Review Of "The First García Márquez: A Study Of His Journalistic Writing From 1948 To 1955" By R. L. Sims

Document Type

Book Review

Publication Date

9-1-1993

Published In

Choice

Abstract

For Sims, García Márquez has always remained a journalist-fiction writer whose so-called "journalistic" texts have never been a mere backdrop for his fiction. He contends that García Márquez's prose resists all attempts to classify it as either journalism or fiction, particularly in light of the publication of the Colombian author's more recent works--e.g., Chronicle of a Death Foretold (1988). In other words, Sims views the corpus of García Márquez's writing as the product of a bigeneric process reflecting a continuous interplay that transcends traditional categories of genre and producing, to use a term from Bahktin, an ongoing dialogue of human heteroglossia. Following an introductory chatper in which he establishes a clear narratological framework, Sims examines texts that García Márquez wrote for different Colombian newspapers between 1948 and 1955. Among these are his 14-part series on sailor Luis Alejandro Velasco (which was later published in book form as The Story of a Shipwrecked Sailor, 1986) and his series on the coastal region called La Sierpe, which prefigures his legendary Macondo. Advanced undergraduate; graduate; faculty.

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