The Who2 Blog

Is Gabriel García Márquez Demented?

Colombian writer Gabriel García Márquez is suffering from advanced dementia, says his brother. But the director of the Márquez Foundation says, naw…Gabo’s just old and has a bad memory.

The report this week from The Guardian was that the younger brother of Gabriel García Márquez, Jaime García Márquez, told a crowd in Cartagena that his brother, the Nobel Prize winning author of One Hundred Years of Solitude, had been suffering from memory loss and dementia for a long time. Jaime added that it runs in the family.

Gabriel García Márquez was diagnosed with lymphatic cancer way back in 1999, and it’s widely known that he’s not writing any more. He wasn’t able to tackle the second of three volumes of his memoirs, so at this point we just have the first one, Vivir Para Contarla (Live to Tell It) — and that came out in 2002, ten years ago.

On the heels of the comments by Jaime García Márquez came a contradictory report from Jaime Abello, the director of Colombia’s Gabriel García Márquez New Journalism Foundation. Abello, who says he last saw the author in April. Abello says about the brother’s remarks, “I do not agree. It is an interpretation based on someone who does not share daily life with him.”

Of course, Abello is in Cartagena, just like Gabo’s brother Jaime, so who knows?

We only know that the great writer Márquez is in Los Angeles and unable to write.

Jaime Abello says Márquez isn’t demented, he just has a bad memory like all men in their 80s. Who knows.

One thing that’s NOT a controversy: we won’t be seeing any books by Gabriel García Márquez anymore. He  is officially retired from writing, according to Abello. Whether his health has anything to do with it is immaterial, I suppose.

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