Gabriel Garcia Marquez discusses inspiration

In the Winter 1981 issue of The Paris Review, Nobel Prize winning novelist Gabriel Garcia Marquez discusses inspiration. (Read the entire interview at The Paris Review.) Here are some excerpts:

I can only work in surroundings that are familiar and have already been warmed up with my work. I cannot write in hotels or borrowed rooms or on borrowed typewriters. This creates problems because when I travel I can’t work…You hope for inspiration whatever the circumstances…

I’m convinced that there is a special state of mind in which you can write with great ease and things just flow. All the pretexts—such as the one where you can only write at home—disappear. That moment and that state of mind seem to come when you have found the right theme and the right ways of treating it. And it has to be something you really like, too, because there is no worse job than doing something you don’t like…

Inspiration is when you find the right theme, one which you really like; that makes the work much easier. Intuition, which is also fundamental to writing fiction, is a special quality which helps you to decipher what is real without needing scientific knowledge, or any other special kind of learning…For a novelist, intuition is essential. Basically it’s contrary to intellectualism, which is probably the thing that I detest most in the world—in the sense that the real world is turned into a kind of immovable theory. Intuition has the advantage that either it is, or it isn’t. You don’t struggle to try to put a round peg into a square hole.

Illustration: Gabriel Garcia Marquez by Margarita Karol, ALL RIGHTS RESERVED. 

…Of Rivers, poem by Langston Hughes

…OF RIVERS
by Langston Hughes

I’ve known rivers:
I’ve known rivers ancient as the world and older than the flow of human blood in human veins.

My soul has grown deep like the rivers.

I bathed in the Euphrates when dawns were young.
I built my hut near the Congo and it lulled me to sleep.
I looked upon the Nile and raised the pyramids above it.
I heard the singing of the Mississippi when Abe Lincoln went down to New Orleans, and I’ve seen its muddy bosom turn all golden in the sunset.

I’ve known rivers:
Ancient, dusky rivers.

My soul has grown deep like the rivers.

ABOUT THE AUTHOR: James Mercer Langston Hughes (February 1, 1902 – May 22, 1967) was an American poet, social activist, novelist, playwright, and columnist. He was one of the earliest innovators of the then-new literary art form jazz poetry. Hughes is best known as a leader of the Harlem Renaissance. (Read more at Wikipedia.org.)

PHOTO: Langston Hughes by Gordon Parks, ALL RIGHTS RESERVED

The Addressing of Cats, poem by T.S. Eliot

THE ADDRESSING OF CATS
by T.S. Eliot

You’ve read of several kinds of Cat,
And my opinion now is that
You should need no interpreter
To understand their character.
You now have learned enough to see
That Cats are much like you and me
And other people whom we find
Possessed of various types of mind.
For some are same and some are mad
And some are good and some are bad
And some are better, some are worse–
But all may be described in verse.
You’ve seen them both at work and games,
And learnt about their proper names,
Their habits and their habitat:
But how would you address a Cat?

So first, your memory I’ll jog,
And say: A CAT IS NOT A DOG.

And you might now and then supply
Some caviare, or Strassburg Pie,
Some potted grouse, or salmon paste–
He’s sure to have his personal taste.
(I know a Cat, who makes a habit
Of eating nothing else but rabbit,
And when he’s finished, licks his paws
So’s not to waste the onion sauce.)
A Cat’s entitled to expect
These evidences of respect.
And so in time you reach your aim,
And finally call him by his NAME.

So this is this, and that is that:
And there’s how you ADDRESS A CAT.

PAINTING: “Blue Cat, Green Eyes” by Walasse Ting

F. Scott Fitzgerald’s influence on Ross Macdonald

The Moving Target — originally published in 1949 — features Lew Archer, an L.A. private investigator, who appears in a series of novels by Ross Macdonald.

While reading the work of this amazing wordsmith/poet, I was struck by its similarity to the best passages in The Great Gatsby by F. Scott Fitzgerald — and figured somebody somewhere must have written about this. A quick Google search revealed more than I’d hoped.

My research uncovered a fascinating article entitled “Ross Macdonald’s Marked Copy of The Portable F. Scott Fitzgerald: A Study of Influence” by Robert F. Moss. In the article, Moss demonstrates how Macdonald learned from Fitzgerald on a variety of levels, including language, plot, structure, and technique. Macdonald is quoted as calling Fitzgerald “a dream writer,” “our finest novelist,” and “my master.” Read the entire article here.

To give a sense of Macdonald’s command of language, here is the opening paragraph from Chapter 4 of The Moving Target:

We rose into the offshore wind sweeping across the airport and climbed toward the southern break in the mountains. Santa Teresa was a colored air map on the mountains’ knees, the sailboats in the harbor white soap chips in a tub of bluing. The air was very clear. The peaks stood up so sharply that they looked like papier-maché I could poke my finger through. Then we rose past them into chillier air and saw the wilderness of mountains stretching to the fifty-mile horizon.”

the silver mirror, poem by Charles Bukowski, painting by Jocelyne Desforges, after a photo by Joan Gannij

the silver mirror (Excerpt)
by Charles Bukowski

she pulls a large silver mirror 
from her purse
and starts to pencil her eyebrows.
the left eye is bruised where she
fell several nights ago.
the afternoon sun comes through the
blinds behind her…
the afternoon sun seeps through her
red-brown hair. quickly she crosses
her legs, swings her foot up and
down. she drops the silver mirror 
back into her purse, looks up at me – 
her eyes very large and the palest 
green that I have ever seen, and 
down through Georgia and New Orleans 
and up in Maine
the whole world is caught in her glance
and at last
the universe is 
magnificent.

SOURCE: “the silver mirror” appears in Charles Bukowski‘s collection What Matters Most is How Well You Walk Through the Fire.

ART: “Georgia & Hank,” a painting by Jocelyne Desforges, after a photo ©Joan Gannij, appears in the Silver Birch Press Bukowski Anthology, available at Amazon.com.

Note: According to Charles Bukowski’s Scarlet, a memoir by Pamela “Cupcakes” Wood, Charles Bukowski wrote “the silver mirror” for Georgia Peckham-Krellner, who was with Cupcakes the night she met Bukowski. Find the fascinating Charles Bukowski’s Scarlet at Amazon.com.

breathing bukowski, poem by dirk velvet

breathing bukowski
by dirk velvet

he used the smallest words
he could find
to
tell his
tales
 
he knew that
the large ones
could get
stuck
going in
 
and
 
never
come
out
 
he knew
what we all
needed
to live
 
 
to
breathe
 
in
and
out

SOURCE: “breathing bukowski” by dirk velvet appears in the Silver Birch Press Bukowski Anthology, available at Amazon.com.

IMAGE: “Charles Bukowski” by Christopher R. Adams, ALL RIGHTS RESERVED.

Ode to Enchanted Light, poem by Pablo Neruda

ODE TO ENCHANTED LIGHT
by Pablo Neruda

Under the trees light
has dropped from the top of the sky,
light
like a green
latticework of branches,
shining
on every leaf,
drifting down like clean
white sand.

A cicada sends
its sawing song
high into the empty air.

The world is
a glass overflowing
with water.

PAINTING: “A Ray of Light,” watercolor by Derek Collins, ALL RIGHTS RESERVED. Prints available at etsy.com.

Play Time, quote by Pablo Neruda

“A child who does not play is not a child, but the man who does not play has lost forever the child who lived in him and whom he will miss terribly.” PABLO NERUDA

Illustration: Wall Art in Valparaiso, Chile — photo by Janet Rudolph, ALL RIGHTS RESERVED

Ode to the Present, poem by Pablo Neruda

ODE TO THE PRESENT
by Pablo Neruda

This
present moment,
smooth
as a wooden slab,
this
immaculate hour,
this day
pure
as a new cup
from the past–
no spider web
exists–
with our fingers,
we caress
the present; we cut it
according to our magnitude
we guide
the unfolding of its blossoms.
It is living,
alive–
it contains
nothing
from the unrepairable past,
from the lost past,
it is our
infant,
growing at
this very moment, adorned with
sand, eating from
our hands.
Grab it.
Don’t let it slip away.
Don’t lose it in dreams
or words.
Clutch it.
Tie it,
and order it
to obey you.
Make it a road,
a bell,
a machine,
a kiss, a book,
a caress.
Take a saw to its delicious
wooden
perfume.
And make a chair;
braid its
back;
test it.
Or then, build
a staircase! Yes, a
staircase.
Climb
into
the present,
step
by step,
press your feet
onto the resinous wood
of this moment,
going up,
going up,
not very high,
just so
you repair
the leaky roof.
Don’t go all the way to heaven.
Reach
for apples,
not the clouds.
Let them
fluff through the sky,
skimming passage,
into the past. You
are
your present,
your own apple.
Pick it from
your tree.
Raise it
in your hand.
It’s gleaming,
rich with stars.
Claim it.
Take a luxurious bite
out of the present,
and whistle along the road
of your destiny.

ABOUT THE AUTHOR: Pablo Neruda (1904-1973) was the pen name of the Chilean poet, diplomat and politician Neftali Ricardo ReyesBasoalto. He chose his pseudonym after Czech poet Jan Neruda. In 1971, Pablo Neruda won the Nobel Prize for Literature. Neruda often wrote in green ink because it was his personal symbol of desire and hope. Colombian novelist Gabriel García Márquez called him “the greatest poet of the 20th century in any language.” (Source: Wikipedia)

Illustration: “Apple Abstract” by Susana Fernandez, ALL RIGHTS RESERVED.

Drama, comedy, and tragedy, quote by Mark Twain

There was never yet an uninteresting life. Such a thing is an impossibility. Inside of the dullest exterior there is a drama, a comedy, and a tragedy.”

 MARK TWAIN

Photo: Mark Twain and a cat friend. Twain enjoyed the company of cats and was often surrounded by his feline friends while writing.