A resting place for literary lion’s library
Texas’ Ransom Center gets Gabriel García Márquez’s collection of signed books.
Books that Fidel Castro and Bill Clinton gave to Gabriel García Márquez will sit side by side on shelves in Texas.
The Harry Ransom Center at the University of Texas at Austin, home to a preeminent collection of 20th century author archives, has acquired a collection of books, many of them inscribed by their authors, from the library of the Colombian novelist, who died in 2014.
They include books he received from at least five fellow winners of the Nobel Prize in literature — Toni Morrison, Orhan Pamuk, Pablo Neruda, Mario Vargas Llosa and Nadine Gordimer — as well as political leaders Castro and Clinton. Clinton gave García Márquez the Spanish version of his memoir, “Mi Vida.” Castro, who died Nov. 25, was a longtime friend and wrote a long note in the front his 2010 book “La Victoria Estratégica: Por Todos los Caminos de la Sierra,” with the salutation, “fraternalmente” — fraternally.
One of the most unusual items in the collection may have wound up in García Márquez’s hands by mistake. Castro’s 1973 book “La historia me absolverá” included a few of the Cuban leader’s monogrammed handkerchiefs.
The books will join the novelist’s literary archive, which the Ransom acquired two years ago.
García Márquez was born in Aracataca, Colombia, in 1927, and gained worldwide fame with his novel “One Hundred Years of Solitude,” which ushered in the era of magic realism. After finding success with such novels as “Autumn of the Patriarch” and “Chronicle of a Death Foretold,” he was awarded the Nobel Prize in literature in 1982.
As with many Latin American novelists writing in the 20th century, García Márquez both engaged political movements and was affected by them. He worked internationally as a journalist before finding success as a novelist, and he settled in Mexico. It was there that he died, in 2014.
But Colombia was at the heart of many of his works. Like William Faulkner, García Márquez built a world around a place he invented, Macondo, which was constructed from imagination and memory.
In May, his ashes were interred in Cartagena, Colombia, where he attended college and began his career as a journalist.
Many of the more than 180 books in his library reflect his reputation as a worldwide literary celebrity.
Clinton had a special relationship with the writer. Shortly after he began his presidency in 1993, Clinton ended a ban against the author, instituted because of the socialist novelist’s criticism of American foreign policy. Clinton signed his book: “To my friend Gabriel García Márquez, with thanks for your life, your imagination and your kindness to all.”
The longtime fan of “One Hundred Years of Solitude” also referred to García Márquez as “the most important writer of fiction in any language since William Faulkner died.”
Among the books is a copy of Vargas Llosa’s “La Casa Verde,” inscribed in 1965, when the two were close friends — and García Márquez apparently remembered that time fondly enough to keep the book, even after their relationship devolved into one of the world’s most famous literary feuds. In February 1976, the two writers were leaving a movie theater and Vargas Llosa punched García Márquez in the eye, and according to legend, they never spoke again.
Other friendships were less volatile. The collection also includes a signed copy of Morrison’s “Paradise,” which the author dedicated to García Márquez using his nickname: “For Gabo, with always increasing love and respect. Thank you for the outrageously wonderful visit.”
Other writers included in the collection are Álvaro Mutis, Milan Kundera and Isabel Allende. She signed a copy of her novel “The House of the Spirits” with an inscription in Spanish that translates to: “For Gabriel García Márquez, the true teacher of all who want to write in the Spanish language, with a tight hug and the desire to meet you personally someday.”
The library also includes some of García Márquez’s own books, annotated by the novelist.
The collection, along with García Márquez’s literary archive, will be available for research at the Ransom Center, whose holdings include manuscripts and literary archives of James Joyce, Norman Mailer, Anne Sexton, David Foster Wallace and Don DeLillo.