...
But then realized he had too many years on me for that, so I modified it eventually to hoping he would not, at least, die before he finished the promised grand trilogy autobiography.
My hopes are forever being dashed.
In my vast library dump, I could not part with his books, nor Jon's, nor Dashiell Hammett's. I have only those and a couple hundred translations of ancient masters, some reference books and just a very few miscellaneous ones by people I admire too much not to have near. This, I realize, is way more books than most people have, but it is a paltry few compared to days of yore, and certainly not even 1% of the books I've read in my life, but, of all of them, Gabriel García Márquez was the one who stole my heart.
I can't describe the passion I have for certain writers and certain books, but it was different with him. Each new book, novel, stories, non-fiction, didn't matter, I would swear a solemn oath to read it slooooowly, to linger on every phrase. I failed. Every time. Every single time. I have been incapable of even stopping for a day. And barely capable of stopping to pee or to eat. My whole mind and heart and spirit lock on and I cannot bear to put a book from him down. It's almost as though a chunk of me was grafted onto him... or him me... yes... he grafts himself on me just by writing it down.
No one even had to tell me he was friends with Fidel. Of course he was!
Nearer than a lover in many ways, he was bad for me... made me afraid to keep writing. I was writing "magical realism" every time I'd start a novel without even knowing what it was, that it was a thing, and so then, finding out this powerfully, I burned them. I didn't have a shred of resentment. More like pangs. And would always dissolve into self-recrimination for not being able to stretch out his books, not even just to do a chapter a day, let alone a page, or a paragraph, whatever way I might devise to keep reading him for the rest of time....
