Gabriel Garcia Marquez?

Question

Where was Gabriel Garcia Marquez when he wrote A Very Old Man With Enormous wings? When and where is the story set? (by this i mean in the actual story).

Answer 1

Marquez deliberately sets this children's story in a timeless and nameless village. I think he does it for the effect. in that it could take place anywhere.

Answer 2

This story was written shortly after the author had ensconsed himself for eighteen months to write his masterpiece "One Hundred Years of Solitude" and this book undoubtedly influenced it, setting the standard for a genre called Magical Realism, which Garcia Marquez wonderfully continued in his following works and which other writers have expanded. Latin-American life is particularly rich with the experiences that create Magical Realism: the reality of political oppression and proud familial obligations easily complement the magic of strong beliefs in the divine and supernatural.
This story, with many others of Garcia Marquez's stories, takes place in the fictional town of Macondo, located in the banana-zone of Colombia. It is certainly based on Garcia Marquez's own village of Anacataca, which he used to explore as a child. (Macondo means "banana" in the Bantu language.) It raises questions about reality: what it is, what it can become, and whether it is the same for all people. Like many of his other works, it is touched with deep melancholy.

Answer 3

I read him first for a course on South American lit my sophomore year of college--we read Borges, Allende, etc., as well. As the originator of magical realism, of course, there can't be enough said there. But beyond that, he has a sense of history and of belonging that I think is very much in keeping with Allende and the others--South American writers have much more a sense of place and time, speaking generally, than do North American writers. Garcia Marquez is also a fine storyteller. Anyone who starts out with a line like "Many years later, as he faced the firing squad, Colonel Aureliano Buendia was to remember that distant afternoon when his father took him to discover ice." almost _has_ to be--but I've yet to see him fail to deliver in any story for sheer tale-telling.