News of a Kidnapping
Márquez, Gabríel Garcia
UNMAGICAL REALISM News of a Kidnapping Gabriel Garcia Marquee; translated by Edith Grossman Aifed A. Knopf, $25. 297 pp. Joseph A. Page L ike the proverbial 800
pound gorilla, Nobel...
...The deceptively plain, conversational style of these essays makes not only the writing, but the writer herself, seem accessible...
...Garcia Marquez was obviously writing for his compatriots, which makes inexcusable the failure of his American publisher to provide background information, a simple chronology, or even an index...
...The fortythree short essays that comprise her delightful volume Naming the Light generously open her garden, her circle of friends, her daily life, and the inner world of her meditations to her readers...
...The narrative recounts how agents working for the country's most notorious drug dealer, Pablo Escobar, snatched nine Colombians and one German in four discreet operations between late August and early November of 1990, and held them as bargaining chips in negotiations between the au t hors tics and the traffickers, with the latter doggedly determined to avoid the possibility of extradition to the United States- The Colombian government sought the peaceful surrender of the narco-kingpins, who in turn demanded assurances that they would serve prison terms in Colombia and that they and their families would be protected from violent reprisals...
...So when he decided, as a personal favor to one of the victims, towrite a nonfictional ac count of a series of drug-trafficking-re lated kidnappings in his native Colombia in 1990, there could be no doubt that his endeavor would find its way into print...
...Garcia Marquez makes fleeting references to this historical context...
...The narcotics peddlers resisted government efforts to eliminate them by murdering public officials, political candidates, judges, journalists, and innocent bystanders...
...M y d ivarication (to divaricate: botanically, to branch at a wide angle) illustrates one of the pleasing results of reading Deen'sessavs, in which the matter-annuals, rocks, sandy soil, old clos THE GARDEN PATH Naming the Light A Week of Years Rosemary Deem UnitYr;ity of fdirzni...
...However, readers looking for a more comprehensive treatment should consult Alma Guillermoprieto's brilliant chapter on Colombia in her book, The Heart flint Bleeds...
...How ineffectual seemed the coral bells and the columbine to improve a plot that yielded a rusted pistol when l first turned the soil...
...The aftermath of the kidnappings demonstrates their relative insignificance in the broader scheme of things...
...Library Journal MARTHA MANNING I la rperSan Francisco I Corn:++rurrzura1 2 1 'rlrternber26, JQq...
...It is as though we were witnessing future Hall of FamerGreg Maddux «workon the mound ina s1mv-pitch softball game...
...Cbasins Grace...
...Manning's meditation will appeal to thoughtful readers of every persuasion...
...Moreover, the author's terse style recalls his early career as a journalist, and reflects a conscious choice to let the hostages tell their own stories without impressing upon them the stamp of the Garcia Marquez imagination...
...The state of near anarchy giving rise to the events described in News of a Kidrralrliing forms part of a complex layering of turbulence that has enveloped Colombia over the past half century...
...The curse of violence then took a new and even deadlier turn as a result of the success of the nation's powerfu 1 cocainetrafficking cartels that built an industry generating billions of dollars in income and spreading the rot of corruption throughout Colombian society...
...One wonders, for example, what flights of fantasy he might have constructed from the following minimalist passage he tossed off in News of a Kidnapping: "Politicians, industrialists, businesspeople, journalists,even ordinary freeloaders, came to the perpetual party...
...One feels impelled to swap stories of gardens and their denizens: surely Deen would appreciate my obstinate desire to coax a garden out of a desolate New Haven yard, bounded by chain-link fences and flanked by pitbulls, "Samson" and "Sophia" on the left, the more bluntly named "Shotgun" on the right...
...Now the renters with the deadly dogs and I have all moved on, but when last I peered into my old neglected yard, the herbs and the perennia is were hanging in there still...
...Press...
...Unfortunately, neither the substantive content nor the literary qualities of News of a Kidnapping come near matching the dimensions of his generous impulse...
...Joseph A. Page L ike the proverbial 800 pound gorilla, Nobel laure ate GabrielGarcia Marquez an sit wherever he pleas e-, even if this means abandoning the field of Latin American fiction he has dominated since the publication of One Hundred Years of Solitwkin 1967...
...Just when some sort of peace was returning to Colombia, various Cuban-inspired guerrilla groups launched a series of bloody offensives, which in turn provoked extreme brutality on the part of security forces bent on annihilating them without regard for basic human rights...
...Perhaps the most glaring weakness of the book is its failure to put these events in a perspective that would render them more comprehensible to readers unfamiliar with Colombia's tortured history...
...Joseph A. Page, a professor al flit, GcorgeIouWrr Lh:&-ersiri/ dare' Ce+iter, is the ant hor of The Brazilians en rd Pcr6n: A Biography...
...The book takes as its subject an episode that will scarcely rate as a blip on the radar screen of Colombia's recent history...
...lime I tihould like to...
...14.95...
...Ne'st's of a Kidnapping displays occasional deft touches, but on the whole it is a minor work by a major talent...
...C "Poignant, witty...
...This tragic convulsion, known simply as "La Violentis' ("The Violence"), combined undeclared warfare between the nation's two major political parties with blood feuds in the isolated communities of the mountainous interior, as well as with unvarnished banditry...
...The priest took it upon himself to act as media for between Escobar and the government, and made personal contact with the trafficker, who thereupon released the hostages and presented himself to the authorities...
...192 F...
...Indeed, the part of the narrative that comes closest to the wizardry for which Garcia M6rquez is best known describes Escobar's bizarre surrender, apparently provoked by an appeal from a saintly eighty-two-year-old cleric whose longrunning evening sermonettes ("God's Minute") reached a wide radio audience despite their tendency to lapse into total incomprehensibility...
...Garcia Marquez presents a somewhat muted portrait of Escobar,whose larger-than-life qualities would seem to have been perfect grist for the author's literary talents...
...A political assassination in 1948 triggered an orgy of killing that lasted for more than a decade and claimed more lives than the American Civil War...
...Escobar gave himself up and was confined in a specially constructed prison which had many of the characteristics of a country club and from which he casualiv strolled, an escape made possible by some well-placed bribes...
...Pablo Escobar did in fact eventually order the release of eightof thehostages Lone wasexecuted and another killed in Commonweal 2 0 ~qrtrmlrrr 26, 1997 a shootout when the police stumbled upon the neighborhood where she was being held...
...Yet the cocaine trade continues to flourish, and recent reports of payments made by the drug traffickers to Colombian legislators (and allegedly even to the president) demonstrate the deep roots of lawlessness in the country...
...Simultaneously moving ant entertaining, Manning's reflections on "growing up Catholic" will inspire all readers to explore their own relationship to faith...
...ecause Rosemary Deen is the poetry editor of Corn- nuwal, I should begin by erring that I have never met 11or...
...Suzanne Keen B The Portrait o f a life Colored by Faith NOW IN PAP&MCKI From Martha Manning, author of the powerful Undercurrents, comes this wwickedk funny coming of age story...
...where Pablo Escobar kept a zoo with giraffes and hippos brought over from Africa, and where the entrance displayed, as if it were a national monument, the small plane used to export the first shipment of cocaine...
...The police subsequently tracked him down and killed him...
Vol. 124 • September 1997 • No. 16
