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"(I started writing) by drawing cartoons.
Before I could read or write I used to draw comics at school and at home.
The funny thing is that I now realize that when I was in high school I
had the reputation of being a writer, though I never in fact wrote anything.
If there was a pamphlet to be written or a letter of petition, I was the
one to do it because I was supposedly the writer. When I entered
college I happened to have a very good literary backround in general, considerably
above the average of my friends. At the university in Bogota, I started
making new friends and aquaintances, who introduced me to contemporary
writers. One night a friend lent me a book of short stories by Franz
Kafka. I went back to the pension where I was staying and began to
read The Metamorphosis. The first line almost knocked me off
the bed . . . . When I read the line I thought to myself that I didn't
know anyone was allowed to write things like that. If I had known,
I would have started writing a long time ago. So I immediately started
writing short stories."
The above quotation is taken from an interview with Marquez
and Peter Stone in winter of 1981 from Writers at Work; Sixth Edition.
ed. George Plimpton. The Viking Press; New York, NY, 1984.
Biographical Sketch of Gabriel Garcia Marquez
Gabriel Garcia Marquez was born on March 6, 1928 in Aracataca,
a town in Northern Colombia. He lived with his grandparents and other
family members. He attended the National University of Bogota and
the University of Cartagena to study law from 1947-1955. In 1950,
however, Marquez traded in law to begin working in journalism. He
began writing for El Espectador, a Bogota newspaper. He transferred
from journalism to nonfiction in 1955 when he serialized the story of a
Colombian sailor who survived for days out at sea in his publication Story
of a Shipwrecked Sailor. During the same year, he also published
his first fiction novel, Leaf Storm. Marquez then became more
interested in writing fiction, especially when his newspaper was shut down
in 1957. This loss also became his gain because he was then able
to settle down more and marry his sweetheart, Mercedes Barcha, in 1958.
They moved to Mexico City, originally so Marquez could edit magazines,
but here he also began his masterpiece novel, One Hundred Years of Solitude.
The novel was published in 1967, and it brought him global acclaim and
several international awards. Around 1975, Marquez helped find the
Colombian parties "Firmes" and HABEAS, both organizations to assist political
prisoners. His most recent novel is Love and Other Demons,
published in 1994. Some other works include: No One Writes
to the Colonel, 90 Days Behind the Iron Curtain, Big Mama's
Funeral, In Evil Hour, Innocent Erendira, Autumn of
the Patriarch, Operacion Carlota, Chronicle of a Death Foretold,
El Odor de la guayaba ("The Fragrance of Guava"), Viva Sandino,
Love in the Time of Cholera, The General in his Labyrinth,
and Strange Pilgrims.
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