Gabriel Garcia Marquez

[theclaud]

[QUOTE 1154769"]
Gray's been my fave fictional writer ever since Lanark. I buy his new stuff and read it straightaway. He's not a nice hols read, he's a must read.


Poor Things is probably my favorite of his.


[/quote]

Fab, innit? And his short stories are the best thing since Raymond Carver. Have you read The Book of Prefaces?

 

[dellzeqq]

I think one of the things that I like about GGM (sorry, but that's too easy a trap not to fall in to) is that he's not self-consciously clever, and he always seems to be taking an interest in the story.

I know that the latter seems an odd thing to write, but with some writers seem to want to take you on, and show you how clever they are (which they undoubtedly are), and you get the odd inkling that they're not really interested in the book.

 

[User169]

I think that's very valid. And we're victims of translation as well. I don't know if you read them in the original. I certainly didn't as my Spanish is limited to ordering a beer, but reading, say, Mann or Kafka in German compared with the Penguin classic English translation was very different. I have Latin-American friends who don't find him a magical realist (or whatever other tag we want to put on him), they find him very "Spanish", which is funny.

I thought I'd read that the primary translator of Mann's works into English was notoriously bad, although perhaps there are better versions now.

The only thing I tend to read in the original is Dick Bruna - not sure it makes a whole lot of difference!