The Only King We’ve Ever Had

Our interview with Gabriel García Márquez

The Paris Review Redux: free interviews, stories, poems, and art from the archives of The Paris Review. View this email in your browser Gabriel García Márquez. Photograph by Nancy Crampton. "Everyone has an anecdote about García Márquez," says the writer Carolina Sanín in an oral history of the author that we published online last week. "We all want a sense of familiarity with the most powerful man Colombia has ever produced—the magician, the only king we've ever had, maybe even a father figure." This week, we're unlocking his Art of Fiction interview, which appears in issue no. 82 of the Review.  INTERVIEW The Art of Fiction No. 69 Gabriel García Márquez INTERVIEWER Blaise Cendrars said that writing is a privilege compared to most work, and that writers exaggerate their suffering. What do you think? GARCÍA MÁRQUEZ I think that writing is very difficult, but so is any job carefully executed. What is a privilege, however, is to do a job to your own satisfaction. I think that I'm excessively demanding of myself and others because I cannot tolerate errors; I think that it is a privilege to do anything to a perfect degree. It is true though that writers are often megalomaniacs and they consider themselves to be the center of the universe and society's conscience. But what I most admire is something well done. I'm always very happy when I'm traveling to know that the pilots are better pilots than I am a writer. From issue no. 82 (Winter 1981) Gabriel García Márquez. Photograph by Daniel Mordzinski. To read more from issue no. 82, including fiction by Julio Cortázar and Jamaica Kincaid, why not subscribe? You'll receive four print issues a year plus unlimited digital access to our seventy-year archive. Copyright © 2024 The Paris Review. All rights reserved. You are receiving this email because you opted in via our website. Our mailing address is: The Paris Review 544 West 27th Street 3rd Floor New York, New York 10001 Add us to your address book Want to change how you receive these emails? You can update your preferences or unsubscribe, if you must.