"Nothing awful can happen to me if there are yellow flowers around. To be absolutely safe, I need yellow flowers (preferably yellow roses) and to be surrounded by women."
Gabriel García Márquez: The Last Interview: and Other Conversations (The Last Interview Series) is a compilation of interviews and conversations of arguably the most celebrated Latin American writer and journalist of the 20th century.
The interviews find Gabo at different stages of his career. From a young aspiring novelist, to the mammoth that he had become. Charming yet elusive, sometimes outspoken and at others diplomatic, these interviews give us an intimate view of one of the greatest writers of our times.
INTERVIEWS
A Novelist Who Will Keep Writing Novels (1956)
A young García Márquez has just found some acclaim after releasing his first book Leaf Storm. The interview explores his views on writing and the state of Colombian literature, his interests in film and his future plans on writing fiction.
Power to the Imagination in Macondo (1975)
Here we find Gabo at his peak. On the brink of unleashing The Autumn of the Patriarch into the world, García Márquez talks extensively about his views on Latin American politics and revolution and how much his writing has been influenced by these themes. His views on the 1973 Chilean coup d'état are also explored here
“Women,” “Superstitions, Manias, and Taste,” and “Work” (1983)
A more personal interview, Gabo sits with fellow writer/journalist Plinio Apuleyo Mendoza and answers his questions on the role of women in his life and in Latin American culture, his superstitions and manias, and his writing. This interview finds a particularly cheerful Márquez just before he would be receiving the Nobel Prize for Literature.
A Stamp Used Only for Love Letters (1994 & 1997)
Two series of interviews by David Streitfeld explore Gabo's views on his friendship with Castro, his new perception of mortality (he had just beat cancer) and his career in journalism and his life as a major public figure in Latin America. If the other interviews find García Márquez at his most amicable and charming, these interviews are a lot more difficult as Streitfeld pokes and prods with his questions into formidable aspects of his life and questioning him about politicians and drug-lords.
With Fidel Castro
‘I’ve Stopped Writing’: The Last Interview (2006)
García Márquez's final interview, where he admits that he has taken a "sabbatical" from writing and that it is undecided whether he will ever write again. This piece finds Gabo and his family reminiscing of the past, of the places where they lived and the people they met. He also talks about his memoirs and is found to be a lot more confident.
I really enjoyed reading these interviews. There was sharp contrast in the García Márquez of each era, proving that the man's views and character have remained elusive 'til the end. Yet, we do get an intimate portrait of the man, his eccentricities, his aspirations and his hopes for the future. I particularly enjoyed Mendoza and Streitfeld's interviews because of their differing journalistic approach to the interview and Gabo's reaction to both.
Gabriel García Márquez, 1927-2014
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