This immense novel is claimed to be an effort to express everything that had influenced García Márquez throughout his childhood. I am writing about this author today because his greatest work, One Hundred Years of Solitude, turns 50 years old this year, and I would like to understand why it has had such flabbergasting success. This is a measure of how many competing realities existed in García Márquez’s voracious mind. He had effectively made up an entire shadow-novel while in the middle of writing one of the most imaginative and jam-packed books in the history of modern literature. There was just one problem: none of what García Márquez told Mutis actually occurs in the book. As he wrote One Hundred Years of Solitude, he would regularly meet with his fellow great Colombian author Álvaro Mutis, updating Mutis on his progress by narrating the latest events from his novel.
There is an oft-told anecdote that cuts to the heart of this writer’s greatness. And most of all, towering over the rest, is Colombia’s most beloved author, Gabriel García Márquez. Then there is the world-famous painter Fernando Botero, who has adapted his unique style to depict countless national icons, as well as the torture practiced by US soldiers at Iraq’s Abu Ghraib prison. There are also the ancient indigenous civilizations, whose exquisite artifacts you will see in museums everywhere. There is of course the coffee, some of the best in the world and perhaps primarily known to Americans by the mustachioed Juan Valdez. During my stay, I became familiar with many of the emblems around which this wonderful nation’s image revolves. Earlier this year I made my first visit to Colombia.
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