On meeting a favorite author

[pynchonoid]

''Really, he sat with you and edited your pieces?'' I
asked, betraying, no doubt, a touch of provincial
amazement. But I have to admit that it still always
amazes me whenever I encounter people who know Gabriel
García Márquez, the one writer who, especially in my
youth, meant more to me than any other, in a manner
that transcended merely a love of his literature.
Meeting people who personally know him, who speak
casually of their connections to him -- as so many
I've met in Mexico City do -- can leave me dumbstruck
with vicarious shyness and wonder. Sometimes it even
astonishes me that my friend Gonzalo Garcia speaks so
casually of knowing García Márquez, even though
Gonzalo is his son. The prospect of meeting any other
writer, or any celebrity, does not affect me like
this, not in the least. [...] Until this summer,
whenever faced with even the possibility of meeting
García Márquez in Mexico City, I had always invoked an
essay of his in which he recounted how he had
preferred to wave and salute Ernest Hemingway, one of
his masters, from across a Parisian street rather than
try to speak to him. If I was more than satisfied with
the García Márquez I could imagine from his writings,
why meet the other one? [...]

read it all:
<http://www.nytimes.com/2003/11/02/magazine/02MARQUEZ.html>

...sorry, no time to particpate in VLVL (or take flame
bait) these days, I barely have time to skim the
P-list digests.  But I thought some of you might enjoy
this article...


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