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🦋 Influences, (mis)interpretations

Anne McLean passes along a link to her translation of Juan Gabriel Vásquez' essay on "Misunderstandings Surrounding Gabriel García Márquez" ("Malentendidos alrededor de García Márquez", El malpensante 2006) -- a wonderful piece of writing in which Vásquez examines how García Márquez chose his influences in the course of developing his voice: how an author consciously goes about choosing influences, how he can acknowledge the greatness of the magical realism of Macondo without considering it an appropriate influence for his voice. I have seen the line from García Márquez about Faulkner's being a Caribbean author but had never really thought about how strong of an influence Faulkner was on his voice (though looking back I see I have spoken of the two authors in the same breath).

The ideas from the essay seem similar to ones I've heard voiced by Diego Trelles Paz in relation to El futuro no es nuestro -- in particular the line that "there is nothing further from late-twentieth-century Bogotá, or the European experience of a young emigrant, than the Macondian method" -- Vásquez is not in that collection but perhaps I can think of him in a group with those authors.

posted evening of Saturday, September 17th, 2011
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