at least i now know what movie they were watching

A commenter named Michael has found some details on the Gabriel Garcia Marquez and Mario Vargas Llosa feud:

A little googling - marquez+llosa+1976+cine - and I might have a couple of answers, though no idea whether the information I've uncoverd is accurate. The movie in question that fateful day appears to have been René Cardona's, "La odisea de los Andes". According to this site:

http://despistado.blogspot.com/2006/09/vargas-llosa-vs-garca-mrquez.html

The dispute was over Llosa's wife, Patricia, somehow. There are at least two versions of why they came to blows, or so it says. Another site discusses the incident, here:

http://www.geocities.com/awcampos/vpolemica.html

Thank you! This is one more reason why i need to learn Spanish properly, instead of the abominable excuse for it that i hate to admit that i know... which does not even qualify as pidgin Spanish. This seems to be the film in the IMDB, and yep, it seems that it was the original take of the story that wound up in American theaters as Alive.

Tales from the Town of Widows

Nope. Not my cup of tea. Tales from the Town of Widows is a nice enough book though.

This is not like my reaction to that charlatan Pessl. That was disgusting, pretentious hype. No, my problems with Cañón are something else altogether. His writing is sincere, well-intentioned, and seems to have a lot of promise. Unfortunately, it was a first novel. The debt to Marquez is enormous, although i wonder if the more appropriate comparison would be to Allende. He probably deserves every bit of praise he can get right now, and the reviews had me quite excited. Unfortunately, they do not ring true for me.

The characterization of the women made me wince, as they are unlike any other women i've known. It took them years for them to build a new society after all of the men of their village were shanghaied into soldiering for communist rebels. I could accept this as part of the nature of the genre, but the mix of gritty reality with exaggeration of fables did not sit right for me. Violence and absurdity can easily be accomplished, but violence and whimsy? That's Lewis Carroll and that does not seem to be what Cañón was striving for. Neither did the hare-brained escapades didn't blend well into the agrarian utopia that they nearly spontaneously development later.

The guy can create eccentric backstories quite easily, but too often they don't seem to have any point other than being entertaining grotesques.

I just don't know. I probably would have enjoyed the book a lot better if i had not just finished The Echo Maker prior to it. Sorry.