When facing the blank page, Colombian fiction writers must confront two shadows: the culture of drug-trafficking and the legacy of Gabriel García Márquez’s magical realism. Juan Gabriel Vásquez has managed to dodge both in The Informers, a novel about Colombia’s German and Jewish émigré populations during World War II ... read more
I burst out laughing when I read the first line of this story: The part, I mean, about Colombian writers having to face the blank page AND García Márquez's magical realism. I recall having submitted an unpublished (probably never-to-be-published, for this very reason, among others) manuscript to a potential agent who, seeking to find any reason at all not to like it, said, with something like astonishment: "But, this isn't magical realism!"
ReplyDelete"Uh, nooooo....and your point is???"
"Well, I mean, your from South America." (Like that explained everything).
"Actually, no. I'm FROM Ohio. I LIVE in South America."
"Oh, well I was thinking, you know, more along the lines of Isabel Allende, see?"
Okay, then! Just let me run right out and get a sex change and a culture transplant, and I'll be right the heck back!
No,no, guys, it's not just the Colombian writers that face that. It's a cross all of us "southerners" have to bear. Even the Southern Yankees.