Islamabad literati on Marquez

His writings lend a sense of familiarity to Pakistanis.

ISLAMABAD:

Millions of admirers across the world offered tributes to the Colombian Nobel Prize-winning writer Gabriel Garcia Marquez who popularized the genre of magic realism most notably through his 1967 novel “One Hundred Years of Solitude.”

There was an outpouring of praise for Marquez in Islamabad too, where writers and editors said he was perhaps the last great storyteller of epic tales. But they said they were not saddened by his demise because they believed he had lived a fulfilling life and had left an indomitable literary legacy for future generations.

Poet and author Harris Khalique said Marquez helped him see the world in a new light.

“I am one of the many around the world who from the day they picked up Marquez have not put him down since,” Khalique said. “Through his all encompassing embrace of life and love, ecstasy and melancholy, we have seen the world differently.”

As news of Marquez’s death spread on Friday, many of his admirers declared the impact of his on their lives.

“Love in the Time of Cholera” was a life-changing book for me, said Afia Aslam, the editor of the literary magazine Papercuts, who had read the book two decades ago.

“The idea of old people being capable of romantic love was both unnerving and exhilarating because it afforded such a sense of freedom, such a dramatic break from what I’d been conditioned to consider appropriate,” said Aslam, who is also a co-founder of the Desi Writers’ Lounge.

Some of the Colombian master’s writings were inspired from real-life events in Latin America, including incidents he had heard about from his grandfather. The socioeconomic similarities between South America and South Asia lend a sense of familiarity to Pakistani readers.

“The local reader thinks Macondo is somewhere here in Pakistan,” said poet and magazine editor Enwar Fitrat.

For Fitrat, the true genius of Marquez was in sentences the writer coined, which he said deserved to become maxims.

There are lessons from his works for new writers, too. Asim Butt, a short story writer, said he often tells his peers that Marquez rewrote 19 drafts for “No One Writes to the Colonel,” a 1961 novella about a retired war veteran struggling with poverty.

“If Marquez, the god of literary skill, had to rewrite his drafts over and over, amateur writers should never fuss over improving their stories,” Butt said.

“He refined and developed magical realism so monumentally that none of the generations of writers that followed him have been able to come out from under his influence,” Butt said.

Published in The Express Tribune, April 23^rd, 2014.