 --> 01:24:20,040
who are dragged by forces beyond them.

1170
01:24:21,800 --> 01:24:26,160
One of the clashes that haunted
him in his life as a writer was

1171
01:24:26,360 --> 01:24:29,120
man against his fate.

1172
01:24:33,200 --> 01:24:35,640
This is what the locals say.

1173
01:24:35,800 --> 01:24:40,880
That morning, Santiago Nasar was coming
back from delivering some steers

1174
01:24:40,960 --> 01:24:42,840
from one of the farms
on the outskirts of town

1175
01:24:43,000 --> 01:24:45,720
and came from the side of the alley

1176
01:24:45,800 --> 01:24:47,760
of María Amalia Sampayo, the Big Mama,

1177
01:24:47,840 --> 01:24:54,040
He was coming down that alley and
the Vicario brothers or the Chica Salas

1178
01:24:54,160 --> 01:24:57,760
were opposite,
at Clotilde Armenta's tavern.

1179
01:24:57,920 --> 01:25:01,880
They were there, waiting
and scrutinizing the entire square.

1180
01:25:03,200 --> 01:25:06,880
Upon seeing him round the alley,

1181
01:25:06,960 --> 01:25:09,440
they came out behind him to stab him.

1182
01:25:10,000 --> 01:25:13,240
A little earlier he had tried to go
into his house, but it was closed.

1183
01:25:14,480 --> 01:25:17,360
He tried to enter through the back,

1184
01:25:17,440 --> 01:25:19,920
so he looked for ways
to reach the fatal alley.

1185
01:25:20,080 --> 01:25:24,320
The Chica Sala brothers
caught him at the bottom of the alley

1186
01:25:24,400 --> 01:25:25,800
and cut him to pieces

1187
01:25:25,920 --> 01:25:30,400
at 9:30 am, on January 22, 1958.

1188
01:25:30,680 --> 01:25:33,880
At that moment, I was already
dressed to go to school.

1189
01:25:34,080 --> 01:25:37,000
Then I heard, "they killed Cayetano."

1190
01:25:37,280 --> 01:25:38,640
I ran out.

1191
01:25:39,320 --> 01:25:40,160
When I got there,

1192
01:25:40,240 --> 01:25:43,120
the doctor took his stethoscope off

1193
01:25:43,240 --> 01:25:49,960
and tried to give Cayetano's mom a shot,
to sedate her or something.

1194
01:25:50,080 --> 01:25:52,520
-"What are you going to do?"
-"To calm you down."

1195
01:25:52,600 --> 01:25:54,760
-"But..."
-"This will tranquilize you."

1196
01:25:54,840 --> 01:25:56,840
She said,
"No, why would you calm me down?

1197
01:25:56,920 --> 01:26:00,680
He's my son, I have to mourn him.
I need to mourn him."

1198
01:26:10,920 --> 01:26:16,480
In recent years, I noticed that Gabo

1199
01:26:17,200 --> 01:26:19,600
was losing his memory.

1200
01:26:20,360 --> 01:26:23,400
What remained of the original
Gabo was his tenderness.

1201
01:26:24,240 --> 01:26:29,960
He carried on being
affectionate, tactile, kind.

1202
01:26:31,480 --> 01:26:34,760
Having been a man
so obsessed with memory,

1203
01:26:35,040 --> 01:26:39,480
it's incredible his life ended this way.

1204
01:26:39,800 --> 01:26:45,560
I think that this is part of his life,

1205
01:26:45,640 --> 01:26:50,440
part of the experience he had.

1206
01:26:50,920 --> 01:26:52,680
It had to be this way.

1207
01:26:53,320 --> 01:26:56,720
I think that the cycle is now closed.

1208
01:27:00,360 --> 01:27:03,280
He said, "you're writing about me."
I said, "yes."

1209
01:27:03,560 --> 01:27:07,360
"And you're going to say that I had it
all planned, right here in my head."

1210
01:27:07,800 --> 01:27:10,160
I said, "perhaps" and he went,
"well, it's not true.

1211
01:27:10,320 --> 01:27:13,520
I never knew where I was going,
how far I was going.

1212
01:27:13,680 --> 01:27:16,080
It was impossible to know
where I'd end up.

1213
01:27:16,240 --> 01:27:20,880
All I did was push, like pushing a cart.
Push and push and push...

1214
01:27:20,960 --> 01:27:23,040
without knowing whether
you'll get there or not."

1215
01:27:24,160 --> 01:27:27,120
A writer's tempo

1216
01:27:28,040 --> 01:27:31,080
can only be measured like music.

1217
01:27:32,240 --> 01:27:35,120
It starts when he's seven years old

1218
01:27:35,360 --> 01:27:37,080
and ends when he dies.

1219
01:28:14,680 --> 01:28:17,320
Not dying is the only option I accept.

1220
01:28:17,440 --> 01:28:21,640
I think it is the single most
important thing you have in life.

1221
01:28:21,760 --> 01:28:23,280
Being alive is what matters,

1222
01:28:23,360 --> 01:28:25,120
and I think death is a trap.

1223
01:28:25,240 --> 01:28:28,720
It's a betrayal that they set on you,
without giving you a choice.

1224
01:28:33,360 --> 01:28:36,920
The fact that it is all going to end
sounds grim to me.

1225
01:28:37,480 --> 01:28:41,440
Our involvement in the matter
is null, until it comes.

1226
01:28:42,640 --> 01:28:44,000
I think it is unfair.

1227
01:28:45,200 --> 01:28:47,440
What can we do to avoid it?

1228
01:28:47,840 --> 01:28:49,640
Write a lot.