Gabriel Garcia Marquez, the master of short stories

Mexico City, Apr 27 (EFE). —  If Colombia’s Gabriel Garcia Marquez had never written “One Hundred Years of Solitude” or any other novel, it might have been necessary to award him the Nobel Prize in Literature for his short stories, the part of his work that is much less known.

That is what leading Mexican writers think about the perfection achieved with “El Ahogado Mas Hermoso del Mundo,” “El Rastro de Tu Sangre en la Nieve,” “El Verano Feliz de la Señora Forbes,” “Solo Vine a Hablar por Telefono” and all the rest of the 34 short stories written by Gabo.

“The short story is an arrow that hits the bull’seye and the novel is like hunting rabbits,” Garcia Marquez often said, and though an expert hunter, he hit perfection all 38 times he shot arrows at the shortstory target between 1947 and 1982.

“I’ve always stood up for the shortstorytelling ability of Garcia Marquez, which is little known because he was such a great novelist. His short stories excited me early on,” Ignacio Padilla, one of Mexico’s outstanding shortstory writers, told Efe.

This month, when Latin American countries commemorated the author on the first anniversary of his death, tributes to him repeated the names of Ursula Iguaran, Florentino Ariza, Santiago Nasar and other characters from his novels, but also on hand were those who cited his short stories.

The Colombian was still a law student when his roommate lent him a small book with yellow covers. He stretched out on the bed to read it, and by the time he finished that gem “The Metamorphosis” by Franz Kafka he was another person.

That night in 1947, at age 20 and with the Kafka character Gregor Samsa in mind, Garcia Marquez finished “La Tercera Resignacion,” a story published in the daily El Espectador.

Playwright and novelist Elmer Mendoza believes that after writing much later “Relato de un Naufrago,” a work halfway between journalism and fiction, Garcia Marquez found that the way to work with greater freedom was the novel, an imperfect genre in which he knew how to play with situations, the characters and the times in which they lived.

“Short stories come with restrictions, but nonetheless he wrote them masterfully and we must preserve that part of his work. I love ‘El Rastro de Tu Sangre en la Nieve,’ but all of them are amazing. Now that an edition of his complete short stories has come out, I have a good excuse to reread them,” he said.

As he did in his novels, Garcia Marquez in his short stories made normal, everyday happenings into exceptional events.