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Posts tagged ‘Gabriel García Márquez.’

May 23

words
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Close Encounters of the Reading Kind

And then I came upon noted American Spanish-to-English literary translator Edith Grossman’s comment on translation, which she calls ‘a kind of reading as deep as any encounter with a literary text can be.’ And I thought, how many authors have I read in such a manner. Which writer has transcended the average and beyond to stand out and make me delve deep into their works, the charm of their words and the feelings they evoked. How many of these books managed to remain alluring over the years? Which writer delighted with words in the same way a painter does with colours and images or a singer with voice and lyrics?

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May 4

Gabriel Garcia Marquez
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To Write Like Gabo

The first time I read Gabriel García Márquez, I wanted to write like him. It was one thing wanting to, and quite another being able to. But I learnt a lot of lessons along the way.

1. Desire: In 1951, Márquez returned from a trip home to Aracataca, his home town, to write Leaf Storm (1955), his first novel. ‘From the moment I wrote Leaf Storm I realized I wanted to be a writer and that nobody could stop me and that the only thing left for me to do was to try to be the best writer in the world.’

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Apr 3

Gabriel Garcia Marquez with “One Hundred Years of Solitude” on his head
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Found in Translation

Literature in translation is meat and if you are not reading them, you are missing out on a whole new world. Around 60% of all translations are from books originally published in English, but only 3% of books in a foreign language are translated into English. A glaring disparity without a doubt and one that smacks of arrogance? Or is it that translated works do not sell? Murakami, Paulo Coelho, Gabriel Garcia Marquez, T Steig Larsson are writers whose books sell in their millions. When I buy a book, the thought that never crosses my mind is whether it is a work of translation.

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Jan 31

Book-Endings-_1
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Beginning with the Ending

I have this pile of books by my side. The dog is nearby, sleeping on another pile. I am reading to catch up. I look through the books. First one, I toss aside. No names, please. Names cause strife. The blurb is enticing enough, but when I steal a glance at the ending, something didn’t feel right. The words, I think. The next book, the ending I liked. No, not how it ended, but how the words came together to say something sensible, beautiful even. It held my attention. I began reading. Like a good beginning, endings also matter. Have you done the same with writing? Have you ever written the other way around, beginning with the ending first?

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Mar 14

AdverbProtest_007
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An Aversion to Adverbs

The road to hell is paved with adverbs – Stephen King

No one is suggesting that the use of adverbs in speech or writing is against the rules of the English language. Not even Stephen King. If using ly ending adverbs and adjectives doesn’t break any rules of usage, what’s the hullabaloo about? Why is using ly ending adverbs considered bad writing for fiction writers. To illustrate the point, a passage from a book that made its writer a billionaire.

‘Careful not to walk through anyone,’ said Ron…

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Mar 6

g

Thank goodness for March 6!

March 6 gave me two things I could do without: Aspirin and the books of Gabriel García Márquez.

On this very day in 1899, the Imperial Patent Office in Berlin registered Aspirin, the brand name for acetylsalicylic acid, on behalf of the German pharmaceutical company Bayer & Co. Originally derived from the bark of willow trees, the active ingredient salicin has been in use for centuries serving as traditional medicine since ancient Greece. A Bayer employee, Felix Hoffman, created a stable form of the drug in 1897. After obtaining the patent rights, Bayer began distributing aspirin in powder form to physicians to give to their patients one gram at a time…

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