Garcia Marquez talks about writing

Talking about writing Garcia Marquez's masterpiece: "Hundred Years of loneliness" Thanks: Lin Yian Marquez's typewriter used to write "Hundred Years of loneliness"

[Marquez] I accidentally started writing, maybe just to show a friend that my generation can be a writer. From then on, I fell in love with writing and couldn't stop it. Later, I thought that, apart from writing, there were no transactions in the world that I liked more.

[Mendos] You have said that writing is a great pleasure. You have also said that writing is a bitter thing. What should I do?

[Marquez] Both are true. When I started writing, I was just exploring the mysteries of writing, and I was so happy that I hardly thought of my responsibilities. I remember that at that time, at three o'clock every morning, I finished my job as a newspaper and wrote four pages, five pages, or even ten pages of books. Sometimes I write a short story in one breath.

[Mendos] What about now?

[Marquez] Now I'm lucky to write a big paragraph in one day. Over time, writing has become a hard task.

[Mendos] Why? Some people will say that you have mastered the skills to control text, and it should be easy to write. [Marquez] The problem is that the sense of responsibility is getting stronger and stronger. Now I think that every time I write a letter, there will be a greater response, which will affect more people. [Mendos] This may be the consequence of your fame. Does reputation affect your mood? [Marquez] does make me feel uneasy. On a continent where we never imagined that a group of successful writers will emerge, this is especially true for a person without literary talent, because his books are sold like sausages. I hate being the target of everyone, TV, conferences, reports, seminars, etc ......

[Mendos] What about interviews? [Marquez] is also annoying. I don't want to win fame from anyone. This is the same as a mountain who likes his life to climb the Peak. But what should I do when I climb up? To continue, or to strive for a wise and decent manner. [Mendos] When you were young, you were engaged in other professions, So you often write at night and smoke a lot. [Marquez] 40 yuan a day. [Mendos] What about now? [Marquez] I am not smoking now. I only work during the day. [Mendos] Is it morning? [Marquez] from nine o'clock A.M. to three o'clock P.M. The room is quiet and silent, with plenty of heating. If it was so loud and cold, my thoughts would be messy. [Mendos] Are you anxious to face blank paper, just like other writers? [Marquez] Yes. In addition to what is said in medicine, what worries me the most is this. However, after listening to Hemingway's advice, this kind of anxiety swept away; he said, The rest can only be done when you know what to do the next day. [Mendos] What are the conditions for you to write a book? [Marquez] a witness. I think other writers can write a book with an idea. I always have to have an image first. I think it's my best short story, it was written by me when I saw a woman wearing a funeral suit and a black umbrella with her hands leading a little girl wearing a funeral suit in the scorching sun. The old man took his grandson to the funeral. The reason for the book "no Colonel has written to him" is based on the image of a person waiting for a ferry at the barbarrigia city pier. The man was speechless and anxious. A few years later, I waited for a letter in Paris. Maybe it was a draft, and it was so anxious, just like the one I remembered. [Mendos] So what kind of witness image is "Hundred Years of loneliness" based on? [Marquez] An old man took a little boy to see ice cubes. At that time, Cirque de used ice cubes as rare baboons for exhibition. [Mendos] is your grandfather, Colonel Marquez? [Marquez] Yes [mendos] That is to say, you are retrieving materials from reality. [Marquez] is inspired not by taking materials directly from reality. I remember, when we were living in alacataka, I was still young. Once my grandfather took me to the circus and saw a single-peak camel. One day, I told my grandfather that I have never met ice cubes, so he took me to the banana company warehouse to open a box of frozen mackerel, press my hand in ice. "Hundred Years of loneliness" is based on this image. [Mendos] You have summarized these two things into the beginning of this novel. Specifically, how did you write it? [Marquez] "after many years, in the face of the final sentence team, Colonel orelano bounham will remember that his father took him to the distant afternoon of ice ." [Mendos] In general, you pay great attention to the first sentence of a book. As you said to me, the first sentence is often harder to write than the rest of the book, which takes time. Why? [Marquez] Because the first sentence is likely to be an experimental place for writing books, it determines the style, structure, and even length of the book. [Mendos] It takes a lot of time to write a novel? [Marquez] writing is not a long time. It is very fast. In less than two years, I wrote "Hundred Years of loneliness. However, before I sat down at the typewriter, I spent 15 or six years thinking about this novel. [Mendos] "The decline of parents", you have spent so much time brewing maturity. So it took you a few years to write "a murder case that was publicized in advance? [Marquez] Thirty years. [Mendos] Why does it take so long? [Marquez] What was described in the novel happened in 1951. At that time, I felt that it could not be used as a long-lived clip, but only as a news report. But at that time, in Columbia, the works of news and reports were not very popular, and I was a local newspaper reporter. The newspaper may not be very interested in such things. A few years later, I began to think about it from a literary perspective. However, as long as I think that my mother has seen so many good friends, and even a few relatives have been involved in a book written by my son, I am not happy, And I hesitate again. But to be honest, this subject attracted me only after I thought about it for many years and found the key to the problem. The key to the problem is that the two men did not have the idea of killing people. They tried every means to prevent them from doing so. This is a last resort, and this is the only novelty of this tragedy. Of course, such tragedies are quite common in Latin America. Later, due to structural reasons, I had not made any effort. In fact, the story described in the novel is settled in 25 years after the occurrence of the case. At that time, the husband took the abandoned wife back to the town. However, I believe that the end of the novel must be detailed descriptions of the Act. The solution is to let the storyteller appear on his own (for the first time in my life), so that he can write freely and freely in the Time Structure of the novel. That is to say, thirty years later, I realized that the truth is always the best mode of literature, which is often ignored by our novelist. [Mendos] Hemingway said that a subject cannot be written in a rush or put on hold for too long. Don't you worry about writing a story in your head for so many years?

[Marquez] to be honest, if an idea cannot be discarded for many years, I will never be interested. If such an idea is indeed able to withstand the test, it would be like I have been writing "a hundred years of loneliness" for fifteen years, and I have been writing "the decline of parents" for sixteen years, I thought about the same thing for thirty years when I wrote "a murder case that was publicized in advance". Then, it will become mature and I will write it out. [Mendos] How much have you changed? [Marquez] In this regard, my work has changed a lot. When I was young, I often wrote it in one breath, then I made several copies and made changes. Now I want to write and change my work line by line. In this way, my article is clean and I can send it to the publishing house if I have not altered it for one day. [Mendos] Do you tear up a lot of paper? [Marquez] countless. I will first load a piece of paper into a typewriter ...... [Mendos] Are you always typing? [Marquez] Yes, I use an electric typewriter. If something goes wrong, I'm not very satisfied with the words I typed, or just because I typed the wrong words. Whether it's my bad habits, bad habits, or overly careful, I will remove the paper, change to a new one. I sometimes use five hundred pieces of paper to write a twelve-page short story. That is to say, I have a strange temper: I think wrong typing is equal to wrong creation. I cannot change this problem. [Mendos] many writers are not used to electric typewriters. Aren't you doing this? [Marquez] I don't have one. I had a close connection with an electric typewriter. I can't write without this kind of typewriter. In my opinion, in general, the various conditions are comfortable and can be better written. There is a romantic myth that if a writer wants to create, he must be hungry and suffering. I don't believe it at all. Eat well. Use an electric typewriter to write better. [Mendos] in an interview, you seldom talked about the work you are writing. Why? [Marquez] Because the work I am writing is part of my private life. Honestly, I feel a little pity for the writers who talked about their future works in an interview. This proves that their affairs are not going smoothly. They want to solve the problems that cannot be solved in the novel creation in newspapers and periodicals, In order to comfort themselves. [Mendos] But you often talk to your close friend about the work you are writing. [Marquez] This is true. I want them to work hard. As long as I write something, I often talk to my friends. Using this method, I can find out where the writing is successful and where there are still defects. This is a trick to recognize the way forward in the dark. [Mendos] You can tell others what you are writing, but almost never let others see it. [Marquez] Never let others see it. This has almost become a rule that I must follow. In fact, I believe that writers will always be alone in the journey of literature creation. This is exactly the same as the maritime victims struggling in the waves. Yes, this is the most lonely profession in the world. No one can help a person write what he is writing. [Mendos] What is the ideal writing environment? [Marquez] I have already said this several times: in the morning on a desert island, in the evening on a big city. In the morning, I need to be quiet. In the evening, I have to have a drink and chat with friends. I always feel that I must keep in touch with people in the streets and alleys to keep abreast of the current situation. What I am talking about here is the same as that of William bucket. I heard that the most perfect home for writers is fireworks Liuxiang, Which is silent in the morning and smiles at night. [Mendos] Let's Talk About writing skills again. In your long writing career, who has the greatest impact on you, can you tell me? [Marquez] First, my grandmother. She quietly told me many thrilling stories, as if he had just seen them. I found that she spoke calmly and vividly, making the story sound authentic and credible. I used my grandmother's method to create "one hundred years of loneliness. [Mendos] Does she make you discover that you will become a writer? [Marquez] Kafka is not her. I think he uses my grandmother's method to tell the story in German. When I was 17 years old, I read the metamorphosis, and I thought I could be a writer. I saw the hero grigoer samsa wake up one morning and become a huge beetle, so I thought, "You can write this. If I can write this way, I am also interested ." [Mendos] Why does this attract your attention? This is not to say that writing can be fabricated out of thin air? [Marquez] It was because I suddenly realized that in the field of literature, apart from the rigid and academic dogma in the middle school textbooks that I had learned well at the time, there was another world. This means that the heavy burden is removed at once. However, with the passage of the year, I found that a person cannot create anything or imagine it out of thin air, because it is very dangerous and will lie in the future, the lies in literature are more endless than those in the present life. No matter how absurd and unreasonable a transaction is, there is a definite rule. As long as the logic is not chaotic, and it is not completely ridiculous, we can discard the shame of racism. [Mendos] is not illusory. [Marquez] Yes, you have to get stuck in the illusion. [Mendos] You hate vanity. Why? [Marquez] I think vanity is just a tool for whitewashing reality. However, in the final analysis, the source of creation is always a reality. The illusion, or just speculation, is like the things of Walter Disney, not based on reality. It is the most annoying. I remember one time, I wrote a fairy tale with great enthusiasm and named it "the ocean of time in vain". I sent you a clear sample. You honestly told me that you didn't like this book as before. In your opinion, the illusion is at least true to you. What you say is what I suddenly realized, because the children do not like vanity and they like what they think. The difference between illusion and imagination is the same as the manipulation in the hands of a verbal actor and a real person. [Mendos] In terms of literary creation and writing skills, apart from Kafka, which writers have influenced you? [Marquez] Hemingway. [Mendos] You don't think of him as a great novelist. [Marquez] He is not a great long novelist, but an outstanding short story novelist. He has a famous saying: short stories seem like an iceberg and should be based on what is invisible to the naked eye. That is to say, it should be based on the materials that have been researched, thought, collected but not directly selected. Yes, Hemingway has benefited a lot. He even told you how to describe a cat turning around a street corner. [Mendos] Green also taught you a lot. We once talked about this. [Marquez] Yes, Graham Green indeed taught me how to explore the mysteries of the tropical ocean. It is difficult for a person to make an artistic generalization of the most essential things in an environment that he is very familiar with, because he knows so many things that he cannot start, finally, I couldn't say a word. I have read with great interest the works of observer columns, pikafada, and the West Indian chronicle, I have also read the works of salgoro, Conrad, and tropical American writers in the early centuries wearing modern colored glasses, and many others. I found that there is a big gap between their observation and the present. Some people just list the phenomena. The more phenomena are listed, the shorter the eyes are. As far as we know, some people just cut sentences and chew words. Graham Green solves this literary problem very correctly: he selects materials that are irrelevant but objectively closely related to each other. In this way, the tropical mysteries can be refined into the fragrance of rotten guava. [Mendos] Who else did you learn from? Do you remember? [Marquez] about 25 years ago, I had listened to the teachings of Juan bosh in Nicaragua. He said that the writer's profession, his skills, his ideas, and even his delicate and concealed descriptive techniques should be integrated in the young age. We writers, like parrots, cannot talk after years of age. [Mendos] I am engaged in journalism. After all, does it always help your literary creations? [Marquez] Yes, but not as people have said, it enables me to effectively master the language tool. Journalism teaches me how to write stories with flesh and blood. Let the pretty girl, Lei Mei, fly up the sky with a bed sheet (white sheets), or give Father nikol Reina a cup of chocolate (chocolate, not other drinks ), it can make him ten centimeters away from the ground. These are the descriptive or reporting methods of journalists and they are very useful. [Mendos] You have always liked movies. Can writers learn useful things from movies? [Marquez] I don't know how to answer this question. For me, movies have both strengths and weaknesses. Yes, it makes me see all kinds of images, but now I realize that, in all my works before "Hundred Years of loneliness, I am too keen on describing people and things I see with my own eyes, and even taking into account the viewpoint and angle of view. [Mendos] You must have come up with the novel "no one wrote to him, Colonel. [Marquez] Yes. the style of this novel is very similar to that of a movie script. The activities of the characters seem to be manipulated by the camera. When I reread this novel, I seem to have seen the camera working. Today, I realize that literary means and film means are different. [Mendos] Why do you not pay much attention to conversations in your work? [Marquez] The Spanish conversation always seems fake. I have always thought that verbal dialogs in Spanish are very different from written dialogs. In real life, Spanish dialogs are beautiful and vivid, but writing them into novels is not necessarily the case. Therefore, I seldom write spoken English. [Mendos] before you start to create a novel, do you know what kinds of activities each character will launch in the future? [Marquez] Just has a rough idea. In the process of writing a novel, it is difficult to reverse. My original vision for Colonel orreyano bouenghei was that he was an old man in China's civil war, and his life was overcast when he urinated under a big tree. [Mendos] Mercedes told me that when you wrote about his death, you felt very uncomfortable. [Marquez] Yes, I know that I will get his results sooner or later, but I am not afraid to start. The colonel was old and spent the whole day doing his little goldfish. One afternoon, I finally made up my mind: "Now he's dead !" I had to let him die. After I wrote that chapter, I walked to the third floor, where Mercedes were. As soon as she looked at her face, she knew what had happened. "The colonel is dead ." She said. I fell into bed and cried for two hours. [Mendos] What is inspiration? Does it exist? [Marquez] the term inspiration has become notorious for romantic writers. In my opinion, inspiration is neither a kind of talent nor a kind of talent, but a kind of reconciliation made by writers with perseverance and superb skills for the theme they strive to express. When a person wants to write something, there is a mutual constraint between the person and the topic he wants to express, because the writer wants to explore the topic, the theme tries to set various obstacles. Sometimes, all obstacles will be swept away, all contradictions will be solved, and many things that were not dreamed of in the past will happen. At this time, you will feel that writing is the best thing in life. This is my inspiration. [Mendos] Do you sometimes lose this kind of talent when writing a book? [Marquez] Yes. At that time, I had to try again from the beginning to the end. I used a cone to repair the locks and sockets in my house and painted the door with green paint. I think physical labor often helps me get rid of fear of reality. [Mendos] Where Will an error occur? [Marquez] This often occurs in the structure. [Mendos] is the problem sometimes very serious? [Marquez] is very serious. I often have to rewrite it. In 1962, I wrote "The decline of parents" in Mexico, and wrote nearly three hundred pages of paper, so I stopped writing, in the paper, only the name of the hero is reserved. In 1968, I started writing again in Barcelona. After six months of hard work, I stopped writing again because some characteristics of the character of the hero, an elderly and indecisive person, were not clearly written. About two years later, I bought a book about hunting in Africa, because I am very interested in the preface written by Hemingway. This Preface is of little value to me, but when I read the chapter describing elephants, I found a way to write my novels. It turns out that I can plot the character of the independent person in my novel based on some characteristics of the elephant. [Mendos] apart from the structure of the work and the psychology of the central figures, have you ever encountered any other problems? [Marquez] Once upon a time, I had no idea how well I could write about the sultry climate of a city in my work. This is tricky because it is a city in the Caribbean and the weather should be terrible. [Mendos] How did you solve it later? [Marquez] I came up with an idea: I went to the Caribbean with my family. I spent almost a whole year on it and did nothing. When I went back to Barcelona where I wrote "The decline of parents", I planted several plants to make them elegant and fragrant, so I finally let readers experience the hot weather in this city. This book was successfully written without much extra twists and turns. [Mendos] What happens when you finish writing a book? [Marquez] I'm no longer interested in it. As Hemingway said, it is a dead lion. [Mendos] As you said, excellent novels are the artistic reproduction of reality. Can you explain this point? [Marquez] Yes. In my opinion, a novel is a reality written with a password, and a speculation about the world. The reality in the novel is different from the reality in life, although the former is based on the latter. This is similar to a dream. [Mendos] in your work, especially in "a hundred years of loneliness" and "the decline of parents", the reality you depict already has a name, namely, Magic Realism. I think your European readers often relish the magic things you are talking about, but they turn a blind eye to the reality of these things ...... [Marquez] It must have been that their racism has prevented them from seeing that the reality is not how much a pound of tomatoes or eggs are. The daily life in Latin America tells us that reality is full of strange things. For this reason, I would always like to give the example of the American explorer F. W. upp de Graf. At the beginning of the last century, he made an incredible trip to the Amazon River basin. This trip made him quite satisfied. He has seen a river in boiling water, and a place where people speak and it rains heavily. On the southern end of Argentina, in the Navy bristle city of Riva Davia, the geek blew all the Cirque into the sky. The next day, fishermen salvaged many dead lions and dead giraffes from the Internet. In this short story "the funeral of the grand aunt", I described the Pope's unimaginable and impossible trip to a village in Columbia. I remember, I wrote the President who welcomed the Pope as a bald, fat child, not the tall and thin president who was in office at that time. The novel has been around for eleven years. The Pope really visited Columbia and greeted his president as he described in my novel: bald and fat. After I wrote "Hundred Years of loneliness", a young man in balancilia said that he really had a pigtail. As long as you open a newspaper, you will know that things happen around us every day. I know some common people who read "one hundred years of loneliness" with great enthusiasm and attention, but I am not surprised when I read it, I did not tell anything that is very different from their real life. [Mendos] So what you say in your work has a realistic foundation? [Marquez] In my novels, I didn't see any line of words on the basis of reality. [Mendos] Are you sure you want? There are many strange things in "Hundred Years of loneliness. The pretty girl, Lei Mei, is flying into the sky, and the yellow butterfly is entangled in Lucio babionia ...... [Marquez] This is also based on reality. [Mendos] Could you give an example ...... [Marquez] For example, Lucio babionia. I lived in alakataka when I was about 4 or 5 years old. One day, an electrician came to the house to change the electric meter. This incident is as though it had occurred yesterday. He tied himself to the pole with a belt to avoid falling down. This belt really gave me a look. He has been there several times later. One time when he came, I saw my grandmother Catch a butterfly with a rag and said, "when this person comes to our house, this yellow butterfly will come along ." The electrician is the prototype of Lucio babonia. [Mendos] What about the pretty girl, reméd? How did you think of sending her to the sky? [Marquez] originally, I was planning to let her in the corridor at home disappear when she was embroidered with repeica and amalanta. However, this is a film-like arrangement, and it is difficult for me to accept it. Reemeider said that he had to stay there. So I came up with one thing: Let her physically and mentally go up to the sky. Is there any evidence of the facts? One morning, an old lady found her granddaughter had escaped. to conceal the truth, she told her granddaughter to fly to the sky.

[Mendos] You once said in a place that it is not easy to fly the pretty girl, Lei Mei, to the sky. [Marquez] Yes. Why can't she survive. At that time, I was anxious to find a way to send her to the sky. One day, I thought hard and walked into our yard. When the wind is high. A tall and beautiful black woman who comes to our house to wash clothes can't dry the sheets on the rope. The sheets let the wind blow away. At that time, I was inspired. "Yes ." I think. The pretty girl, Lei Mei, can fly to the sky with the sheets. In this case, bed sheets are a factor actually provided. When I got back to the typewriter, the pretty girl, Lei Mei, flew, and couldn't even stop her. Marquez portrait

Cover of the memoir of malex's childhood portrait "born for fiction"

Marquez cartoon

Marquez's book

A restaurant in Columbia to pay tribute to Marquez

One text message from a boy to a girl on the copy of "Hundred Years of loneliness"

Text message 2 written by a boy to a girl on the copy of "Hundred Years of loneliness"

Text Message 3 from a boy to a girl on the copy of "Hundred Years of loneliness"