{"id":70442,"date":"2014-04-28T19:00:03","date_gmt":"2014-04-28T23:00:03","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.theparisreview.org\/blog\/?p=70442"},"modified":"2014-04-28T18:35:05","modified_gmt":"2014-04-28T22:35:05","slug":"the-hypnotic-act","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.theparisreview.org\/blog\/2014\/04\/28\/the-hypnotic-act\/","title":{"rendered":"The Hypnotic Act"},"content":{"rendered":"
\"gabo<\/a>

Silvana Paternostro (front row, second from right) poses for a photo with her journalism class, taught by Gabriel Garc\u00eda M\u00e1rquez (third row from front, center, in glasses).<\/p><\/div>\n

Last week, we had the pleasure of featuring Silvana Paternostro\u2019s \u201cSolitude & Company<\/a>,\u201d an oral biography of Gabriel Garc\u00eda M\u00e1rquez from our Summer 2003 issue. But Silvana also wrote, for our Winter 1996 issue, \u201cThree Days with Gabo<\/a>,\u201d an essay about the time she spent at a small journalism workshop hosted by Garc\u00eda M\u00e1rquez in Cartagena that spring. As Silvana writes: \u201cFor us, Latin American journalists in the early stages of our careers, he is a role model. We like to say that before he was a novelist he was a reporter. He says he has never stopped being one.\u201d The essay provides a charming account of Garc\u00eda M\u00e1rquez\u2019s professorial style\u2014somehow both whimsical and practical\u2014and it serves a reminder of his formidable talents as a journalist and an observer:<\/p>\n

\n

It has been said that Gabo is too creative to be a good journalist. After all, he is the same writer who in his novels, with a straight face, had Remedios the Beauty levitating to the skies and the smell of Santiago Nasar after his well-announced death penetrating the entire town.<\/p>\n

As if reading my mind he says, \u201cThe strange episodes in my novels are all real, or they have a starting point, a basis in reality. Real life is always much more interesting than what we can invent.\u201d He says that the ascension of Remedios the Beauty was inspired by a woman he saw spreading clean white sheets with her arms stretched out to the sun. He has also said that \u201cto move between the magical and the incredible, one has to become a journalist\u201d \u2026 He begins to read paragraphs out loud from some of our articles; he offers light copyediting. Some of the sentences are too long and Gabo pretends to be choking as he reads along. \u201cWe have to use breathing commas,\u201d he says. \u201cIf not, the hypnotic act does not work. Remember, wherever there is a stumble, the reader wakes up and escapes. And one of the things that will make the reader wake up from hypnosis is to feel out of breath.\u201d<\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n

We\u2019ve made Silvana\u2019s essay available online for free; you can read it here<\/a>. It\u2019s a fitting conclusion to our tribute to Garc\u00eda M\u00e1rquez\u2014he will be missed.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Last week, we had the pleasure of featuring Silvana Paternostro\u2019s \u201cSolitude & Company,\u201d an oral biography of Gabriel Garc\u00eda M\u00e1rquez from our Summer 2003 issue. But Silvana also wrote, for our Winter 1996 issue, \u201cThree Days with Gabo,\u201d an essay about the time she spent at a small journalism workshop hosted by Garc\u00eda M\u00e1rquez in […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":38,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[1188],"tags":[13712,3071,188,1457,13713],"class_list":["post-70442","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-from-the-archive","tag-gabo","tag-gabriel-garcia-marquez","tag-journalism","tag-teaching","tag-workshops"],"acf":[],"yoast_head":"\nFrom our Archive: \u201cThree Days with Gabo\u201d<\/title>\n<meta name=\"description\" content=\"Silvana Paternostro on the time she spent at a small journalism workshop hosted by Gabriel Garc\u00eda M\u00e1rquez in Cartagena.\" \/>\n<meta name=\"robots\" content=\"index, follow, max-snippet:-1, max-image-preview:large, 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