MEXICO CITY (AP) — The family of
Nobel laureate Gabriel Garcia Marquez says the late Colombian
novelist's archive was offered only to the University of Texas, which
will be the materials' repository.
The
Harry Ransom Center, a literary research archive at the university's
campus in Austin, announced Monday that it would receive the archive.
The
family explained that it chose the Texas center "because it is one of
the places that does this sort of archiving and preservation of
documents better than anyone."
"At no time was the archive offered
to other centers and at no moment was it auctioned, nor was the highest
bidder sought," the letter said.The Ransom Center already has extensive archives on writers Jorge Luis Borges, William Faulkner and James Joyce. Other Nobel laureates included in its collection are Samuel Beckett, T.S. Eliot, Ernest Hemingway and John Steinbeck.
Monday's announcement had raised eyebrows in Colombia.
"There's
some regret that this entire archive we're talking about didn't go to
Colombia, but I understand there were private negotiations and we
respect those," Sergio Zapata, spokesman with the National Library of
Colombia, said after the deal was revealed.
Garcia
Marquez's family said some objects would go to the Colombian library,
including the typewriter the author used to write "One Hundred Years of
Solitude," as well as his Nobel Prize medal and certificate. They said
discussions with the national library had been going on for more than a
year.
"There will also be
other things that we want to leave in Mexico, since it was Gabo's home
for 50 years," the family said, without specifying what those items
would be. Garcia Marquez was known lovingly as Gabo.
Garcia Marquez, the ultimate exemplar of literature's magic realism, died April 17 at his home in Mexico City. He was 87.