(How to Avoid the) Usual Bullshit: Quoting the Master
The following is from the epilogue the master wrote for his book, The General in His Labyrinth:
"Vinicio Romero Martinez, the biographer of Bolivar, helped me from Caracas..... To him I owe the providential warning that Bolivar could not eat mangoes with the delight I had attributed to him, for the simple reason that the mango would not reach the Americas for another few years."
"Finally, Antonio Bolivar Goyanes - a distant relative of the protagonist and perhaps the last old-fashioned typesetter left in Mexico - had the kindness to revise seven different versions of the manuscript with me in a millimeter-by-millimeter hunt for contradictions, repetitions, irrelevancies, mistakes, and typographical errors, and in a pitiless examination of language and spelling. In this way we surprised in flagrante a soldier who won battles before he was born, a widow who went to Europe with her beloved husband, and an intimate luncheon for Bolivar and Sucre in bogota when one was in Caracas and the other was in Quito. Nevertheless, I am not very certain that I should give thanks for these two final pieces of assistance, for it seems to me that such absurdities might have added a few drops of involuntary - and perhaps desirable - humor to the horror of this book. G. G. M."
Now, for those who do not know, the Master suffers from dyslexia due to which he write many common spellings wrongly, a reason he was excluded from inviation for a literary conference in Spain in 2004, provided I believe what A. A., a passionate Gabo-lover, reported! (I would believe her, because it was her, who also provided me with Gabo's phone and fax numbers!).
If you read my earlier blog on bullshit, you must have noticed that what I said about this mango episode was not completely accurate either. I mentioned that Gabo made them both eat mango together; while, in reality these were two different incidents as you have read here. I won't change my words in that other blog, however, because not only it shows that relying on one's memory is not the best thing, but also because my blog against bullshit also conains its own bullshit!
"Vinicio Romero Martinez, the biographer of Bolivar, helped me from Caracas..... To him I owe the providential warning that Bolivar could not eat mangoes with the delight I had attributed to him, for the simple reason that the mango would not reach the Americas for another few years."
"Finally, Antonio Bolivar Goyanes - a distant relative of the protagonist and perhaps the last old-fashioned typesetter left in Mexico - had the kindness to revise seven different versions of the manuscript with me in a millimeter-by-millimeter hunt for contradictions, repetitions, irrelevancies, mistakes, and typographical errors, and in a pitiless examination of language and spelling. In this way we surprised in flagrante a soldier who won battles before he was born, a widow who went to Europe with her beloved husband, and an intimate luncheon for Bolivar and Sucre in bogota when one was in Caracas and the other was in Quito. Nevertheless, I am not very certain that I should give thanks for these two final pieces of assistance, for it seems to me that such absurdities might have added a few drops of involuntary - and perhaps desirable - humor to the horror of this book. G. G. M."
Now, for those who do not know, the Master suffers from dyslexia due to which he write many common spellings wrongly, a reason he was excluded from inviation for a literary conference in Spain in 2004, provided I believe what A. A., a passionate Gabo-lover, reported! (I would believe her, because it was her, who also provided me with Gabo's phone and fax numbers!).
If you read my earlier blog on bullshit, you must have noticed that what I said about this mango episode was not completely accurate either. I mentioned that Gabo made them both eat mango together; while, in reality these were two different incidents as you have read here. I won't change my words in that other blog, however, because not only it shows that relying on one's memory is not the best thing, but also because my blog against bullshit also conains its own bullshit!
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