Gabriel Garcia Marquez

Bio b. March 6, 1928 Aracataca, Northern Colombia Raised by maternal grandparents

Colombia

Influences Grandmother: "The tone that I eventually used in One Hundred Years of Solitude was based on the way my grandmother used to tell stories. She told things that sounded supernatural and fantastic, but she told them with complete naturalness.... What was most important was the expression she had on her face. She did not change her expression at all when telling her stories and everyone was surprised.” Faulkner--relevance of place: Yoknapatawpha = Macondo Kafka--write anything, any way.

Magical Realism ”These writers interweave, in an ever-shifting pattern, a sharply etched realism in representing ordinary events and descriptive details together with fantastic and dreamlike elements, as well as with materials derived from myth and fairy tales.” M. H. Abrams Jorge Luis Borges, Argentina Gabriel Garcia Marquez, Colombia Milan Kundera, Czech Salman Rushdie, UK/India Laura Esquivel, Mexico Como Agua Para Chocolate

Strange Pilgrims Short Stories written from Gabo in his 50s 12 short stories meant to be read as a whole

Hermeneutic Circle One cannot understand the whole without understanding the parts One cannot understand the parts without understanding the whole