Gabriel Garca Mrquez's Sons Publish Novel the Author Wanted to Destroy

[Judi Lynn]

The famed novelist had instructed his family never to publish drafts of “Until August,” written as he struggled with dementia during his final years

Sonja Anderson
Daily Correspondent

March 13, 2024 2:45 p.m.



Writer Gabriel García Márquez died in 2014 at the age of 87. Ulf Andersen / Getty Images

As author Gabriel García Márquez was suffering from dementia, he told his two sons that the novel he’d been working on was not for the public’s eyes: “This book doesn’t work,” he said. “It must be destroyed.”
Now, a decade after García Márquez’s death in 2014, his sons have had that book published. The slim novel, titled Until August, is available for purchase worldwide.

As Gonzalo García Barcha, one of the sons, tells the BBC’s “Front Row” radio program, he and his brother Rodrigo read a version of the novel in 2022. It was embedded in 769 pages of drafts and notes, housed in the University of Texas at Austin’s Harry Ransom Center. The brothers came to their decision quickly.

“We realized that the book was complete,” says García Barcha. “We realized that we didn’t have to do a lot of editing. We did think about it for about three seconds—was it a betrayal to my parents, to my father’s [wishes]?”

He adds: “We decided, yes, it was a betrayal. But that’s what children are for.”



Gonzalo García Barcha, one of Gabriel García Márquez's sons, publicizes the launch of Until August, or En Agosto nos Vemos, at a press conference in Madrid. Isabel Infantes / Getty Images

Born in Colombia in 1927, García Márquez (who was sometimes called Gabo) was a Nobel Prize winner and pioneering magical realist best known for his novels One Hundred Years of Solitude (1967) and Love in the Time of Cholera (1985). “A surreal quality, a rendering of the improbable and impossible as real, pervades his work,” as William Kennedy wrote in the Atlantic in 1973.

More:
https://www.smithsonianmag.com/smart-news/gabriel-garcia-marquezs-sons-betray-the-author-by-publishing-a-draft-of-his-last-novel-180983927/

[GreenWave]

1. Gregory Rabassa translated Cien (better avoid that word!) de Soledad into English.

He was paid a pittance of $500 but as a desperate graduate student needed the $. Márquez made millions off his translation. As a much later student of Petch Peden and her Spanish literature translation seminar she asked me what I would charge to translate a novel (I did not know Rabassa's story at the time) and I said 50/50 for a novel, lump sum for just about anything else. I believe she finally got the movie version out.

above word would be años, title does not allow for accents?

[Judi Lynn]

2. Extremely interesting names you've mentioned! Easily spotted article on Gregory Rabassa, with photo of him wearing

the National Medal of Arts he was awarded in 2006:

https://www.arts.gov/honors/medals/gregory-rabassa


Another very quick Google find on Petch Peden:

https://www.tandfonline.com/doi/full/10.1080/07374836.2020.1799652

Two deeply accomplished people who worked well with literary giants. Amazing!

So glad you related your experience and acquaintence.

Regarding the lines above the body of the messages in our posts, they vaporized any accented letters! Pitch them right out! That's a new one. If you think of it in time, you can return, and edit by typing the same letter, without the accent.

Knowing Petch Peten was connected to M.U. makes the place look even more respected! It was tremendous hearing your comment.

Thank you.

[GreenWave]

3. Are you a Tiger?

How they used to flock to Mizzou because of her. Manuel Puig e.g. But I met a new author, Mempo Giardenelli, and was set to translate for him when an Argentinian professor decided to play keep away and she was on my comps committee and I could not find time for him without her chasing after him. Degree or starve? I chose degree. Too bad about Mempo, we had the same personalities at times.
Mempo was recently running in the Argentine elections.
https://www.pagina12.com.ar/561840-elecciones-argentina-2023-uno-por-uno-los-precandidatos-a-pr
at the bottom

Also what you wrote caused me to rethink what M.U. displayed in the passageway through their School of Journalism back in my days there: Portraits of Cronkite, Huntley, Brinkley, Rather, etc and I assumed they were alums but none went there as I just now checked!

[Judi Lynn]

4. The Journalism School there is and has been for ages, a highly respected one, by all means!

No doubt it would be easy to wonder what that translation job would have been, from time to time! Looks as if Mempo Giardianelli has his own place in Argentina's political structure by now. I'm uneducated about their political parties, but they all look very involved where they are now. That's a shame that woman presented a roadblock. She probably does that wherever she goes. Seems like a chronic problem.

Living in a Kansas City suburb on the Kansas side of the State Line! The Kansas City Star has hired a lot of M.U. journalists for many decades, and they've gone everywhere at one time or another. Tremendous foundation!

I'll bet the list of M.U. journalism luminaries is very impressive, even if Rather, Cronkite, Huntley and Brinkley didn't attend, however. (Those names were so substantial. No one comes close to any of them now, or for a long time before now.)