Book Review: The Story of a Shipwrecked Sailor harks back to the days in 1955 when Gabriel Garcia Marquez was a staff reporter for a newspaper. He conducted 20 six-hour interviews with the nationally-famous "shipwrecked" sailor, which were then published by the newspaper in 14 non-fiction installments, written as a first person narration "by" the sailor. This book's extended (I mean extended) title is "... who drifted on a life raft for ten days without food or water, was proclaimed a national hero, kissed by beauty queens, made rich through publicity, and then spurned by the government and forgotten for all time." That sounds like GGM to me. The newspaper accounts were first published as a book in Spain in 1970 because, as Garcia Marquez writes, "the publishers are not so much interested in the merit of the story as in the name of the author, which, much to my sorrow, is also that of a fashionable writer." The Story of a Shipwrecked Sailor does not sound much like the Marquez we know and love. Marquez had to write in the "voice" of the sailor to make it credible (as anyone who's ghosted term papers knows) to the newspaper-reading public. Imagine having Gabriel Garcia Marquez as your ghostwriter! Even so, there are a few scenes in which the reader may see Marquez peeking out: a visit by an old but friendly seagull; a close encounter with an enormous, yellow turtle; the story of the fakir; and the reception by the townspeople of Mulatos. The introduction written by Marquez in 1970, also gives a wonderful sense of the man, mentioning: "the U.S. Panama Canal Authority, which performs such functions as military control and other humanitarian deeds." The Story of a Shipwrecked Sailor is not a novel, is not fiction, but does show Marquez as a writer and reporter. It's the exciting story of a resourceful, but in some ways just average, man, a sailor whose "heroism" consisted of not letting himself die. A good story in its own write. [3½★]
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