Ariel Dorfman at Literary Hub:
It was in a trattoria on the Piazza Navona in early April of 1974 that for the first but not the last time I heard Gabriel García Márquez refuse to even contemplate turning his masterpiece, Cien Aňos de Soledad, into a film.
Gabo—as his friends called him—was in Rome as one of the vice-presidents of the Second Russell Tribunal convened to denounce human rights violations in Latin America, so the conversation that evening was basically political. But towards the end, a question was broached by the illustrious Brazilian director, Glauber Rocha. Everyone else at the table went quiet—it was a star-studded gathering, the Argentine author Julio Cortázar, the legendary Chilean artist Roberto Matta, the exiled Spanish poet Rafael Alberti and his white haired wife, María Teresa León, who had sworn at some point during the evening that she would enter Madrid on a white horse, totally naked, as soon as Franco died.
None of us expected the vehement reaction of the Colombian novelist, usually so softspoken. “Never!” Gabo exclaimed. “To synthesize that story of seven generations of Buendías, the whole history of my country and all of Latin America, really of humanity, impossible. Only the gringos have the resources for that sort of film. I’ve already received offers: they propose an epic, two hours, three hours long. And in English! Imagine Charlton Heston pretending he’s an unknown, mythical Colombian in a fake jungle.” And added a definitive, “Ni muerto!”
Which could be translated as “Over my dead body” but better rendered as “Not even after I’m dead!”
More here.
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