[Reader-list] Marquez

[Nagraj Adve]

The first story idea came to me in the early 1970s, the result of an
illuminating dream I had after living in Barcelona for five years. I
dreamed I was attending my own funeral, walking with a group of friends
dressed in solemn mourning but in a festive mood. We all seemed to be happy
to be together. And I more than anyone else, because of the wonderful
opportunity that death afforded me to be with my friends from Latin
America, my oldest and dearest friends, the ones I had not seen for so
long. At the end of the service, when they began to disperse, I attempted
to leave too, but one of them made me see with decisive finality that as
far as I was concerned, the party was over. "You're the only one who can't
go," he said. Only then did I understand that dying means never being with
friends again. - Gabriel Garcia Marquez, from the Prologue to *Strange
Pilgrims*, 1992.