Gabriel García Márquez, “Gabo” to his friends, lived for journalism. He wrote for newspapers and magazines his entire life, and he founded six publications himself. He once said, against the wisdom of the ages, “I do not want to be remembered for ‘One Hundred Years of Solitude,' nor for the Nobel Prize, but for the newspapers.”
García Márquez (1927-2014) inhaled fresh ink the way the press critic A. J. Liebling did, as if it were cigar smoke. He called journalism “the best job in the world” and “a biological necessity of humanity.” He understood that newspapers and magazines not only deliver data but that they add, through commentary of all variety, to the gaiety of a society.
A resonant new collection of García Márquez's journalism, “The Scandal of the Century,” demonstrates how seriously he took reportage and what's now sometimes called (would Liebling approve?) long-form narrative.
There are intricate, involving stories here about the death of a young woman who seemed to lead a double life; about the 1978 political siege of Nicaragua's Palacio Nacional by the Sandinistas; and about the international efforts to save a young boy who needed a hard-to-find rabies serum raced to him within 12 hours.
Read Full Article »