Gabriel García Márquez: One Hundred Years Of Solitude

[Bubba]

Re: Gabriel Garc?a M?rquez: One Hundred Years Of Solitude

This book is on my reading list, but it took a huge hit after I read The Old Gringo and found it to be a huge pile of crap. No offense meant, it could have easily been due to a horrendous translation.

In any case, the translator was afraid to change the syntax too much and have to reconstruct Fuentes complicated meaning and style herself, so she ended up just recreating it, but it was utterly impossible to follow. There were so many places I ahd to stop as a reader because so many sentences didn't make grammatical sense in English. It was also difficult to follow, wordy, and very overdone.

I was rather shocked to think how Ambrose Bierce would have liked having been turned into a rather mushy, romantic, hero who likes to speak about all his deepest feelings and loves in long uninterrupted monologue. The novel itself does a poor job at integrating the supernatural elements with the storyline, in fact it does a rather poor job at narration in general.

I've rarely found a novel so bewildering. Then again no novel I've ever come across starts a sentence with one point of view, changes to another one midway, and ends with another one, leaving the reader thoroughly confused as to who the hell is the narrator by the end. It's a long droning book about love, war, Mexico and revolution, with a few occassional interesting to say but they are few and far between and do not make up for the mush.

I can't say of a novel that disappointed me more, I really can't, other than maybe when I first picked up a Cormac McCarthy book, Blood Meridian, with excitement, expecting to love it too...

So being that it came from a celebrated Latin American Magical realist, I'm skeptical about being disappointed by 100 Years as well. Afterall, The General in His Labyrinth was readable, but it didn't thrill me. It also dealt with the problem of strange convoluted sentences that didn't quite seem grammatically correct, but mainly it was just a book that suffered in it's own myriads of boredom and weak character work.

I'm not a great fan of either GGM or 100 Years (I would rather read a novel that focuses on just a few characters), but because I know some people like him and his books very much I would urge you not to let your surely justified dislike of Old Gringo dissuade you from reading 100 Years. Fuentes's work and GGM's don't really have that much in common.

I haven't read Old Gringo, but I have read other work by Fuentes, and I find it supremely irritating. Shifts, for example, from the second person to the first, from the first to the third, then back to the second. Fuentes, in short, is a show-off of the worst sort. And it's too bad, because he is not without some storytelling talent.

About twenty years ago, I was playing basketball in a playground just outside Zacatecas, Mexico. A tough-looking kid a few years younger than I was came up to me, wanted to know what the "pinche gringo" was doing there. We shot around for a while, and he told me he'd had a part in the movie version of Old Gringo. Later, when I returned to the US, I rented the movie; sure enough, there the kid was, much younger than when I met him, but unmistakable. The part wasn't a major one (he plays a sort of street kid who runs errands for tips), but he had a couple of lines and appeared throughout the movie.

 

[Daniel del Real]

Re: Gabriel Garc?a M?rquez: One Hundred Years Of Solitude

Of the other books of GGM that I have read I particularly liked
- Chronicle of a death foretold
- Love in times of cholera
- About love and other demons
(in that order)

Good luck with the 100 YoS, Waalkwriter, I hope you'll enjoy it as much as I did.

Agree Peter, you've succesfully summarized the good Garcia Marquez works. I'd only add his short stories in Extra?os Doce Cuentos Peregrinos, translated as Strange Pilgrims I think

I haven't read Old Gringo, but I have read other work by Fuentes, and I find it supremely irritating. Shifts, for example, from the second person to the first, from the first to the third, then back to the second. Fuentes, in short, is a show-off of the worst sort. And it's too bad, because he is not without some storytelling talent.

Totally truth, he's a writer than in every line wants to let you know how smart and great he is. The most terrible thing is that sometimes he's just right, he's a smart guy.
I support the idea that Marquez and Fuentes have not many things in common in their literatures, so I'd totally recommend you to give it a try to Cien A?os de Soledad, one of the top ten novels I've ever read.

 

[waalkwriter]

Re: Gabriel Garc?a M?rquez: One Hundred Years Of Solitude

Thanks, I'm hoping i'll enjoy it. Story of a Death Foretold is also on my Marquez list. His Short Story the Really Old Man With Enormous Wings was one I really enjoyed as well, so I'm hoping for the best.

 

[Peeping Tom]

Re: Gabriel Garc?a M?rquez: One Hundred Years Of Solitude

I also concur with what most posters have said: Fuentes and Garcia Marquez are very different writers. Fuentes is a more challenging novelist to read, very difficult. I liked some of his works (The Death of Aremio Cruz for one), but I did not like The Old Gringo, though it is a much easier novel to read. On the other hand, One Hundred Years of Solitude is absolutely one of my favorite novels. If there?s one piece of work to read by Garcia Marquez, this is it.

Also, if you liked A Very Old Man with Enormous Wings, you'll like The Handsomest Drowned Man in the World.


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[Daniel del Real]

Re: Gabriel Garc?a M?rquez: One Hundred Years Of Solitude

The trail of your blood in the snow, is my all time Garc?a M?rquez favorite short story. You should try this one too.

 

[Bartleby]

The teaser for the Netflix adaptation of the beloved García Márquez novel has been released. I was worried they were going to mess the source material up really badly, but now I'm more hopeful about it. I particularly liked the different actors looking so much alike across the ages.

‘One Hundred Years Of Solitude’: Netflix Unveils Teaser For Series Adaptation Of Gabriel García Marquez’s Magical Realist Masterpiece

‘One Hundred Years Of Solitude’: Netflix Unveils Teaser For Adaptation Of Gabriel García Marquez’s Magical Realist Masterpiece

deadline.com

 

[Phil D]

So weird reading the English subtitles and how they don't fit with Gregory Rabassa's legendary translation. I get that there are copyright issues and that subtitling has its own parameters in terms of what fits on screen etc, but for me that first sentence in English is just as unchangeable as it is in Spanish.

 

[Benny Profane]

I hope Netflix doesn't distort Cien Años de Soledad, the great Latin American novel.

And I hope Pedro Páramo may adapted into film someday...
Who knows?