Jan
25
2010

My Favorite Newspaper Lede, Ever.

Gabriel García Márquez is a master of fiction, but what most people don’t realize is that he started as a journalist. But, he wasn’t your standard run-of-the-mill writer. Below is a lede to an article he wrote for El Espectador about a remote part of Columbia. After reading an intro sentence like that, is there anyway you wouldn’t continue?

Several years ago a ghostly, glassy-looking man, with a big stomach as taut as a drum, came to a doctor’s office in the city. He said, ‘Doctor, I have come to have you remove a monkey that was put in my belly.’

—Gabriel García Márquez, El Espectador

2 Responses to “My Favorite Newspaper Lede, Ever.”

  1. Justin says:

    Don’t leave us hanging – where is the rest of the article?!

  2. Adam Harrell says:

    Hey Justin,

    I’ve been searching far and wide for the whole article in english. I came across the lede in this great article about Gabriel Garcia Marquez that was in the Columbia Journalism Review — http://www.cjr.org/second_read/the_hack_1.php?page=all

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