oh, garcia marquez, how i will miss you!

listen, folks, i admitted in the previous post that i'm on drugs -- the good, legal kind.  covered by my blessèd obamacare-ACA-presidentially-approved health insurance policy, for which, you wacked-out wingnuts, i pay good money.

well, not good money.  just money.

anyway.  [the best of segues]

here follows the provenance of this post, and you SHOULD know by now my obsession with provenance:

at least a bazillion people a day tramp through marlinspike hall (read the damn **ABOUT::THIS::BLOG** section over on the right side of the freaking page, would 'ya?), and wayyyyy too many of the folks come with a pass stamped "looking for information about that asswipe Jorge Mario Pedro Vargas Llosa, 1st Marquis of Vargas Llosa."

what's more?  our docents, docentesses, and the struggling underclass of the most recent priestly novitiate from next door (they earn coin to make desperate calls home) are overwhelmed with the number of theta and lisping Spanish-speakers (we report them all as likely nazis to Tête de Hergé Homeland Security) inquiring after vargas llosa.  just click the underline, light blue shaded (or is it purple?) text of his name in the preceding paragraph and you can read about him to your hearts' content. or HERE, click HERE!  at Wikipedia!

track in the gritty clay of our land, smear smooshed greeny asphodels around our pompeian mosaic floors, we don't mind the cleaning... it's of the mindset ruling your sneakers that we think whilst scrubbing away the dregs of nature with toothbrushes and tubes of Sensodyne! [don't you dare touch that sentence.]

why, o why, are we not receiving pilgrim upon pilgrim seeking after our magical collection of Gabriel Garcia Marquez arty-facts?

where did all this people clearly RAISED IN A BARN come from?  okay, okay, i know, they're likely of german descent, but we don't paint tar all over the sensitive skins of an entire people around here! that's not the marlinspike hall way!

oh, garcia marquez, how i will miss you! 

i need a new fentanyl patch.  and a percocet.

********* *** *********

vargas: SF= steepest part of a slope

********* *** *********

Gabriel García Márquez: Discurso por el recibimiento del Premio Nobel de Literatura en 1982 --

© 2013 L. Ryan

Help the Funds Dissemination Committee (FDC) decide how to spend Wikimedia donations

Comment on 4 proposals until April 30, including the Wikimedia Foundation's annual budget
The proposals are in English, but you can comment in your own language.

Vargas Llosa

The Nobel, he won. 

Hmm.

Not a fan, not a fan at all. 

Nary a bit.

But it's an Occasion and I'm nothing if not a Celebrant.  So while everyone is tippy-toeing around this decision, undoubtedly mentioning Garcia Marquez within their first two paragraphs, let's commemorate an entirely different event -- one that really did bring the two together, whirligigs, 34 years or so, ago.

For extra credit, who'd win in The Hulk v Vargas Llosa?
Okay, that was too easy...

For an honorary doctorate, then:  100 words on Vargas Llosa and deceit.  (Show your work.)


Vargas Llosa is teaching at Princeton this semester, How to write novels, or something like that.
In a feat of swell timing, he has a book coming out in November.

Feud sensation! Why Vargas Llosa thumped Márquez!Now it can be told: the amazing truth behind the Latin American literary giants' legendary ding-dong.


It is 31 years since Mario Vargas Llosa punched Gabriel García Márquez in the face. It happened like this. "Mario!" exclaimed Márquez happily on seeing his old literary chum after a film premiere in Mexico City. He marched towards the Peruvian, arms outstretched as if for an embrace. "How dare you come and greet me after what you did to Patricia in Barcelona!" Vargas Llosa reportedly shouted and decked the Colombian with a right hook. Mexican writers ran around looking for steaks to put on the Colombian's eye. Patricia, it turns out, was Mario's wife.

The two men have reportedly never spoken since. So began one of the greatest rows in literary history, right up there with the Gore Vidal-Truman Capote feud (in which Vidal suggested Capote had "raised lying into an art - a minor art". Capote retorted: "Of course, I'm always sad about Gore. Very sad that he has to breathe every day.")

But the details of what Mario said to Gabriel in Mexico City that emerged earlier this week beg more questions than they answer. What happened in Barcelona? What did Gabriel do to Patricia? Did Patricia like it? And what about the mystery Swedish woman? How does she fit into the story? Why didn't Márquez duck in Mexico City? How could Gabriel not know Mario was angry? Why didn't Gabriel hit Mario back? After all, Peruvian novelists punch like girls, don't they? [Read the rest of this Nobel-Announcement-Day-Worthy piece, HERE...]

[[Thank you, Stuart Jeffries!]]