Date: Sat, 20 Feb 1999 03:42:02 -0500 (EST) From: Orpheus <cw_duff-AT-alcor.concordia.ca> Subject: Why my Friend Bill Had to Lie, by Gabriel Garcia Marquez (fwd) One wonders... about the aging brains of writers.. ************************ >Why my Friend Bill Had to Lie, by Gabriel Garcia Marquez >1/30/99 > >The Guardian > >Copyright (C) 1999 The Guardian; Source: World Reporter (TM) > >The first thing you notice about William Jefferson Clinton is his >height. >The second is his power of seduction: from the first handshake he oozes >the familiarity of an old friend. The third is his intellectual >brilliance. You can tackle him on any issue, however thorny, as long as >you phrase your question right. I had already been warned by one of his >lesser admirers that the real danger of Clinton is the way he charms you > >into thinking that whatever you are saying is the most fascinating thing > >he has ever heard. > >I met Clinton in August 1995 at a dinner organised by the writer William > >Styron at his summer house in Martha's Vineyard. During His first >presidential campaign, he had said that my novel One Hundred Years Of >Solitude was his favourite book. I was quoted in the Press responding >that I thought this was just a bait for the Latino electorate. It didn't > >go unnoticed. Clinton's first comment on meeting me at Martha's Vineyard > >was that he'd meant everything he'd said. > >Carlos Fuentes and I have our reasons for believing that we lived a >great >chapter in our memoirs that night. Clinton caught us off guard with his >sense of humour, his interest and respect for what we were saying. He >hung on our every word as if it were gold dust. His mood fitted his >appearance. His hair was cut short like a brush, his skin was tanned, he > >had the rude health of a sailor on leave and he wore a childish >sweatshirt with a logo stamped on the chest. At 49, he was a glorious >survivor of the generation of '68, someone who had smoked dope and sung >along to the Beatles, someone who had taken to the streets in protest at > >the Vietnam war. > >The dinner began at eight and finished at midnight, there were 14 >guests at the table, but little by little, the conversation turned into >an impromptu literary jousting match between the President and the three > >writers. The first topic was the imminent Pan-American summit. Clinton >wanted it to be held in Miami, where it eventually did take place. > >Fuentes and I thought that New Orleans or Los Angeles had a more >historical standing. We defended our thesis valiantly until it became >clear that Clinton wouldn't budge. He was counting on the Miami vote for > >his re-election. > >'Forget votes, Mr President,' Fuentes said. 'Florida loses, >history wins.' That set the tone for the evening. When talk turned to >drug >trafficking, the President lent me a benevolent ear: 'The 30 million > drug addicts in the US are proof that the North American Mafia is >much more powerful than the Colombians and the US authorities are far >more corrupt.' When I raised the issue of Cuba, he seemed even more >receptive: 'If you and Fidel sat down and discussed this face to face >I'm >sure that it could all be sorted out.' We skimmed over Latin America and > >it became clear that his interest was far greater than we had imagined, >even though he lacked a few essential details. When the conversation >threatened to turn too formal, we asked him to name his favourite film. >High Noon, by Fred Zinnemann, whom he had honoured in London days >before. >And when we asked what he was reading, he breathed a sigh of relief and >mentioned a book about economic wars of the future, whose author and >title I didn't recognise. > >'You're better off reading Don Quixote,' I told him. 'It's all in >there.' >The truth is that Don Quixote is not read by half the people who mention > >it in conversation, but very few own up to never having opened it. >Clinton proved with two or three references that he knew it well. > >Enthused, he asked us all to name our favourite books. Styron chose >Huckleberry Finn by Mark Twain, I would have chosen Oedipus Rex by >Sophocles, which has taken pride of place on my bedside table for 20 >years, but I decided on the Count Of Monte Cristo for reasons hard to >explain. Clinton's favourite was Meditations by Marcus Aurelius and >Fuentes didn't hesitate on Absalom! Absalom!, William Faulkner's best >work, although some prefer Light In August for personal reasons. In >homage to Faulkner, Clinton stood up and, taking long strides around the > >table, recited from memory Benji's monologue from The Sound And The Fury > >- an astonishing but almost impenetrable passage. > >Talk of Faulkner led us once more on to the subject of the affinities >between Caribbean writers and the authors of the American South. It >seemed logical to us to view the Caribbean not as a geographical area >confined to the Caribbean sea but as a vast cultural and historical >space >stretching down to the north of Brazil and up to the Mississippi basin. >Thus Mark Twain, William Faulkner, John Steinbeck and so many others are > >just as Caribbean in their own right as Jorge Amado or Derek Walcott. >Clinton, born and bred in Arkansas, welcomed the idea and happily >proclaimed his own Caribbean affiliation. > >It was approaching midnight when Clinton had to interrupt the >conversation to take an urgent call from Gerry Adams, and then and >there, >he authorised Adams to raise funds and campaign for peace in Northern >Ireland. That would have been a historic ending to an unforgettable >evening had Fuentes not gone one step further. He asked Clinton who he >considered to be his enemies. The answer was instant. 'My only enemy is >right-wing religious fundamentalism.' With that, dinner was over. On the > >other occasions that I have met Clinton, in public or in private, my >first impressions have been confirmed. He is quite the opposite of what >Latin Americans imagine a US president to be. > >So is it right that this exceptionally human man should have his place >in >history distorted because he couldn't find a secluded spot in which to >make love? It's true: the most powerful man on earth was unable to >consummate a secret passion because of the invisible but ever-present >eyes of his security force, a force that serves more to prevent than to >protect. > >There are no curtains at the windows of the Oval Office. There is no >lock >on the bathroom door behind which Clinton carries out his more private >matters. The vase of flowers that you see behind him in photographs of >the Oval Office is, according to the press, host to the bugging device >that provided details of his affair. > >Sadder still, the President only wanted to do what the common man has >done behind his wife's back since the world began. > >Puritan stupidity did not only refuse him that, it withheld his right to > >deny it. > >Fiction was invented the day Jonas arrived home and told his wife that >he >was three days late because he had been swallowed by a whale. Shielding >himself with a similar trick of story telling, Clinton denied that he >had >had sexual relations with Monica Lewinsky. He denied it with his head >held high, as any self-respecting adulterer would. Because at the end of > >the day, his personal drama is a private matter between him and his >wife. >Hillary was quick to defend him to the world with Homeric dignity. > >So it should be. It is one thing to lie to deceive, it is something >quite >different to conceal the truth in order to protect one's private life. >By >right, no one is obliged to denounce themselves publicly. But because >Clinton persisted in his initial denial, he has been >prosecuted in every way possible. Surely it is more dignified to perjure > >yourself in defence of carnal desire, than to condemn love altogether? >It >was Clinton's misfortune that, with the same determination with which he > >denied he was to blame, he was later to admit it and carry on admitting >it in every single media - be it printed, visual or spoken - to the >point >of total humiliation.This was the fatal mistake of a lover disturbed in >foreplay. Clinton will go down in history not for having made love >badly, >but for having turned the act of love on its head. He submitted to oral >sex while on the telephone to a senator. He sacrificed himself to a >frigid cigar. He resorted to every trick and appliance he could in order > >to make a mockery of nature, but the harder he tried, the more his >inquisitors found grounds against him. Because puritanism is an >insatiable vice that feeds off its own shit. > >The entire impeachment process has been a sinister plot by fanatics for >the personal destruction of a political adversary whose grandeur they >could not bear. The method chosen was the criminal abuse of the justice >system by a fundamentalist public prosecutor named Kenneth Starr, whose >inflamed and salacious examination of witnesses >seemed to excite him to the point of orgasm. > >The Bill Clinton that we met four months ago at a White House gala >held for Andres Pastrana was a different man. He was no longer the >laid-back graduate of Martha's Vineyard, but a condemned man, wizened >and >shy. His professional smile couldn't hide his physical exhaustion; it >was >like the metal fatigue of an old plane. > >Days before, at a dinner with journalists, in the presence of the grande > >dame of the Washington Post, Katharine Graham, I heard someone say that >judging by the Clinton trial, the US is still the country of Nathaniel >Hawthorne. My dinner at the White House was the living proof. > >Hawthorne, the great American novelist of the last century denounced the > >horrors of New England fundamentalism which saw the Salem witches burnt >alive. His best work, The Scarlet Letter, is the story of Hestor Prynne, > >a young married woman who had an illegitimate child by a Man who wasn't >her husband. In the novel, a Kenneth Starr figure of the time orders >that >she shall be punished by wearing a penitent's shirt marked with the >letter A, the same colour and smell as blood. A guard is ordered to >follow her everywhere she goes, beating a drum so that passers-by will >stand aside. > >The novel's ending shatters the dreams of our present day Starr, For the > >father of Prynne's child turns out to be the minister of the very cult >that martyred her. > >The morals and the methods of the persecution of Clinton and >Prynne are essentially the same. When Clinton's enemies were unable to >find a basis for prosecuting him for what they wanted, they hounded him >with questions until they caught him in a secondary snare. They forced >him to denounce himself in public, they forced him to repent for >something that he hadn't done, live on air. The drums that haunted >Hester >Prynne were replaced with the latest information technology, and through > >the lusty questions of the prosecutor, children at their mother's >breast learned of the lies that their parents had told them about how >they came to exist. > >Beaten by fatigue, Clinton succumbed to the unforgivable madness >of an imagined enemy 5,396 sea miles from the White House forcefully >punishing him just to divert attention from his personal grief. > >Toni Morrison, a Nobel Prize winner and one of the greatest >writers of this dying century, sums it up in one inspired flourish. >'They >have treated Clinton as if he was a black president.' > > > >Copyright Gabriel Garcia Marquez /Cambio Translation by Angelique >Chrisafis. >
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