Vol. 5 No. 10 · 2 June 1983
pages 18-19 | 4067 words
At Tranquilina’s Knee
G. Cabrera Infante
- The Fragrance of Guava: Plinio Apuleyo Mendoza in conversation with Gabriel Garcia Marquez translated by Ann Wright
Verso, 126 pp, £9.95, May 1983, ISBN 0 86091 965 X
To judge by the reaction of some of his staunchest admirers, many readers of Gabriel Garcia Marquez were truly taken aback by what he wrote about the alleged behaviour of British troops in the trenches during the Little War for the Falklands. It’s surprising, however, that most of his disenchanted fans live not in England but in Spain, where the offending article appeared. Down there they are still writing letters of disapproval – though Spanish readers are not exactly what you could call a race of letter-writers. They don’t read the Times, you see. Besides, Spain is a traditional rival of Britain in most international affairs, from the World Cup to the Rock. Moreover, the Spanish were verbal supporters of the Argentine side in what’s usually called by Spaniards la guerra de las Malvinas. They, too, refuse to call the islands Falklands.
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Letters
Vol. 5 No. 13 · 21 July 1983
From David Callahan
SIR: Mr Cabrera Infante is right to inform us of Garcia Marquez’s insidious articles (LRB, Vol. 5, No 10), the more so given the large circulation and high prestige of the Spanish newspaper in which he publishes them. On the very day I read the LRB article a Spaniard credulously told me the story of the Gurkhas, a wild tribe from Asia who apply warpaint before charging off to their head-cutting exploits. However, Mr Cabrera Infante’s article is not a review of the book in question, The Fragrance of Guava, and does a disservice to those who might be interested in it. For even if it were packed with outright lies and dissimulations (which it isn’t) the nature of literary fame is such that we should still have to attend to them. A writer’s evasions and opinions, however muddle-headed, are of interest to anyone who reads his or her work. The understandable vitriol which Cabrera Infante pours on Garcia Marquez is noticeably, however, not devoted to the material presented in this book (except fleetingly) but rather to the aforementioned articles in El Pais. Someone should point out that The Fragrance of Guava is not full of ranting attacks on the British (who don’t come into it at all), nor even of lofty condemnations of capitalism. Most of it is taken up with mild recollections of his family, his attitudes towards his books, his early writing career, the effects of financial success and so forth. And while Cabrera Infante might decry it people do like to know, for example, that Garcia Marquez was the son of a telegraph operator, that he does not wear gold on his person, that he believes Chronicle of an Announced Death to be his best work although The Autumn of the Patriarch is the one by which his literary reputation will stand or fall. These things may prove to be false, but we may become interested in them precisely because of that. The reviewer could also have suggested something of the quality of the book’s production by telling us of the wooden translation of what is easy conversational prose, of the transposition of two of the captions to the photographs, of the people represented in another being described in the wrong order. And finally, I hope that it is a typesetter’s desire to save space rather than Cabrera Infante’s getting fed up and capitulating to British ignorance which leads to the frequent abbreviation of Garcia Marquez to plain Marquez. Or are we now licensed to speak of Mr Infante? Infante Cabreado?
David Callahan
London N6
From Paul Milican
SIR: Has Cabrera Infante lost his head? Down here where the Times isn’t read but the LRB is, the offending article was generally regarded as ironic. Tranquilo, hombre!
Paul Milican
Madrid
