Marquez's Magic

A central dilemma for the fiction writer, especially one who tries to present a social message through his story, is how closely to mirror reality in his fiction. Some writers change only the names of their characters leaving imaginative artifices out of their works. Others place their stories so far from the realm of common experience that only the most determined can find any relation to reality. Gabriel Garcia Marquez has found a comfortable, even delightful balance between the two extremes. "Reality is not restricted to the price of tomatoes," he says in a recent issue of the New Republic. "Life is filled with the miraculous lying dormant in the heart of the quotidian.

The miraculous is what the reader remembers from the title story in Garcia Marquez's new short story collection, "Innocent Erendira and Other Stories. With the simplicity and innocence of a fairy tale, Garcia Marquez weaves dreams, superstitions and magic into a serious and disturbing story of a cruel matriarch's domination over her lovely and obedient granddaughter. Garcia Marquez's imagination gives the story charm and life which enhances its relevance and meaning.

The central figure in Erendira is the corpulent grandmother who exerts ironfisted control--Marquez calls it a spell--over her granddaughter. When a "wind of misfortune" knocks over Erendira's candle igniting a fire that destroys the grandmother's opulent estate, the grandmother "with sincere pity" sells Erendira into a life of prostitution.

The grandmother leads Erendira on a bizarre odyssey across the desert to search for customers for Erendira's favors. As revenue begins to roll in, the grandmother restores the gaudy splendor of her old estate although her new empire is more of a traveling carnival which slowly expands to include Indian bearers, a photographer on a bicycle, a brass band, and numerous ox-carts packed with trinkets. At first the grandmother reminds Erendira cheerily that she only has eight years, seven months and eleven days more of slavery, if receipts continue at the same rate.

Erendira is physically incapable of revolt although her thoughts turn to it often. On one level Marquez is pointing out the stifling effects that can result from deeply ingrained traditions of family loyalty, particularly strong in Latin cultures. Also, he is protesting any form of authoritarian rule when it passes the bounds of reason and dignity.

Unfortunately only one other story in the collection works these techniques to as great an advantage. "The Sea of Lost Time" explores Marquez's primary obsession, death, but unlike most of his gloomy musings on the subject, this' story suggests that though death is frightening because of the uncertainty connected with it, the world of the dead may be more charming than that of the living.

The other stories in the collection were mostly written in the '40s and '50s before Marquez had a name for himself. They are interesting because they show the genesis of what is now a marvelous style, but the myth-making in these early stories is ponderous and inelegant.

Marquez is not a true philosopher; his stories do not probe deep truths and profound metaphysical concerns. Instead, he is a cataloguer of everyday feelings and attitudes. He realizes, however, that everyday feelings are more complicated than they may seem and are best dealt with by pulling one step away from the commonplace. He has said that the ideal novel should "perturb not only because of its political and social content, but also because of its power of penetrating reality, and better yet, because of its capacity to turn reality upside down so we can see the other side of it." By magically twisting reality so heaven is at the bottom of the sea and a mysterious wind brings a photographer on a bicycle, Marquez's stories tantalize his readers into grappling with disturbing, real questions about life and death.