“He returned to the island on Friday, August 16 on the three in the afternoon ferry. She was wearing jeans, a plaid shirt, simple low-heeled shoes and no socks, a satin parasol, her handbag and as her only luggage a beach briefcase. so it begins “See you in August”, the posthumous novel by Gabriel García Márquez which was published this week, exactly March 6a date on which the writer would have turned 97 years old and a few days before the tenth anniversary of his death was commemorated.
Without a doubt, it is the release of the year, which arrives simultaneously in bookstores around the world, from Korea to Brazil and from Taiwan to Colombia (on the 12th it is published in its English and French editions). Only for the Hispanic world, Penguin Random House, the publishing house, will make a first printing of 250,000 copies, an immense figure by current book standards. The volume will cost $19,990 in Argentine bookstores.
Ana Magdalena Bach is the name of the protagonist of this story that Gabo began writing about three decades ago. A woman who every August travels to the place where her mother is buried, to tell her about loves, missteps and pleasures that happened during the course of the year.
The text is made up of five independent stories and had countless rewritings until reaching the final version that we can buy in bookstores today. It is accompanied by a prologue by his children and an epilogue by the specialist who made the definitive edition.
The journey of the manuscripts
But this is not just any novel in the history of the Colombian Nobel Prize. His writing was subject to postponements and intense corrections, a typical habit of García Márquez who made 18 versions of a book before considering it finished. It was left aside for years while Gabo wrote “Live to tell the tale” and “Memory of my sad whores”. At the end of his life, a mental illness that resulted in the loss of his memory forever cut short the possibility of concluding “See you in August.”
The existence of the novel became a legend. García Márquez had announced that he was writing it in 1999, at an event in Madrid at Casa de América, where he read a chapter. In 2003, El País of Spain published a text with the title “The night of the eclipse”, which belonged to the same material.
After the death of the writer, the family decided to give it to the Harry Ranson Center at the University of Austin, Texas; most of Gabo’s manuscripts and papers, considering that it was the place where they would best take care of that legacy.
The Harry Ranson Center is one of the world’s most important archives, bringing together materials from some of the most prominent writers and artists. Manuscripts by Borges and Cortázar are part of its collection, as well as iconic film scripts and even drafts of the Watergate investigation. The center paid the sum of 2.2 million euros to keep García Márquez’s archive, one of the most consulted in the institution today.
The decision aroused criticism from intellectuals and universities in Colombia and Mexico, the country where García Márquez lived almost his entire life. But, the prompt digitization of the material and its making available to the public confirmed that it had been a correct option.
Among those papers were five drafts of “See you in August” that, when they were uploaded to their digital versions, generated great interest among readers. “That made us curious. “We realized that the novel was better than we thought,” explained his son. Rodrigo García Barcha, at the press conference with which the book was presented to the Latin press this week. “My father had told us that the book was useless. But his memory problem had also affected her ability to judge him. This encouraged us to publish it. We liked this very feminine, feminist character. It seemed to us that she made a good trio with her latest novels, ‘Love and Other Demons’ and ‘Memories of My Sad Whores’. It was a good coda,” García Barcha concluded.
Christopher Pera, who had worked with Gabo in editing his latest books, was in charge of creating the final version. To do so, he compared the drafts kept at the Harry Ransom Center with the text that Gabo’s secretary had corrected based on the writer’s observations. Pera knew the work before. Although García Márquez did not like to show his work until it was finished, he had already shared part of this novel with him: “He allowed me to read three chapters aloud with him. I remember the impression he left on me of absolute mastery with an original topic that I had not addressed before in his works, and the hope that one day his readers would be able to share it. His memory no longer allowed him to fit together all the pieces and corrections of his latest version, but revising the text was for a time the best way to occupy his days in the studio doing what he liked to do most: proposing an adjective here or a detail that could change there,” says the editor in the epilogue of “See you in August.”
Post Morten Publication
Is it legal to publish, once the author disappears, the unfinished or discarded papers that he refused to publish during his lifetime? The discussion could go through the history of 20th century literature, from Kafka and Max Brod until today. Especially if one takes into account that the publishing industry is capable of tempting the most austere of heirs with its promises.
“He didn’t want this to be published. “He wrote the novel while suffering from dementia and I am worried about it reaching bookstores,” he declared. Salman Rushdie, who admires García Márquez, last year; when the news of the publication became known.
At the aforementioned press conference, the children gave their explanations. “It leaves me calm that all of Gabo’s work is available to his readers. There is no ‘the mysterious novel in an archive in Austin, Texas’. It was a work that was going to come out sooner or later,” explained Gonzalo García Barcha.
“When he is dead, do what you want,” the heirs say the writer told them before he died. And that single phrase absolves them of guilt.
García Márquez also did not want a film version of “One Hundred Years of Solitude”. However, Netflix announced for this year the premiere of a blockbuster based on the novel, one of the most famous books in the world. Tribute or betrayal? That is a difficult question.
Fragments of “See you in August”
“The first three years were punctual every day, at night in bed or in the morning in the bathroom, except for the sacred truces of periods and childbirth. They both saw the threats of routine in time, and without agreeing they decided to add a grain of adventure to love. At one time they used to go to cheap motels, both the most refined and the seedy ones, until one night when the hotel was robbed at gunpoint and they were left naked. They were such unexpected inspirations that she got used to carrying condoms in her purse to avoid surprises. Until they discovered by chance a brand that had her advertising printed on it: Next Time Buy Lutecian. “This is how they inaugurated a long era in which each love was rewarded with a happy phrase, from ribald jokes to Seneca’s sayings.”
“Ana Magdalena Bach found her man of the following year on the ferry that took her to the island. There were threats of rain, the sea looked like October and it was not good to be out in the open. A Caribbean music group began playing as soon as the ship set sail, and a group of German tourists danced tirelessly to the island. She sought a break in the deserted dining room at eleven in the morning to concentrate on reading The Martian Chronicles by Ray Bradbury. She had made it halfway when she was interrupted by a shout:
–This was my happy day!
Dr. Aquiles Coronado, a highly prestigious lawyer, a friend of his since school and godfather at his daughter’s baptism, was approaching down the hallway with open arms and the laborious gait of a great primate. He lifted her up by her waist and smothered her with kisses. Her somewhat theatrical friendliness aroused more misgivings than she deserved, but she knew her joy was sincere. She reciprocated him with the same joy, and she sat him down next to her.
“How barbaric,” he said, “we no longer see each other except at weddings and funerals.”
«–For once in your life, Domenico, tell me the truth. He knew that her first name in her mouth was a sign of a storm, and he urged her with her usual serenity:
-What is it?
She was no less:
–How many times have you been unfaithful to me?
“Unfaithful, never,” he said. But if what you want is to know if I’ve slept with someone, you warned me years ago that you don’t want to know.
Even more: when they got married he had told her that he wouldn’t care if he slept with someone else, as long as it wasn’t always the same one, or if it was just for once. But when push came to shove she erased it with her elbow.
–Those are things that one says out there –he said–, but not to be taken so literally.
“If I tell you no, I’m sure you don’t believe it,” he said, “and if I tell you yes you won’t stand it.” How we do?”.
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