NY, Nov 07: A former president hailed it as the greatest novel of the past 50 years. A Pulitzer Prize-winning author called it second only to the Bible as a universal text. Another literary luminary said it changed the way he viewed the world. Such was the effusive praise that flowed Wednesday at a tribute to Gabriel Garcia Marquez, the Colombian author whose works include One Hundred Years of Solitude, a novel that remains a milestone of modern literature. "All of us who have read tonight can actually remember the day we first read Garcia Marquez. It's that colossal of an event," said author Salman Rushdie, one of the renowned writers who offered favorite excerpts at the tribute at The Town Hall theater in midtown Manhattan. The event marked the U.S. release of Living to Tell the Tale, the first volume in a three-part series of memoirs. Garcia Marquez's new book is a nostalgic look at the people and places that form the raw material for One Hundred Years, Love in the Time of Cholera, and Chronicle of a Death Foretold. Garcia Marquez, who lives most of the year in Mexico City, did not attend the tribute. Instead, the 1982 recipient of the Nobel prize for literature sent a short statement of thanks, adding darkly that he "can't remember a less appropriate time for celebration" than these "evil times" of war.
William Kennedy, author of the Pulitzer Prize-winning Ironweed, quoted his three-decade old review of One Hundred Years, calling the novel "the first piece of literature since the Book of Genesis that should be required reading for the entire human race."
The evening began with a videotaped message from former President Bill Clinton, who recalled meeting the author at the home of Rose and William Styron on Martha's Vineyard and rated One Hundred Years as "the greatest novel in any language of the last 50 years."

After Clinton came a procession of translators and writers - including Edwidge Danticat; Francisco Goldman and Jose Manuel Prieto - who thanked Garcia Marquez for his literature and his fostering of young journalists through the Foundation for New Latin American Journalism, an organization he created in 1994.

John Lee Anderson, author of a comprehensive biography of Che Guevara among other things, said Garcia Marquez's foundation is fostering a new generation of writers. "His inspiration, material support and moral example have been a priceless gift," he said.
Bureau Report