A new García Márquez novel, or not

On May 6 and 7, the news raced up and down the Americas and the Spanish-speaking world that Gabriel García Márquez was putting the "final touches" on a new novel, also focused on love, as were Love in the Time of Cholera, and Memories of My Melancholy Whores. This news came out after Gabo was interviewed by an old friend, radio journalist Darío Arizmendi, who went to see García Márquez at his residence in Mexico City. Arizmendi also claimed that the novel would be published before the end of the year. Since Arizmendi's considered a credible source and a friend of the Colombian writer, the news was taken at face value.

But the next day, after the news made the rounds, his publishers, both on the global level and in Colombia, denied having any news of a forthcoming novel, although they said they knew García Márquez was working on something. According to the culture editor of Bogotá's El Tiempo, Andrés Zambrano, quoted in Argentine newspaper Los Andes, it may have all been a misunderstanding:“Although Arizmendi is a very serious journalist and has had a long friendship with Gabo, he is not part of his most intimate circle. Let's compare his version with another source that does have a very close relationship with García Márquez and confirmed the fact that the news was not true. Also, the editor of Norma Colombia said that at 81 years of age, the author has his moments of not very much lucidity and he very well might have given that information out to Arizmendi."

Another possibility occurs to me: The novel does exist, and will be released before the end of the year, but publishers are being extra-secretive because of the piracy problems surrounding the release of García Márquez's more recent books.

I don't know, whatever the exact truth, for me it is another signal of the great man's decline, when friends and associates must talk over one another to disclaim or reaffirm news of a forthcoming book. The literary reputation of García Márquez will remain intact, but the solid, radiant man in the guayabera shirt who received the Nobel prize has given way to a man no longer in total control of his increasingly blurry public image.

On the other hand, I seem to remember vaguely reading somewhere that in fact Cholera and Melancholy Whores were part of a projected trilogy on the theme of love. I will not give up hope that PR flaps aside, Gabo has another trick up his sleeve, and will redeem what to me seemed to me the anemic Memories of My Melancholy Whores, with his next and perhaps final novel, if it exists.

(Note: Thanks to Out of the Woods Now for the original alert on this story.)