Chronicle of a Death Foretold Essay | Critical Essay #3

Chronicle of a Death Foretold Critical Essay #3

In the following excerpt, Epstein examines if Garcia Marquez is as talented as popular opinion seems to think he is.

How good is Gabriel Garcia Marquez? "Define your terms," I can hear some wise undergraduate reply. "What do you mean by is?" Yet I ask the question in earnest. Over the past weeks I have been reading Garcia Marquez1 s four novels and three collections of stories—all of his work available in English translation—and I am still not certain how good he is. If I were to be asked how talented, I have a ready answer: pound for pound, as they used to put it in Ring magazine, Gabriel Garcia Marquez may be the most talented writer at work in the world today. But talent is one thing; goodness, or greatness, quite another.

Valery says somewhere that there ought to be a word to describe the literary condition...
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