Ascent to Glory. Álvaro Santana-Acuña

cultural industry, or art world could control the production of this novel or any major New Latin American Novel. Instead, One Hundred Years of Solitude arose in a transnational niche in which the cosmopolitan Latin Americanism of his peer writers shaped the imagination (and hence the taste) of gatekeepers such as publishers Sudamericana and Seix Barral and literary agent Carmen Balcells. This cosmopolitan and Latin American viewpoint adapted perfectly to the demands of the modernizing Spanish-language publishing industry and its growing audience of students and middle-class readers. One Hundred Years of Solitude proved to be the most exact of matches for this industry.

3

       A NOVEL IN SEARCH OF AN AUTHOR

      The book was not coming out, I couldn’t do it.

      —García Márquez on One Hundred Years of Solitude¹

      García Márquez first imagined One Hundred Years of Solitude in 1950. He struggled to finish it for the next seventeen years. Conceiving a work of art, included this novel, is hardly the offspring of a solitary act of inspiration. Conception in art is a collaborative venture—no artist imagines a work of art alone. García Márquez imagined the novel that would become One Hundred Years of Solitude over the course of almost two decades and during that time he joined groups of artists in Colombia, France, Venezuela, and Mexico, plus short stays in the United States, England, and Italy.² Yet having an idea for a work of art and discussing it with collaborators does not ensure that it will come into being one day. As the previous chapters showed, the passage of One Hundred Years of Solitude from an idea to a book, from the stage of imagination to the stage of production, happened as Latin American literature grew into a region-spanning movement and the modernizing Spanish-language book industry created a market of best sellers for Latin American novels. For these reasons, One Hundred Years of Solitude is the work of García Márquez as much as the novel and its author are the work of a booming Latin American literature and publishing industry.

      This chapter shows how García Márquez’s imagination took form, especially from 1950 to 1965, that is, from when he conceived the idea for a novel about a family and its house in a village to when he had the professional tools to turn this idea into a publishable book. During those years, he learned vital skills from his work in journalism, cinema, advertising, and literature. In the meantime, he also wrote several drafts of “The House,” the story that evolved into One Hundred Years of Solitude, and he published three novellas, one book of short stories, and over five hundred journalistic pieces. He created professional ties in six countries that nurtured his creative vision, gave him firsthand experiences for stories, and granted him privileged access to influential gatekeepers in publishing. But he also worked hard to become a professional writer. For years, fiction writing was a part-time endeavor for which he received no royalties. By 1965, after years of learning and setbacks, leading peers finally recognized him as an “integrated professional [with the skills] necessary to make it easy to make art.”³ An international network of collaborators was central to achieve this recognition. They helped him to transform his literary imagination into the professional conventions he needed in order to be a full-time writer capable of producing One Hundred Years of Solitude.⁴

      PLACES, NETWORKS, SKILLS, AND CONVENTIONS

      García Márquez was once an anxious aspirant writer. Traditionally, would-be writers must learn several skills in order to become literary authors. To attain these skills, they need to convert them into professional conventions accepted by peer writers, gatekeepers of the publishing industry, and critics. Mastering these conventions gives writers access to professional resources and opportunities for advancement. Since some conventions are more difficult to master than others, the more difficult the convention, the more likely that its practitioner would attract the attention of vested groups in that professional activity. But if socioeconomic obstacles get in the creator’s way, skill learning becomes more difficult, as it did for the young García Márquez.

      Table 3.1 García Márquez’s locations from birth up to publication of One Hundred Years of Solitude

Location	Year
Colombia (1927–1955)
Aracataca	1927–1929
Barranquilla, Aracataca	1929–1930
Aracataca	1930–1936
Sincé	1936–1937
Aracataca	1937–1938
Barranquilla	1938–1939
Sucre, Barranquilla	1939–1942
Zipaquirá, Bogotá, Sucre	1943–1944
Magangué	1944
Zipaquirá, Bogotá, Sucre	1945–1946
Sucre, Bogotá^a^b	1947
Bogotá,^a^b Cartagena,^ab Sucre, Barranquilla^a^b	1948
Barranquilla,^a^b Sucre, Cartagena^ab	1949
Barranquilla,^a^b Aracataca	1950
Barranquilla,^a^b Cartagena^ab	1951
Barranquilla,^a^b Aracataca	1952
Barranquilla,^a^b Departments of Cesar, La Guajira, and Magdalena	1953
Bogotá,^a^b Barranquilla,^a^b Medellín,^b Department of Chocó^b	1954
Bogotá,^a^b Barranquilla^a	1955
Europe (1955–1957)b
Paris, Geneva, Venice, Rome, Vienna, Warsaw, Kracow, Auschwitz, Prague	1955
Paris^a	1956
Paris,^a Heidelberg, Frankfurt, GDR (Weimar, Buchenwald, Leipzig, East Berlin), West Berlin, Prague, Moscow, Volgograd, Kiev, Budapest, Ujpest, London	1957
Latin America (1957–1967)
Caracas	1957
Caracas,^a^b Barranquilla,^a Cartagena	1958
Caracas,^a^b Havana, Bogotá,^a Barranquilla^a	1959
Bogotá,^a Barranquilla,^a Havana, Mexico City	1960
Barranquilla,^a Bogotá,^a New York City,^b Pennsylvania, Maryland, Virginia, North Carolina, South Carolina, Georgia, Alabama, Mississippi, Louisiana, Texas, Mexico City,^a^b^cd Veracruz^c