Gabriel García Márquez: One Hundred Years Of Solitude

[saliotthomas]

100 years of solitude was one of my first meeting with serious literature and i loved it,maybe it was before the oprah thing,a long time ago aniway.They are not stickers,they are printed on the book.I'm thinking of making stickers with bits of the original cover to hide the yoke....!Maybe a bit complexe.

They are on a lot of good books,and by the way who this Orpha personne?A TV caractere or something?I'm sometime glad to live in the Desert.

[Irene Wilde]

Originally Posted by saliotthomas

100 years of solitude was one of my first meeting with serious literature and i loved it,maybe it was before the oprah thing,a long time ago aniway.They are not stickers,they are printed on the book.I'm thinking of making stickers with bits of the original cover to hide the yoke....!Maybe a bit complexe.
They are on a lot of good books,and by the way who this Orpha personne?A TV caractere or something?I'm sometime glad to live in the Desert.

On paper, I should have loved 100 Years of Solitude -- all those metafiction elements I'm so fond of were there, Marquez is a highly respected writer -- it should have been a match made in heaven. Next year, maybe, I'll give it another try.

Oprah is the queen of daytime chat shows in America, and I think she secretly plans to take over the world. She preaches a squishy, new-age philosophy of positive thinking that is all happy thoughts and no hard work. She frightens me.

[ions]

I found 100 Years of Solitude frankly boring. It just didn't grab me. The magic that was foretold was minimal and the love I was to have for the place and the characters non-existant. Was bleh to be perfectly honest. I don't blame Oprah, she did pick Cormac and Leo afterall, but I do blame the Swedes! For some reason books that push an author into Nobel prizedom and I rarely get along. Some of them I find to be shit, Lord of the Flies & Pamuk's Snow was a boring frozen turd for example, but most fall into the category of .... really?! this is Nobel material?! Granted I have not read all of the Nobels and there are some Nobel winners I enjoy, usually those that have also won awards elsewhere, the earlier stuff. Of course what a book has or has not won has no bearing on my reading of a novel, only the reflection of it. But so far Alfie and I don't agree on books. Pulitzer and National awards mind you, that's a different story.

[Irene Wilde]

Originally Posted by Sybarite

One Hundred Years of Solitude by Gabriel García Márquez.

Brilliant.

Syb, I must have read a different 100 Years of Solitude than everyone else. I think I'll pick this one up again after Tristam Shandy and have another go at it before I start The Wake. How did you find the characterizations? I felt like I was reading about cardboard cutouts with the label "symbol" attached to their heads. I mean, I get magical realism, but for it to work, there has to be some "realism" involved and I wasn't finding any. That left magical creatures standing in for characters without any sort of humanity living in an artificial environment meant to deliver a "message." It left me feeling like I was supposed to read this book because it's supposed to be good for me -- filled with moral fiber and spiritual nurturing. Anyone who knows be knows I'm allergic to moral fiber and I sold my spirit on e-bay for a cocktail shaker and a silver cigarette case.

What made this book work for you? What am I missing?

[Sybarite]

One Hundred Years of Solitude by Gabriel García Márquez

Translated from the Spanish by Gregory Rabassa

Where does one start?

At the most basic level, the novel chronicles a family's struggle and the history of their fictional town, Macondo, for a century.

The family faces war – or rather, wars – dictatorship and tyranny, murder, natural disasters and countless other challenges. Yet in the end, what has their struggle been for?

Márquez is often described as having created magic realism with this novel, and certainly you need to start by putting any sense of reality out of your mind as you read. He distorts time freely and creates a panoply of fantastical occurances, from magic carpet rides and invisibility to ascension into the skies).

In many ways, this is a vast fairy tale epic for adults and, in keeping with that tradition, it has vast amounts going on behind the actual story.

War … what is it good for? Democracy … what is it good for? Marriage … what is it good for? Religion … what is it good for? Family … what is it good for? (You get the gist) And there is, of course, that favourite theme of Márquez – sex.

Then there is the solitude of the title.

In many ways, this can be seen an existentialist novel – individuals create the meaning and essence of their own lives: those characters who seem to be happiest (or who attain greatest happiness at some point or other) are those who ignore convention for the sake of convention, and seek out their own path, make their own rules.

The book sees time as circular and the ending as being what was at the beginning. Thus life is, in many ways, a pretty pointless exercise. And alienation is here too, along with (as noted above) the absurd – all aspects of existentialist thought and theory.

Yet this is not to say that the novel is pessimistic. Márquez weaves a tapestry of life that is complex and sensual and full of experiences and learning. Life, lived fully, has its own vigour, its own point. But ultimately, he seems to say, we are alone: we have to live our own lives according to our own choices.

The solitude includes, for the author, that which comes from being in a passionate relationship with another human being, whereby the rest of the world is debarred from the central event of the couple's life.

It includes the solitude caused by suffering – and by causing suffering. The pain of Colonel Aureliano Buendía, for instance, comes from his years fighting war after war against the dictatorship. It eats away at his humanity and, at the end, when his own party sells out for a share in power for power's sake, his own sacrifice is seen as redundant. His solitude is to live with all that knowledge thereafter.

For Amaranta, she is cursed to live in a bitter solitude, weaving her own shroud for years, with only one possible ending, after choosing to keep her virginity, not to take any of several opportunities to have a relationship with a man, out of spite and hate and self-hate.

As with any Márquez, heat and superstition, passion and violence, permeate the novel.

The characters are a mix – some are drawn in far more detail than others, but all, within their context, work.

It is, quite simply, brilliant. And a novel that will stay in the mind for a long time after the last page has been devoured and Macondo, and all its residents, have turned back to dust.

[Mirabell]

It is, quite simply, brilliant.

Can't say I agree with that.
Marquèz always seemed to me to be a sentimental author without the literary oomph to back that up. And after reading books like Pedro Paramo, which dazzled me, I am even less inclined to go back to that self-indulgent columbian sleeping pill.

May be due to the translation, too, however. Must learn spanish.

[Sybarite]

I think that there's always a difficulty coming to books that are effectively literary icons – I'm sure that that didn't help me with Orwell's 1984 or Kafka's The Trial, for instance: you start from a difficult position of feeling that you're expected to be wowed by it – and almost that there's something wrong with you if you're not.

Personally, I've read a number of Márquez now and there's been no risk of ever being sent to sleep by them. But that's just my personal response.

I certainly don't find them sentimental – I think Márquez is really pretty hard-nosed philosophically (that ties in with what I said earlier about this book being existentialist at core). One of the things that I found amazing with this was that, having noted that philosophical slant, it isn't depressing; it leaves you (well, me at any rate) feeling essentially upbeat. He's also scathing of conventional morality and isn't 'romantic' in any way in his portrayals of relationships.

[Stewart]

I've added to this thread some posts from the Recently Finished thread as I thought they would be better placed here. Just in case someone thinks the progression of the posts is a bit off.

[Sybarite]

Originally Posted by Mirabell

... And after reading books like Pedro Paramo, which dazzled me...

Well, this is one of the great joys of this forum – learning about books that you didn't previously know existed: I've just added this to my Amazon list.

Mirabell – it better live up to the recommendation.

[spooooool]

Pedro Paramo is in my Amazon basket, to be sure. Marquez i read so long ago, I do remember liking "No one writes to the colonel" more than any of his others, but i can't say i'm a huge fan

[Mirabell]

Originally Posted by Sybarite

Well, this is one of the great joys of this forum – learning about books that you didn't previously know existed: I've just added this to my Amazon list.

Mirabell – it better live up to the recommendation.

My fiancé who loooves Gabo, didn't like PP, she broke off after two dozen pages. so.

but I personally think it one of the best novels I've read. It creeps even into other reviews, such as the hwang sok yong review (linked in the appropriate thread).

sonme appreciations here and here.

[titania7]

I read one Hundred Years of Solitude about ten years ago and found it slightly disappointing. I think my expectations were too high. It wasn't until last year that I decided to give Marquez a second chance (I'm very good at giving second chances to writers. I think I'm going to get a halo soon for being so generous!) The book I chose was an obvious one, Love in the Time of Cholera. I don't watch Oprah's show and I'm not a member of her book club. Thus, it goes without saying that my reading this book had *nothing* whatsoever to do with her. In any case, I found it wonderfully entertaining and downright scintillating. I was pleased to see that, once again, I had been right to give a writer another chance. I've done this several times before, most notably with Nabokov and Andre Gide.

Since One Hundred Years of Solitude is the book being discussed here most, I will admit that I empathize with those who find it to be overrated. Boring? Hmmmm.....I don't know about that. I would find it difficult to ever find Marquez boring. What I love about him is his inherent ability to tell a story. Not every good--or even great--novelist is a master storyteller. Yet Marquez is. He's a very colorful writer, too. He's very alive. This is a strange thing to say about an author that some of you find "boring." But that is the wonderful thing about this list--there are so many different opinions, and all of us are (thankfully) strong-willed enough to express our views without being (even more thankfully) narrow-minded enough to object to others not sharing them.

I will check out Pedro Paramo. He sounds like a must-read.

titania

"Whoever wishes to rise above the common level
must be prepared for a great struggle and recoil
before no obstacle."
~Lost Illusions, Honore de Balzac

[Heteronym]

One Hundred Years of Solitude helped turn my attention to literature. I had never before read such a complex novel, which broke the timeline and hinted at events that hadn't happened yet, like the flow of time was irrelevant. The prose had a sensuous impression that I've seldom seen imitated: all the colors, smells, and shapes of Macondo came so alive I thought I could see the village.

Since then I've read almost every novel and short-story collection he's written, and although he's had his less good books over the years, I think he's one of the giants of modern literature.

[jackdawdle]

i think people have a hard time liking this book because of its dull subject matter. it is a family chronicle after all. and then there's the manner in which it is written -- long dense paragraphs with dialogue that seem primitive and even oafish.

still i found the book compelling. in fact i found it sad, pathetic and tremendously comic, especially the way each character is doomed by a fatal obsession. they lack introspection, but i found the characters here more compelling than the characters one might find in books praised by reviewers as having rich, complex inner lives etcetera etcetera.

[Betelgeused]

Gabriel García Márques is one of my favorite writers nowadays. One Hundred Years Of Solitude was my first contact with him and, to this day, I consider it to be his best work. With a extravant, grandiloquent language, a narrative so full of depth which describes even the smallest event with such a burning passion... I personally don't find any failures in this work.

Then again, for me it was pretty easy since Spanish to Portuguese is an easy translation, two sister languages and many similar words. I have no idea how it would be in English, though.

[lionel]

Originally Posted by Betelgeused

I personally don't find any failures in this work.

Welcome, Betelgeused. It would have to be quite a book that didn't fail in some particular respects, and personally I've never found one, but then it depends on what failings you're talking about.

Originally Posted by Betelgeused

Then again, for me it was pretty easy since Spanish to Portuguese is an easy translation, two sister languages and many similar words. I have no idea how it would be in English, though.

It's still a translation, but you have a very strong point. I've only read it in English, and partly out of laziness. But yes, translation is a major problem.

English-only readers, for instance, are still hopelessly hindered by Parshley's translation of Beauvoir's Le deuxième sexe, a French feminist work translated by an apparently non-feminist, Anglocentric male who had only a limited understanding of the French language. Millions of feminists were brought up on this book, but it is a horrendous, and major, failure in terms of translation.

[Beth]

Originally Posted by lionel

English-only readers, for instance, are still hopelessly hindered by Parshley's translation of Beauvoir's Le deuxième sexe, a French feminist work translated by an apparently non-feminist, Anglocentric male who had only a limited understanding of the French language. Millions of feminists were brought up on this book, but it is a horrendous, and major, failure in terms of translation.

Light bulb. I didn't consider its translation when I read The Second Sex a couple of years ago. Her thoughts about narcissism have remained with me, the rest is gone, and I'm wondering if the entire book could have come across with better translation.

Far as One Hundred Years of Solitude goes, I read it almost ten years ago and enjoyed it as a simply sensuous experience, even in the English. I remember thinking ''just let it wash over, enjoy the beauty of the images, don't try to make any sense of it...''

[lionel]

Originally Posted by Beth

Light bulb. I didn't consider its translation when I read The Second Sex a couple of years ago. Her thoughts about narcissism have remained with me, the rest is gone, and I'm wondering if the entire book could have come across with better translation.

Very good point, Beth. But then, try this link for an idea of what is involved: The Legacy of Simone de Beauvoir - Google Book Search