Reviewed by jamiereadthis on
He made a note of something in the prologue, though, that caught my interest: on the decades he worked on these stories, on how they unexpectedly drove him with just as much frustration as work on a novel:
“The effort involved in writing a short story is as intense as beginning a novel, where everything must be defined in the first paragraph: structure, tone, style, rhythm, length, and sometimes even the personality of a character. All the rest is the pleasure of writing, the most intimate, solitary pleasure one can imagine (…) But a story has no beginning, no end: Either it works or it doesn’t.”
Which is exactly what I like to hear, both in line and in contrast with Cormac McCarthy when he said, “I’m not interested in writing short stories. Anything that doesn’t take years of your life and drive you to suicide hardly seems worth doing.”
As when I first read that, I agree in part: up to the fact that— as Márquez is saying here— short stories have just as much right, and power, to willfully wrestle away decades of your life.
Reading updates
- Started reading
- 3 April, 2010: Finished reading
- 3 April, 2010: Reviewed