Influential writer
and Colombian Nobel laureate Gabriel Garcia Marquez dies at 87 ADVERTISING Influential writer
and Colombian Nobel laureate Gabriel Garcia Marquez dies at 87 MEXICO CITY — Nobel laureate Gabriel Garcia Marquez crafted intoxicating fiction from the fatalism, fantasy, cruelty and
Influential writer
and Colombian Nobel laureate Gabriel Garcia Marquez dies at 87
MEXICO CITY — Nobel laureate Gabriel Garcia Marquez crafted intoxicating fiction from the fatalism, fantasy, cruelty and heroics of the world that set his mind churning as a child growing up on Colombia’s Caribbean coast.
One of the most revered and influential writers of his generation, he brought Latin America’s charm and maddening contradictions to life in the minds of millions and became the best-known practitioner of “magical realism,” a blending of fantastic elements into portrayals of daily life that made the extraordinary seem almost routine.
In his works, clouds of yellow butterflies precede a forbidden lover’s arrival. A heroic liberator of nations dies alone, destitute and far from home. “A Very Old Man With Enormous Wings,” as one of his short stories is called, is spotted in a muddy courtyard.
Garcia Marquez’s own epic story ended Thursday, at age 87, with his death at his home in southern Mexico City, according to two people close to the family who spoke on condition of anonymity out of respect for the family’s privacy.
Known to millions simply as “Gabo,” Garcia Marquez was widely seen as the Spanish language’s most popular writer since Miguel de Cervantes in the 17th century. His extraordinary literary celebrity spawned comparisons with Mark Twain and Charles Dickens.
Boston Marathon field expands by a third to 36,000 runners — now, where to put them?
BOSTON — More than 5,000 runners were still on the Boston Marathon course when the bombs went off on Boylston Street.
Race organizers were eager to invite them back — to let them finish what they started — and aware of the message that would send.
“The thought was: If those people, like so many others, wanted to have some physical expression of resilience and determination, it would probably be that many of them at least would want to run the whole race,” Boston Athletic Association president Tom Grilk said as he prepared for the 118th Boston Marathon. “Can we do that? We thought we’d like to do that.”
Then there were the police and firefighters who helped at the site of the explosions; the doctors and nurses and volunteers and EMTs who tended to the wounded; the injured themselves, and friends and relatives who wanted to run in their honor or memory.
After capping the field at 27,000 for about five years, race organizers quickly realized that would not be enough for Monday. But soon the effort to be more inclusive for what proves to be an emotional return to the streets ran into the reality of New England life: The roads built in a horse and buggy era weren’t made for tens of thousands of runners, nor the thousands of fans who cheer them on.
Former inmate who robbed bank saying he was homesick for prison gets 3½ more years
CHICAGO — An ex-con who spent most of his adult life behind bars on Thursday got what he said he wanted for robbing a suburban Chicago bank. The 74-year-old gets to go back to the place he called home — prison.
Telling Walter Unbehaun he frightened a teller by showing her a revolver tucked in his waistband during the 2013 heist, a federal judge imposed a 3 1/2 year prison sentence, citing a rap sheet that includes crimes from home invasion to kidnapping.
“This is not the first time you’ve inspired fear,” Judge Sharon Johnson Coleman said, scolding the high-school dropout and part-time bathtub repairman.
As he had on the day he robbed the bank, Unbehaun gripped a cane as he hobbled to a podium to make a brief statement. He didn’t withdraw his wish to go to prison, though he said, “I don’t want to die in prison.”
“My crime is bad, there ain’t no doubt,” he said calmly. “I just wanna be like everybody else.”
By wire sources
