There is magic in life
It can be a delight to return to one of your favourite books after many years. Re-reading a classic work invariably provides a subtly different experience to the first encounter, especially if that occurred when you were young.
Recently I returned to two classic texts, both of the most exquisite prose; one famous, the other much less so.
The two books in question were A Hundred Years of Solitude, the unsurpassed work of magical realism by Gabriel García Márquez, and Voices of the Old Sea, a masterful memoir written by Norman Lewis, in my opinion the most under-rated author of the 20th century.
Lewis recounted his days staying in lodgings in a Catalan fishing village in the 1940s, among people living an essentially mediaeval way of life shortly before the advent of mass tourism in the Costa Brava.
The books are respectively works of fiction and non-fiction, yet I was repeatedly struck by the similarities; at times I had to remind myself which was which. Norman Lewis’ elderly landlady, with her superstitions, her graded pay scale in which she would pay more for a caught fish that was ‘noble’ in appearance than one with features she considered ugly, could have stepped straight out of a García Márquez novel.
Lewis wrote realism in a magical way, while García Márquez wrote about magic in a realist style, such that the respective narrative voices begin to resemble each other.
At around the same time, as part of research for another book, I came across an academic paper summarizing some of the latest findings on hydrogen bonds and the chemical structure of water; rigorously scientific but curiously directly relevant to a vivid and captivating scene in A Hundred Years of Solitude. At the end of the first chapter José Arcadio Buendía takes his sons to the gypsy tent, pays the 30 reales entry fee and leads them to the centre of the marquee, where there is a giant with a hairless torso and shaved head, a brass ring in his nose, custodian of a pirate’s chest. As he opens the chest, a glacial air emerges.
Inside there is a huge transparent block, with rainbow colours shimmering in the early evening light. The father, in awe of the sight, smell and touch of the block, suggests that it must be the largest diamond in the world. No, comes the reply. It’s ice. This is, Arcadio Buendía declares, the greatest invention of the age.
As any student of GCSE chemistry will be able to inform you, the simple chemical formula of water, H2O, is deceptive. There are just two hydrogen atoms and one oxygen atom for each molecule, but one of the simplest chemical formulae for any compound belies the strange complexity with which the molecules interact with each other to form the unique properties of ice and water. Hydrogen is the lightest element, with a melting point minus 259 degrees Celcius, just above absolute zero. Oxygen is not much heavier, melting at minus 218. Yet put just three of these atoms together and the melting point is zero, more than 200 degrees higher! Water ‘should’ be a gas at the prevailing temperatures and atmospheric pressure of planet earth, extrapolating from the basic laws of chemistry and physics, in which case there would be no life.
The explanation lies in the strength of the hydrogen bond which connects the molecules by virtue of the relatively denuded hydrogen nuclei and their positive charge, binding the molecules together. These powerful bonds create a more stable, less volatile substance than one would expect given the atomic number. It also explains the unusual property in that water is less dense in its solid form than as a liquid, hence icebergs float. Hydrogen bonds have been known about for centuries but a full explanation of their complex dynamics remains elusive. The research paper that I came across revealed more. It transpires that some water molecules are interacting, while some are randomly distributed and non-interacting. Hydrogen bonds form a complex, three-dimensional and dynamic network (A new spectroscopy reveals water’s quantum secrets, Science Daily, 25 October 2024).
So when José Arcadio Buendía describes ice as ‘the greatest invention of all time’ his ingenuous observation revealed a profound scientific truth.
What does this have to do with ghostwriting? Well, in many seemingly matter-of-fact works of non-fiction that I have had the privilege to write, there can be magical moments or themes that serve as a reminder to treat life as a gift and not a given.
I’ve written about a taxi driver who became CEO of LEGO, about a Californian learning method that helped lift hundreds of subsistence farmers in Tanzania out of poverty, and about how people alone in extreme peril experience the tangible presence of a loved one, urging them to survive.
There is magic in everyday life. This is something that writers of true genius, like Gabriel García Márquez and Norman Lewis, appreciate. It helps a writer to maintain a child’s eye, and never cease to wonder at the mysterious universe into which we’re thrown.