In 2000, Talk magazine’s famous editor Tina Brown commissioned journalist Silvana Paternostro to do an article on Gabriel García Márquez for its oral history section.

For months, Paternostro (who is Colombian) interviewed people from “Gabo’s” inner circle, delivered her story, and then Talk abruptly shut down in 2002. 

However, Paternostro — ​ the author of several books and one of  Time/CNN's "50 Latin American leaders to watch in the new millennium" — dusted off those interviews and conducted new ones to turn her trove of anecdotes into a book, Soledad y Compañía (Solitude and Company) published by Vintage Español, the first oral narrative in Spanish of the celebrated Colombian writer.

Tinta Fresca: From what the people in the book say, García Márquez’s portrait comes across as neither black nor white, but gray.

With Gabo it always is either black or white. People love him or hate him. And so what I did was I tried to humanize him. Neither a saint nor a devil. 

You break Soledad y Compañía in two parts: Before One Hundred Years of Solitude, and after.

I was interested in knowing how this person, someone who had come from an environment that I knew so well, could write such a masterpiece, how it changed his life, and how it changed the perception that the world had of Latin America.

One of your interviewees states that success went to García Márquez’s head. 

I think, and there are some people who have said the same, that it is impossible not to change with fame and money. There’s a part of me that empathizes with him. Imagine that everyone wants something from you. And I saw it writing my book.

Does the book’s title mean that, although famous, he could still feel alone while surrounded by throngs of people?

I use a lot of wordplay here.  One, that as a writer, you have to have solitude, but also friends. He would not have been able to write One Hundred Years of Solitude had he not had such good friends. And also, “solitude and company,” because that book is almost like a company or enterprise. An institution. 

What is surprising is the fact that he was crucial to the development of Prensa Latina, the official news agency of the Cuban Revolution. 

I included that because it is not well known. And, no one knows that he came to New York as Prensa Latina’s correspondent! To understand him, you also have to explain the relations he had with very powerful people, like [Fidel] Castro.

Are there works of García Márquez that have not been released?

I know that his papers are just being looked into. So let’s see what comes out of that.