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Gabriel García Márquez Meets Ernest Hemingway |
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From The New York Times, July 26, 1981
I recognized him immediately, passing with his wife Mary Welsh on the Boulevard
St. Michel in Paris one rainy spring day in 1957. He walked on the other side of
the street, in the direction of the Luxembourg Gardens, wearing a very worn pair
of cowboy pants, a plaid shirt and a ballplayer's cap. The only thing that
didn't look as if it belonged to him was a pair of metal-rimmed glasses, tiny
and round, which gave him a premature grandfatherly air. He had turned 59, and
he was large and almost too visible, but he didn't give the impression of brutal
strength that he undoubtedly wished to, because his hips were narrow and his
legs looked a little emaciated above his coarse lumberjack shoes. He looked so
alive amid the secondhand bookstalls and the youthful torrent from the Sorbonne
that it was impossible to imagine he had but four years left to live.
For a fraction of a second, as always seemed to be the case, I found myself
divided between my two competing roles. I didn't know whether to ask him for
an interview or cross the avenue to express my unqualified admiration for him.
But with either proposition, I faced the same great inconvenience. At the time,
I spoke the same rudimentary English that I still speak now, and I wasn't very
sure about his bullfighter's Spanish. And so I didn't do either of the things
that could have spoiled that moment, but instead cupped both hands over my mouth
and, like Tarzan in the jungle, yelled from one sidewalk to the other: ''Maaaeeestro!''
Ernest Hemingway understood that there could be no other master amid the multitude
of students, and he turned, raised his hand and shouted to me in Castillian
in a very childish voice, ''Adiooos, amigo!'' It was the only time I saw him.
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 It's all true, I swear! A
PICTURE
may
be
worth
a
thousand
words
—
but
which
words?
Which
thousand
words,
and
in
what
order?
Of
the
half
a
million
words
in
the
English
language,
which
ones
do
you
leave
out?
It
is
a
commonplace
of
probability
theory
that
six
monkeys
with
six
word
processors
will
write
the
works
of
Shakespeare
if
you
give
them
enough
time.
It
used
to
be
typewriters,
but
the
monkeys
had
trouble
with
the
ribbons.
The
time
required
in
this
lovely
mind
game
tends
to
infinity,
which
—
like
the
bolt
and
the breech
and
the
cocking-piece
—
we
have
not
got.
You
can
fix
your
own
PC
or
cut
your
own
hair
or
paint
your
own
house
and
the
results
can
be
hilarious,
the
consequences
trivial
except
for
your
ego.
Not
so
surgery,
or
litigation.
("Hand
me
the
other
kidney,
quick! The cops are here!")
The
professional
editing
of
your
dissertation
or
your
business
plan
or
your
novel
may
not
be
a
life-and-death
matter,
but
it
can
make
all
the
difference.
It
may
push
you
over
the
line,
and
so
change
your
life.
Wordwing
is
a
professional
editors'
co-operative
with
low
overhead.
You
will
get
personal
attention
at
every
step
of
the
process,
and
you
will
not
have
a
shadow
on
your
lung
where
your
wallet
used
to
be.
That's
the
story
in
a
nutshell.
Only
232
words. All the others have been left out.
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