I'm Not Here to Give a Speech

PREFACE TO THE ENGLISH EDITION

Gabriel García Márquez (1927–2014) was one of the most influential figures in twentieth-century literature. Winner of a Nobel Prize in 1982, he was a formidable storyteller, essayist, critic, screenwriter, and journalist, and one of the great thinkers of our time. As a novelist, García Márquez shaped the magical realism movement and paved the way for countless contemporaries and successors, creating narrative worlds rich with meaning and symbolism. His body of work includes such novels as One Hundred Years of Solitude, Love in the Time of Cholera, Memories of My Melancholy Whores, and Of Love and Other Demons, as well as non-fiction works such as News of a Kidnapping and the autobiographical Living to Tell the Tale.

During his life, Márquez spoke publicly and passionately on the issues that interested him. I’m Not Here to Give a Speech is a collection of these speeches spanning the length of his career. It offers unique insight into the extraordinary mind that created some of the world’s most beloved novels and a final chance to hear the distinctive voice of Gabriel García Márquez. Most of these speeches are translated and published here for the first time in English. Notes on the background to each one are given on this page.

THE ACADEMY OF DUTY

Zipaquirá, Colombia, November 17, 1944

Generally, at all social events like this one, a person is designated to give a speech. That person always looks for the most appropriate subject and then develops it for those in attendance. I’m not here to give a speech. For today I’ve chosen the noble subject of friendship. But what could I tell you about friendship? I might have filled a few pages with anecdotes and aphorisms that in the long run would not have led me to the desired goal. Each of you should analyse your own emotions, consider one by one the reasons why you feel an incomparable preference for the person in whom you have confided all your most private thoughts, and then you will know the reason behind this ceremony.

The chain of ordinary events that has joined us with unbreakable bonds to this group of boys who today will begin to make their way in life, that is friendship. And that is what I would have talked to you about today. But, I repeat, I’m not here to give a speech, and I want only to appoint you the honest judges in this proceeding and invite you to share with the student body of this institution a sad moment of farewell.

Here they are, ready to leave: Henry Sánchez, the appealing d’Artagnan of sports, with his three musketeers, Jorge Fajardo, Augusto Londoño, and Hernando Rodríguez. Here are Rafael Cuenca and Nicolás Reyes, one like the shadow of the other. Here are Ricardo González, the great knight of test tubes, and Alfredo García Romero, declared a dangerous individual in the field of every dispute: together, their lives exemplify true friendship. Here are Julio Villafañe and Rodrigo Restrepo, members of our parliament and our journalism. Here are Miguel Ángel Lozano and Guillermo Rubio, apostles of precision. And here, Humberto Jaimes and Manuel Arenas and Samuel Huertas and Ernesto Martínez, consuls of devotion and goodwill. Here is Álvaro Nivia with his good humour and intelligence. Here are Jaime Fonseca and Héctor Cuéllar and Alfredo Aguirre, three different people and only one true ideal: victory. Here, Carlos Aguirre and Carlos Alvarado, united by the same name and the same desire to be the pride of their nation. And here are Álvaro Baquero and Ramiro Cárdenas and Jaime Montoya, inseparable companions of books. And, finally, here are Julio César Morales and Guillermo Sánchez, like two living pillars who bear on their shoulders the responsibility for my words when I say that this group of boys is destined to endure in the best daguerreotypes in Colombia. All of them are going in search of the light, impelled by the same ideal.

Now that you have heard the qualities of each, I’m going to offer the verdict that you as honest judges must consider: in the name of the Liceo Nacional and of society, I declare this group of young men, in the words of Cicero, regular members of the academy of duty and citizens of intelligence.

Honourable public, the proceeding has concluded.

HOW I BEGAN TO WRITE

Caracas, Venezuela, May 3, 1970

First of all, forgive me for speaking to you seated, but the truth is that if I stand, I run the risk of collapsing with fear. Really. I always thought I was fated to spend the most terrible five minutes of my life on a plane, before twenty or thirty people, and not like this, before two hundred friends. Fortunately, what is happening to me right now allows me to begin to speak about my literature, since I was thinking that I began to be a writer in the same way I climbed up on this platform: I was coerced. I confess I did all I could not to attend this assembly: I tried to get sick, I attempted to catch pneumonia, I went to the barber, hoping he’d slit my throat, and, finally, it occurred to me to come here without a jacket and tie so they wouldn’t let me into a meeting as serious as this one, but I forgot I was in Venezuela, where you can go anywhere in shirtsleeves. The result: here I am, and I don’t know where to start. But I can tell you, for example, how I began to write.

It had never occurred to me that I could be a writer, but in my student days Eduardo Zalamea Borda, editor of the literary supplement of El Espectador, in Bogotá, published a note in which he said that the younger generation of writers had nothing to offer, that a new short-story writer, a new novelist, could not be seen anywhere. And he concluded by declaring that he was often reproached because his paper published only the very well-known names of old writers and nothing by the young, whereas the truth, he said, was that no young people were writing.

Then a feeling of solidarity with my generational companions arose in me, and I resolved to write a story simply to shut the mouth of Eduardo Zalamea Borda, who was my great friend or, at least, became my great friend later. I sat down, wrote the story, and sent it to El Espectador. I had my second shock the following Sunday when I opened the paper and there was my full-page story with a note in which Eduardo Zalamea Borda acknowledged that he had been wrong, because obviously with ‘that story the genius of Colombian literature had emerged’, or something along those lines.

This time I really did get sick, and I said to myself: ‘What a mess I’ve got myself into! What do I do now so Eduardo Zalamea Borda won’t look bad?’ Keep on writing was the answer. I always had to face the problem of subjects: I was obliged to find the story before I could write it.

And this allows me to tell you something that I can verify now, after having published five books: the job of writer is perhaps the only one that becomes more difficult the more you do it. The ease with which I sat down one afternoon to write that story can’t be compared to the work it costs me now to write a page. As for my method of working, it’s fairly consistent with what I’m telling you now. I never know how much I’ll be able to write or what I’m going to write about. I hope I’ll think of something, and when I do come up with an idea that I consider good enough to write down, I begin to go over it in my mind and let it keep maturing. When it’s finished (and sometimes many years go by, as in the case of One Hundred Years of Solitude, which I thought over for nineteen years) — I repeat, when it’s finished — then I sit down to write it, and that’s when the most difficult part begins, and the part that bores me most. Because the most delicious part of a story is thinking about it, rounding it out, turning it over and over, so that when the time comes to sit down and write it, it doesn’t interest