Goodbye

Gabriel García Márquez died today. It is a gigantic loss, an immeasurable loss. We will never know what more he could have written, what other novels, short stories, what other magic.

I never met him, so I cannot write about him. I can only write about myself, about what I thought and felt about his writing. And he was a writer. One of the best Colombia has produced, one of the best South America has produced, one of the best writers in Spanish I have ever read. And let me tell you, it is not easy to write in Spanish. It takes a feeling for the grammar, it takes pace, it takes phrase construction, it takes talent. And he was talented. He could write a short story because he understood it. He knew exactly how to write it.

I only ever read two of his novels "El amor en los tiempos del cólera" ("Love in times of cholera") and "Cien años de soledad" (A hundred years of solitude"). The first was the greatest love story I have ever read. The second was an epic, the story of a family, of a village, of history, of the world. Truthfully, they are not novels, but epics. Gigantic, all-encompassing, indispensable.

I have read many of his short stories. My favourite is probably "La increíble y triste historia de la cándida Eréndira y su abuela desalmada" ("The incredible and sad story of candid Eréndira and her soulless grandmother"), a sordid story, a story with all of the greater points that make a story good. Because let me tell you, so many stories nowadays, specially children's stories are watered down, sweetened, unsordid. The wonder of stories is their hardness, the fear they instill. A short story has to chill you to the bone, and then bring you back to warmth, but never let you forget that the mysterious, the awful, the monstrous exists. This is especially true in children's stories. Their magic is in the evil enemies and the punishments, not in the happy endings (many of which were not present in the original versions).

Anyway. That doesn't really matter today. Today Gabo died, and anyone whoever read him feels that the world is a little more boring, a little sadder for the loss. Goodbye.