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Some commenters believe that only someone who has the Latin American 'experience' would 'get' this novel. I was born in a communist Latin-American Some commenters believe that only someone who has the Latin American 'experience' would 'get' this novel. I was born in a communist Latin-American country and lived there as a young child. I grew up in an American city where over 70% of the population is Latin American. I've read this book (many years ago) in both English and Spanish and it was a chore to finish.
Mejores Libros En Espanol 2017
Life is too short to waste reading something you don't enjoy. Revised 28 March 2012 Huh? I just had the weirdest dream. There was this little town, right? And everybody had, like, the same two names.
And there was this guy who lived under a tree and a lady who ate dirt and some other guy who just made little gold fishes all the time. And sometimes it rained and sometimes it didn’t, and and there were fire ants everywhere, and some girl got carried off into the sky by her laundry Wow. That was messed up.
I need some coffee. The was roughly ho Revised 28 March 2012 Huh? I just had the weirdest dream.
There was this little town, right? And everybody had, like, the same two names. And there was this guy who lived under a tree and a lady who ate dirt and some other guy who just made little gold fishes all the time. And sometimes it rained and sometimes it didn’t, and and there were fire ants everywhere, and some girl got carried off into the sky by her laundry Wow. That was messed up. I need some coffee. The was roughly how I felt after reading this book.
This is really the only time I’ve ever read a book and thought, “You know, this book would be awesome if I were stoned.” And I don’t even know if being stoned works on books that way. Gabriel Garcia Marquez (which is such a fun name to say) is one of those Writers You Should Read. You know the type – they’re the ones that everyone claims to have read, but no one really has. The ones you put in your online dating profile so that people will think you’re smarter than you really are. You get some kind of intellectual bonus points or something, the kind of highbrow cachet that you just don’t get from reading someone like Stephen King or Clive Barker. Marquez was one of the first writers to use “magical realism,” a style of fantasy wherein the fantastic and the unbelievable are treated as everyday occurrences. While I’m sure it contributed to the modern genre of urban fantasy – which also mixes the fantastic with the real – magical realism doesn’t really go out of its way to point out the weirdness and the bizarrity.
These things just happen. A girl floats off into the sky, a man lives far longer than he should, and these things are mentioned in passing as though they were perfectly normal. In this case, Colonel Aureliano Buendia has seventeen illegitimate sons, all named Aureliano, by seventeen different women, and they all come to his house on the same day.
Remedios the Beauty is a girl so beautiful that men just waste away in front of her, but she doesn’t even notice. The twins Aureliano Segundo and Jose Arcadio Segundo may have, in fact, switched identities when they were children, but no one knows for sure – not even them. In the small town of Macondo, weird things happen all the time, and nobody really notices. Or if they do notice that, for example, the town’s patriarch has been living for the last twenty years tied to a chestnut tree, nobody thinks anything is at all unusual about it. This, of course, is a great example of Dream Logic – the weird seems normal to a dreamer, and you have no reason to question anything that’s happening around you. Or if you do notice that something is wrong, but no one else seems to be worried about it, then you try to pretend like coming to work dressed only in a pair of spangly stripper briefs and a cowboy hat is perfectly normal. Another element of dreaminess that pervades this book is that there’s really no story here, at least not in the way that we have come to expect.
Reading this book is kind of like a really weird game of The Sims - it’s about a family that keeps getting bigger and bigger, and something happens to everybody. So, the narrator moves around from one character to another, giving them their moment for a little while, and then it moves on to someone else, very smoothly and without much fanfare.
There’s very little dialogue, so the story can shift very easily, and it often does. Each character has their story to tell, but you’re not allowed to linger for very long on any one of them before Garcia shows you what’s happening to someone else. The result is one long, continuous narrative about this large and ultimately doomed family, wherein the Buendia family itself is the main character, and the actual family members are secondary to that. It was certainly an interesting reading experience, but it took a while to get through. I actually kept falling asleep as I read it, which is unusual for me. But perhaps that’s what Garcia would have wanted to happen.
By reading his book, I slipped off into that non-world of dreams and illusions, where the fantastic is commonplace and ice is something your father takes you to discover. “Arcadio imposed obligatory military service for men over eighteen, declared to be public property any animals walking the streets after six in the evening, and made men who were overage wear red armbands. He sequestered Father Nicanor in the parish house under pain of execution and prohibited him from saying mass or ringing the bells unless it was for a Liberal victory.
In order that no one would doubt the severity of his aims, he ordered a firing squad organized in the square and had it shoot a scarecrow. At first no one took him seriously.”. I guarantee that 95% of you will hate this book, and at least 70% of you will hate it enough to not finish it, but I loved it. Guess I was just in the mood for it. Here's how it breaks down: AMAZING THINGS: I can literally feel new wrinkles spreading across the surface of my brain when I read this guy. He's so wicked smart that there's no chance he's completely sane.
His adjectives and descriptions are 100% PERFECT, and yet entirely nonsensical. After reading three chapters, it starts making sens I guarantee that 95% of you will hate this book, and at least 70% of you will hate it enough to not finish it, but I loved it. Guess I was just in the mood for it. Here's how it breaks down: AMAZING THINGS: I can literally feel new wrinkles spreading across the surface of my brain when I read this guy. He's so wicked smart that there's no chance he's completely sane.
His adjectives and descriptions are 100% PERFECT, and yet entirely nonsensical. After reading three chapters, it starts making sense.
And that's when you realize you're probably crazy, too. The magical realism style of the book is DELICIOUS. Sure, it's an epic tragedy following a long line of familial insanity, but that doesn't stop the people from eating dirt, coming back from the dead, spreading a plague of contagious insomnia, or enjoying a nice thunderstorm of yellow flowers. It's all presented in such a natural light that you think, 'Of course.
Of course he grows aquatic plants in his false teeth. Now why wouldn't he?' This guy is the epitome of unique.
Give me a single sentence, ANY SENTENCE the man has ever written, and I will recognize it. Nobody writes like him. (Also, his sentences average about 1,438 words each, so pretty much it's either him or Faulkner) REASONS WHY MOST OF YOU WILL HATE THIS BOOK: I have to engage every ounce of my mental ability just to understand what the.@ is going on!
Most people who read for relaxation and entertainment will want to send Marquez hate mail. Also, there are approximately 20 main characters and about 4 names that they all share. I realize that's probably realistic in Hispanic cultures of the era, but SERIOUSLY, by the time you get to the sixth character named Aureliano, you'll have to draw yourself a diagram. Not even the classic Russians suffer from as much name-confusion as this guy. On an uber-disturbing note, Marquez has once again (as he did in Love in the Time of Cholera) written a grown man having sex with a girl as young as 9. Which is pretty much #1 on my list of 'Things That Make You Go EWW!!!' He makes Lolita look like Polyanna on the virtue chart!
(Note to authors: You give ONE of your characters a unique, but disgusting characteristic and it's good writing. Give it to more than one, and we start thinking we're reading your psychological profile, ya creep!) If you feel like pushing your brain to its max, read it. The man did win the Nobel after all, it's amazing. But get ready to work harder to understand something than you ever have before in your life. And may God be with you. FAVORITE QUOTES: (coincidentally also the shortest ones in the book) She had the rare virtue of never existing completely except at the opportune moment. He soon acquired the forlorn look that one sees in vegetarians.
Children inherit their parents' madness. He really had been through death, but he had returned because he could not bear the solitude. The air was so damp that fish could have come in through the doors and swum out the windows. He was unable to bear in his soul the crushing weight of so much past. It's enough for me to be sure that you and I exist at this moment. A person doesn't die when he should but when he can. So I know that I'm supposed to like this book because it is a classic and by the same author who wrote Love in the Time of Cholera.
Unfortunately, I just think it is unbelievably boring with a jagged plot that seems interminable. Sure, the language is interesting and the first line is the stuff of University English courses. Sometimes I think books get tagged with the 'classic' label because some academics read them and didn't understand and so they hailed these books as genius. These same acade So I know that I'm supposed to like this book because it is a classic and by the same author who wrote Love in the Time of Cholera.
Unfortunately, I just think it is unbelievably boring with a jagged plot that seems interminable. Sure, the language is interesting and the first line is the stuff of University English courses. Sometimes I think books get tagged with the 'classic' label because some academics read them and didn't understand and so they hailed these books as genius. These same academics then make a sport of looking down their noses at readers who don't like these books for the very same reasons.
(If this all sounds too specific, yes I had this conversation with a professor of mine). I know that other people love this book and more power to them, I've tried to read it all the way through three different times and never made it past 250 pages before I get so bored keeping up with all the births, deaths, magical events and mythical legends. I'll put it this way, I don't like this book for the same reason that I never took up smoking.
If I have to force myself to like it, what's the point. When I start coughing and hacking on the first cigarette, that is my body telling me this isn't good for me and I should quit right there. When I start nodding off on the second page of One Hundred Years of Solitude that is my mind trying to tell me I should find a better way to pass my time.
More like A Hundred Years of Torture. I read this partly in a misguided attempt to expand my literary horizons and partly because my uncle was a big fan of Gabriel Garcia Marquez. Then again, he also used to re-read Ulysses for fun, which just goes to show that you should never take book advice from someone whose IQ is more than 30 points higher than your own. I have patience for a lot of excesses, like verbiage and chocolate, but not for 5000 pages featuring three generations of people with the More like A Hundred Years of Torture.
I read this partly in a misguided attempt to expand my literary horizons and partly because my uncle was a big fan of Gabriel Garcia Marquez. Then again, he also used to re-read Ulysses for fun, which just goes to show that you should never take book advice from someone whose IQ is more than 30 points higher than your own. I have patience for a lot of excesses, like verbiage and chocolate, but not for 5000 pages featuring three generations of people with the same names. I finally tore out the family tree at the beginning of the book and used it as a bookmark! To be fair, the book isn’t actually 5000 pages, but also to be fair, the endlessly interwoven stories of bizarre exploits and fantastical phenomena make it seem like it is. The whole time I read it I thought, “This must be what it’s like to be stoned.” Well, actually most of the time I was just trying to keep the characters straight.
The rest of the time I was wondering if I was the victim of odorless paint fumes. However, I think I was simply the victim of Marquez’s brand of magical realism, which I can take in short stories but find a bit much to swallow in a long novel.
Again, to be fair, this novel is lauded and loved by many, and I can sort of see why. A shimmering panoramic of a village’s history would appeal to those who enjoy tragicomedy laced heavily with fantasy. It’s just way too heavily laced for me. ما الذي كنت تنتظره؟- تنهدت أورسولا، وأضافت:- إن الــزمـــن يـمـضـي الـزمـن وقسوة مروره، هو بالنسبة لي التيمة الأساسية بهذه الرواية دورة حياة زوجين واطفالهم، تحولهم لشباب ثم للكبر والعجز.
وتوالي الأجيال مع الكثير من الحب والشغف.السحر والعجب وهذا السطر من الأم هو أول ما بث فيّ قشعريرة غير متوقعة بعد ربع الرواية، وأخترته لأبدأ به حكايتي مع تلك المدينة التي ابتدعها جابريل جارسيا ماركيز -رحمه الله- في عزلة من الزمن مــاكــونـدو أولا: أزاي تستمتع بهذه الرواية.ابعد تماما عن اي افكار مسبقة عنها، الفصل حو ما الذي كنت تنتظره؟- تنهدت أورسولا، وأضافت:- إن الــزمـــن يـمـضـي الـزمـن وقسوة مروره، هو بالنسبة لي التيمة الأساسية بهذه الرواية دورة حياة زوجين واطفالهم، تحولهم لشباب ثم للكبر والعجز. I remember the day i stopped watching cartoons: an episode of thundercats in which a few of the cats were trapped in some kind of superbubble thing and it hit me that, being cartoons, the characters could just be erased and re-drawn outside the bubble. Or could just fly away. Or tunnel their way out. Or do whatever, really, they wanted. Afterall they were line and color in a world of line and color.
Now this applies to any work of fiction - i mean, Cervantes could've just written i remember the day i stopped watching cartoons: an episode of thundercats in which a few of the cats were trapped in some kind of superbubble thing and it hit me that, being cartoons, the characters could just be erased and re-drawn outside the bubble. Or could just fly away.
Or tunnel their way out. Or do whatever, really, they wanted. Afterall they were line and color in a world of line and color. Now this applies to any work of fiction - i mean, Cervantes could've just written Don Quixote out of any perilous situation, but it just felt different with a lowest-common-denominator cartoon.
It felt that adherence to reality (reality as defined within the world of the cartoon) wasn’t a top priority. This ended my cartoon watching days and i’ve pored over it in the years that followed: was it a severe lack or an overabundence of imagination that made it so that while all my friends were digging saturday morning cartoons i alternated between tormenting my parents and attempting to use logic to disprove the fact that everyone i knew and everyone i ever would know was gonna die? I had a similar experience with One Hundred Years of Solitude. The first chapter is just brilliant: gypsies bring items to Macondo, a village hidden away from mass civilization by miles of swamp and mountains these everyday items (magnets, ice, etc.) are interpreted as ‘magic’ by people who have never seen them and it forces the reader to reconfigure his/her perception of much of what s/he formerly found ordinary. Download ableton live 10 crack.
And then the gypsies bring a magic carpet. One that works. And there is no distinction b/t magnets and the magic carpet. This, i guess, is magical realism. And i had a Thundercats moment. Lemme explain: the magic carpet immediately renders all that preceded it as irrelevant.
Are ice and magnets the same as magic carpets? What is the relation between magic and science? How can i trust and believe in a character who takes such pains to understand ice and magnets and who, using the most primitive scientific means, works day and night to discover that the earth is round - but then will just accept that carpets can fly? Or that people can instantaneously increase their body weight sevenfold by pure will?
Or that human blood can twist and turn through streets to find a specific person? Fuck the characters, how can i trust the writer if the world is totally undefined? If people can refuse to die (and it’s not explained who or how or why): where are the stakes? If someone can make themselves weigh 1000 pounds, what can’t they do? How can i care about any situation if Garcia Marquez can simply make the persons involved sprout wings and fly away? Should the book be read as fairy-tale? I don’t think it’s meant to be read solely as any of those.
And i’d label anyone a fraud who tried to explain away a 500 page book as mere allegory. Moreover, i don’t believe Garcia Marquez has as fertile an imagination as Borges or Cervantes or Mutis –- three chaps who, perhaps, could pull something like this off on storytelling power alone; but three chaps who, though they may dabble in this stuff, clearly define the world their characters inhabit. So i’m at page 200. And i’m gonna try and push on. But it’s tough. Do i care when someone dies when death isn’t permanent?
And do i care about characters who have seen death reversed but don’t freak the fuck out (which is inconsistent with what does make them freak the fuck out) and who also continue to cry when someone dies? Yes, there are some gems along the way, but i think had Solitude been structured as a large collection of interconnected short stories (kinda like a magical realism Winesberg, Ohio) it would've worked much better.
This is one of the most beloved books of all time and i’m not so arrogant (damn close) to discount the word of all these people (although I do have gothboy, DFJ, and Borges on my side - a strong argument for or against anything), and not so blind to see the joy this brings to so many people i fully understand it's a powerful piece of work. But i really don’t get it. And i aggressively recommend The Adventures and Misadventures of Maqroll to any and all who find Solitude to be the end all and be all. By Gabriel Garcia Marquez is a tremendous piece of literature.
It's not an easy read. You're not going to turn its pages like you would the latest John Grisham novel, or The DaVinci Code. You have to read each page, soaking up every word, immersing yourself in the imagery. Marquez says that he tells the story as his grandmother used to tell stories to him: with a brick face. That's useful to remember while reading, because that is certainly the tone the book tak by Gabriel Garcia Marquez is a tremendous piece of literature. It's not an easy read. You're not going to turn its pages like you would the latest John Grisham novel, or The DaVinci Code.
You have to read each page, soaking up every word, immersing yourself in the imagery. Marquez says that he tells the story as his grandmother used to tell stories to him: with a brick face. That's useful to remember while reading, because that is certainly the tone the book takes. If you can get through the first 50 pages, you will enjoy it.
But those 50 are a doozy. It's hard to keep track of the characters, at times (mainly because they are all named Jose Arcadio or Aureliano), but a family tree at the beginning of my edition was helpful. The book follows the Buendia family, from the founding of fictional Macondo to a fitting and fulfilling conclusion.
The family goes through wars, marriages, many births and deaths, as well as several technological advances and invasions by gypsies and banana companies (trust me, the banana company is important). You begin to realize, as matriarch Ursula does, that as time passes, time does not really pass for this family, but turns in a circle. And as the circle closes on Macondo and the Buendias, you realize that Mr. Marquez has taken you on a remarkable journey in his literature. Recommended, but be prepared for a hard read.
Magical realism has been one of my favorite genres of reading ever since I discovered Isabel Allende and the Latina amiga writers when I was in high school. Taking events from ordinary life and inserting elements of fantasy, Hispanic written magical realism books are something extraordinary. Many people compare Allende to Gabriel Garcia Marquez, who is considered the founder of magical realism. Until now, however, I had not read any of Marquez' full length novels so I had nothing to compare. On Magical realism has been one of my favorite genres of reading ever since I discovered Isabel Allende and the Latina amiga writers when I was in high school. Taking events from ordinary life and inserting elements of fantasy, Hispanic written magical realism books are something extraordinary. Many people compare Allende to Gabriel Garcia Marquez, who is considered the founder of magical realism.
Until now, however, I had not read any of Marquez' full length novels so I had nothing to compare. On this 50th anniversary of its first printing, One Hundred Years of Solitude is the revisit the shelf selection for the group catching up on classics for January 2017. An epic following the Buendia family for 100 years, Solitude is truly a great novel of the Americas that put magical realism on the map. Gabriel Garcia Marquez was born in Aracataca, Columbia in 1927.
Influenced by his grandmother's vivid story telling, Marquez decided at an early age that he wanted to be a writer. Upon completion of la Universidad de Cartagena, Marquez began his career as a reporter and soon began to write short stories. His earliest stories were published as early as the 1950s, yet in 1964 while living in Mexico City with his young family, he completed Solitude in a mere eighteen months.
Finally published for the first time in 1967, Solitude sold millions of copies, establishing Marquez as a world renown writer, leading to his receiving the Nobel Prize in 1982. Jose Arcadio Buendia and Ursula Iguaran lived in an isolated Colombian village where branches of the same family intermarried for centuries, resulting in children born with pigs tails or looking like lizards. Determined to end this cycle of incest, Buendia and a group of pioneers crossed the mountains and founded the village of Macondo. In the mid 1800s, Macondo was a fledging community, with Buendia, an alchemist, its most respected member. Jose Arcadio and Ursula went on to have three children: Aureliano, Jose Arcadio, and Amaranta.
These names and the personality traits that distinguished the original bearers of these names repeated themselves over the course of a century. Throughout the novel and the century of change to Macondo, all the Jose Arcadios were solitary individuals and inventors. Determined to decipher the gypsies secret to the universe, they holed themselves up in an alchemist's lab, rarely seen by the outside world.
The Aurelianos, on the other hand, were leaders of revolution. Colonel Aureliano Buendia started thirty two civil wars yet lost all of them. A relic who fathered seventeen sons of the same name and grew to become Macondo's most respected citizen, his spirit of adventure and discovery repeated itself in the descendants who bore his name.
Women held the family together. First Ursula who lived to be 122 years old and then her daughter Amaranta, the women expanded the family home and raised successive generations so that new Jose Arcadios and Aurelianos would not repeat the mistakes of their namesakes. Yet the same mistakes and characteristics occur: rejected love, spirit of adventure, lone soles willing to live for one hundred years in solitary confinement.
Additionally, the two characters who predicted all the events of the novel were not even members of the Buendia family: Pilar Ternera, a card reader who specialized in fates and could look at a Buendia to know his future; and Melquiades, a gypsy who befriended the original Jose Arcadio, leading all the successive generations to a life of solitude. At first Marquez equates solitude with death. Later on he includes individuals happy to live out their days alone. In order to make a point of his examples of solitude, he interjects countless examples of magical realism: a man bleeding to death down a street, yellow butterflies announcing a man's presence, a rain of epic proportions that would not end. With these and other countless examples throughout the text, Marquez created a magical realism genre that is still widely in use by Latino writers and others around the world today.
While used to the magical realism genre, Marquez usage and prose were a treat for me to read. His writing is so captivating, I read the entire novel over the course of a day because I desired to know how the Buendias cyclical existence would either repeat itself or change once and for all. Between the prose and magical realism and a memorable story for the ages, One Hundred Years of Solitude is an epic, genre changing, extraordinary novel. Authors of the last fifty years can credit Marquez' influence in their own work. I feel privileged to have finally read this saga deserving of its numerous awards and top ratings that eventually lead Marquez to earn a Nobel Prize. One Hundred Years of Solitude, a novel for the ages, meriting 5 wonderful stars. I must have missed something.
Either that, or some wicked hypnotist has tricked the world (and quite a few of my friends, it would seem) into believing that One Hundred Years of Solitude is a great novel. How did this happen?
One Hundred Years of Solitude is not a great novel. In fact, I'm not even sure it qualifies as a novel at all. Rather it reads like a 450-page outline for a novel which accidentally got published instead of the finished product. Don't get me wrong.
I'm not disputing th I must have missed something. Either that, or some wicked hypnotist has tricked the world (and quite a few of my friends, it would seem) into believing that One Hundred Years of Solitude is a great novel. How did this happen? One Hundred Years of Solitude is not a great novel. In fact, I'm not even sure it qualifies as a novel at all. Rather it reads like a 450-page outline for a novel which accidentally got published instead of the finished product.
Don't get me wrong. I'm not disputing that Marquez has an imaginative mind.
He does, unquestionably. Nor am I disputing that he knows how to come up with an interesting story.
He obviously does, or this wouldn't be the hugely popular book it is. As far as I'm concerned, though, he forgot to put the finishing touches to his story. In his rush to get the bare bones on paper, he forgot to add the things which bring a story alive.
Such as, you know, dialogue. Character arcs.
Pretty basic things, really. By focusing on the external side of things, and by never allowing his characters to speak for themselves (the dialogue in the book amounts to about five pages, if that), Marquez keeps his reader from getting to know his characters, and from understanding why they do the things they do. The lack of characterisation is such that the story basically reads like an unchronological chronicle of deeds and events that go on for ever without any attempt at an explanation or psychological depth. And yes, they're interesting events, I'll grant you that, but they're told with such emotional detachment that I honestly didn't care for any of the characters who experienced them. I kept waiting for Marquez to focus on one character long enough to make me care about what happened to him or her, but he never did, choosing instead to introduce new characters (more Aurelianos. Sigh) and move on.
I wish to all the gods of fiction he had left out some twenty Aurelianos and focused on the remaining four instead. With three-dimensional characters rather than two-dimensional ones, this could have been a fabulous book. As it is, it's just a shell.
What a waste of a perfectly good story. For a long time I could not find words to write anything on One Hundred Years of Solitude, for Marquez mesmerised me into a silence I didn't know how to break. But I have been commenting here and there on Goodreads and now it is good time, finally, to gather my thoughts in one piece. But this somewhat longer review is more a labour of love than a coherent attempt to review his opus. Marquez resets the history of universe such that the old reality ceases to exist and a new parallel world is born i For a long time I could not find words to write anything on One Hundred Years of Solitude, for Marquez mesmerised me into a silence I didn't know how to break. But I have been commenting here and there on Goodreads and now it is good time, finally, to gather my thoughts in one piece.
But this somewhat longer review is more a labour of love than a coherent attempt to review his opus. Marquez resets the history of universe such that the old reality ceases to exist and a new parallel world is born in which things do not conform to obsolete, worn-out laws. Everything in this world is to be discovered anew, even the most primary building block of life: water. Macondo is the first human settlement of Time Immemorial set up by the founding fathers of the Buendia family. It is a place where white and polished stones are like ‘prehistoric eggs’; an infant world, clean and pure, where ‘many things lack names.’ And it is natural that here, in the farther reaches of marshland prone to cataclysmic events, the mythscape of One Hundred Years of Solitude should come into existence. The tone of this epic and picaresque story is set ab initio. Take a gander at this: Many years later, as he faced the firing squad, Colonel Aureliano Buendia was to remember that distant afternoon when his father took him to discover ice.
It is not long before fateful human activity mars the innocent beauty of creation. The more they discover the more they are sucked into the inescapable cycle of life.
The primordial myth that moulds and shapes their destinies does not let them advance in their efforts to defeat the infernal solitude of existence, whatever they might do, however they might try. History gets back at them again and again and every generation is but a repeat of the past. It is to emphasise the cyclical nature of time, in my opinion, that names of principal characters are repeated in every generation, sometimes to the confusion of the reader, easily rectified by going back to the family tree provided in the start of the book. An external, portentous, disastrous, evil-like power guides and transforms the lives of people in the hamlet of Macondo. The sense of foreboding pervades the whole story: the rain continuing for many days and inundating the streets, the unceasing storm before the arrival in town of a heraldic character, and the fearful episode when townspeople begin to suffer a terrible memory loss, so that to remember the names and functions of things they write it down on labels and tie those labels to objects like chairs and tables. It tells us that we cannot hope for a future if our past is erased from the slates of our collective consciousness. Past may be a burden but it is also a great guiding force without which there's no future.
The only way to retain your sanity is to remember your history and cling to it, or prepare to go insane. When one Jose Arcadio Buendia loses the memory of things, he goes mad: Jose Arcadio Buendia conversed with Prudencio Aguilar until the dawn. A few hours later, worn out by the vigil, he went into Aureliano’s workshop and asked him: “What day is today?” Aureliano told him that it was Tuesday. “I was thinking the same thing,” Jose Arcadio Buendia said, “but suddenly I realized that it’s still Monday, like yesterday.
Look at the sky, look at the walls, look at the begonias. Today is Monday too.” On the next day, Wednesday, Jose Arcadio Buendia went back to the workshop. “This is a disaster,” he said. “Look at the air, listen to the buzzing of the sun, the same as yesterday and the day before. Today is Monday too.” That night Pietro Crespi found him on the porch, weeping forhis mother and father. On Thursday he appeared in the workshop again with the painful look of plowed ground. “The time machine has broken,” he almost sobbed,he spent six months examining things, trying to find a difference from their appearance on the previous day in the hope of discovering in them some change that would reveal the passage of time.
The town is threatened when the change taking place in the outside world begins to spill over into Macondo. Here we have a metaphor for the struggle of Maruqez’s native country and continent which is passing through internecine wars on its way toward externally imposed modernity. Divisions that hitherto did not exist come to define the inhabitants of Macondo and of towns farther afield. One of the Buendias, Colonel Aureliano, takes up a piece of metalwork as new and strange as a gun to mount a revolt and bring the promised glory to his land. New lines are drawn. New alliances are made. Old friends become enemies and enemies, partners.
Colonel Aureliano Buendia, when he is about to kill him, tells General Moncada: Remember, old friend, I'm not shooting you. It's the revolution that's shooting you.
The scene above captures the mechanistic element of their revolutionary war; the one below bares the meaninglessness of the conflict, so pertinent to the 20th century militarisation of the whole continent and its endless armed strife led by colonels and generals of all hues and shades. Tell me something, old friend: why are you fighting?'
What other reason could there be?' Colonel Gerineldo Marquez answered. 'For the great Liberal party.' You're lucky because you know why,' he answered. 'As far as I'm concerned, I've come to realize only just now that I'm fighting because of pride.'
That's bad,' Colonel Gerineldo Marquez said. Colonel Aureliano Buendia was amused at his alarm.
'Naturally,' he said. 'But in any case, it's better than not knowing why you're fighting.' He looked him in the eyes and added with a smile: Or fighting, like you, for something that doesn't have any meaning for anyone.” Although I tried to avoid getting into this discussion, but a review of this work is not possible without throwing in the inevitable buzzword – magical realism. Although the book gets high praise from most readers, it is to be expected that some readers would take a disliking to the basic ingredients from which Marquez draws his style and narrative devices. I want to address in particular one argument from the naysayer camp that pops up again and again: it is not realistic; it can’t happen; this is not how things work. So I ask (and try to answer): what is it with our obsession with “realism” that makes some of us reject the conceptual framework of this novel? Aristotle in Poetics argues that a convincing impossibility in mimesis is always preferable to an unconvincing possibility.
The stress is not on what can physically happen but on mimetic persuasion. This is why some novels that follow every bit of convention, every bit of realistic element in them turn out to be unbelievable stories with unbelievable characters.
You want to forget them as soon as you finish the book – and toss it aside. But on the other hand Greek tragedies populated with cosmic characters pulling suprahuman feats continue to enthrall generations of readers. How realistic are those stories? It is the writer’s task to convince us that this could have happened in a world he has created and set the rules for. In that Marquez is more than successful, and this is the basis of the enduring appeal of this work.
The distinction fell into place for me when I replaced ‘realism’ with ‘truth.’ Kafka’s haunting stories are so far from the 19th century convention of realism we have come to accept as the basis of novel-writing. His is not a representation of likely human activity (how could a human transform overnight into a large insect?) but it is nonetheless a harrowingly truthful story that advances existential dilemmas and makes a statement on human relationships, familial in particular. We say this is how it would feel like to be an outcast from one’s family. Or consider Hamsun’s in which a starving man puts his finger in his mouth and starts eating himself. In the ‘real’ world Kafka’s, Hamsun’s and Marquez’s characters cannot exist but the effect of their existence on us is as truthful and real as the dilemmas of any great realistic character ever created. Marquez, like a god, has written the First Testament of Latin America, synthesising myth and magic to reveal the truth of the human condition, and called it One Hundred Years of Solitude.
February 2015. 'The book picks up not too far after Genesis left off.' And this fictitious chronicle of the Buendia household in the etherial town of Macondo somewhere in Latin America does just that. Rightly hailed as a masterpiece of the 20th century, Garcia Marquez's 'One Hundred Years of Solitude' will remain on the reading list of every pretentious college kid, every under-employed author, every field-worker in Latin America, and indeed should be 'required reading for the entire human race,' as one review 'The book picks up not too far after Genesis left off.' And this fictitious chronicle of the Buendia household in the etherial town of Macondo somewhere in Latin America does just that. Rightly hailed as a masterpiece of the 20th century, Garcia Marquez's 'One Hundred Years of Solitude' will remain on the reading list of every pretentious college kid, every under-employed author, every field-worker in Latin America, and indeed should be 'required reading for the entire human race,' as one reviewer put it a few decades back.
No review, however laconic or ponderous, can do justice to this true piece of art. Perhaps I can only hint at a few of the striking features of the work that are so novel, so insightful, and which make it such a success in my opinion. By far and away the most inspiring element of the work is the author's tone. He reportedly self-conscioulsy wrote in the style that his grandmother back in Columbia used to tell him stories.
Thus there is a conversational, meandering, but indeed succinct and perfect narrative voice to whisk the reader through the years of Macondo's fantastical history. Not unrelatedly, the tone has ample visual imagery, with superb attention to detail (and just the right quantity and nature of the detail that surrounds everyday life) to help prod the story along. The dolls of the child-bride treasured by the mother-in-law and heroine Ursula. The paranormal and mundane contrivences of the gypsies that are celebrated in the opening pages and which close the book. The tree to which the mad genius who founded the town and Buendia line is tied and dies in. The pretentious suitcases of the returning emigre.
The goldfishes that are the relicts of a disillusioned but celebrated warrior. And the ubiquitous ants. All these objects have their proper place among the daily going abouts of the Buendia family, and serve to weave into the story a sense of BOTH the ordinary and the surreal. There is ample space in this world of Macondo and the Buendias for a sad commentary on that world South of the Rio Grande. Incessant, pointless civil wars. A rigid political and ecclesiastical hierarchy shoved down the throats of decent folk. The rampant exploitation of the tropics by outsiders, both foreign and domesitc.
And perhaps most significantly, the strangely marginal and uncomfortable space occupied by technology in daily life in the Latino world. I am surely not alone in uncovering some facet of the work that speaks so boldly and loudly to me. This rich yet surprisingly elegant novel has, it seems, on every page the germinating seeds of an exciting conversation that speaks directly to an observation and experience everybody, and especially those coming to or from Latin America (or any underdeveloped nation), has had. And of course there are the brilliant characters, and the sense one gets of how they are affected by, and in turn affect, their setting. The story is aided by a pedigree one keeps referring to in the beginning of the book, as its immense scope (yes, 100 years) and maddening array of characters demand of the reader to conjure up visualizations of what exactly is going on. It is no wonder that this work is celebrated for being almost biblical in scope. Yes, my review can be condensed into three words: READ THIS BOOK!!!
The Point of Myth? I suppose if your taste runs to JRR Tolkien and Carlos Castaneda this would be a book for you. But mine doesn’t and this isn’t. I prefer James Joyce and Carl Jung.
I understand Marquez’s metaphorical recapitulation of the history of Latin America, his articulation of the repetitiveness of human folly over generations, his recognition of the dangers of human inquiry and technological progress, his appreciation of the dialectical quality of things like ambition, masculine strengt The Point of Myth? I suppose if your taste runs to JRR Tolkien and Carlos Castaneda this would be a book for you. But mine doesn’t and this isn’t. I prefer James Joyce and Carl Jung. I understand Marquez’s metaphorical recapitulation of the history of Latin America, his articulation of the repetitiveness of human folly over generations, his recognition of the dangers of human inquiry and technological progress, his appreciation of the dialectical quality of things like ambition, masculine strength, sex, and family life. But I am still left unimpressed and unaffected by the result. For me the various Jose Arcadia Buendia’s and their homophonic relatives are like Hobbits.
They operate in the world in a permanent state of awed surprise - slack-jawed and glassy-eyed. They lack the ability for introspective reflection and so bumble from one crisis to the next but never confront the inimical content of themselves with any awareness. They'd rather be at home but only when they're away from it.
Consequently there is no tension of development, of discovery, but merely the flatness of yet another unnecessary familial trial that leads nowhere except to further obsession and avoidable grief. After all, at least Joyce’s Bloom and Homer’s Ulysses have moments of personal insight or revelation. In contrast, Marquez’s JAB’s seem obstinately obtuse.
Like any other parabolic myth, One Hundred Years satisfies many interpretations, even contradictory ones: the world of the inquiring intellect vs. The world of the participative human being; personal ambition vs. Communal duty; power and its conceits; the sources of tribal identity, etc.
But for me these possibilities don’t lead to anything more meaningful than the opportunity presented by a telephone book to ring up any number of strangers. I find nothing ‘larger’ to which such things point. The various JAB’s are fatally fascinated solely by what presents itself in front of them.
I think I would prefer the story of Marquez’s gypsy seer, Melquiades, who had “an Asiatic look that seemed to know what there was on the other side of things.” But Marquez doesn’t say anything else about what that might be.