Gabriel García Márquez

Heteronym

Heteronym

Reader
kpjayan said:
Yes, absolutely. But, I liked his autobiography - Living to Tell the Tale. It was supposed to be the part one of a three book series, as I was given to understand. But there was no followup volumes ever after that.
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That's also what I understand; but like his new novel, it seems we shouldn't expect those two volumes ever to surface. I own Living to tell the tale. I have to read it eventually.
 
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Galatea92

Reader
Yes, I've been reading quite a bit over the last year. He's well worth reading, Eric, but he can be a bit uneven. Of the novels I've read so far, the one I'd really recommend is 'Chronicle of a Death Foretold'; it's a beautifully written book, cleverly structured, and really engaging (and not too long).

'A Hundred Days of Solitude' I'm still in two minds about. I hated it for the first 100 pages (I stopped reading it once, then came back to it after a few weeks), then it engaged me, and I ended up not wanting to stop reading it. But even then there was something about it that gave a bad taste. I think I'd have to read it again before I could give a definitive judgement (especially as the ending makes you think again about what it is you've been reading).

Like Stiffelio, I don't think the short story is his strong point, but there were a couple of stories in the collection I read ('Strange Pilgrims') that I really enjoyed ('Sleeping Beauty and the Airplane' and 'The Trail of Your Blood in the Snow').
 
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kpjayan

Reader
I see the "Memory of my Melancholy Whores" is now made into a movie as well.

Gabriel Garcia Marquez's fiction has been ill served by cinema, and Henning Carlsen's "Memories of My Melancholy Whores," adapted from his most recent novel (2004), doesn't buck the trend. This elegant and wildly non-PC take on a 90-year-old man who doesn't want to die without experiencing true love is as evocative and thought-provoking as its source, but a splendid central perf by Emilio Echevarria can't ward off inertia and an air of deja vu. Marquez aficionados may want a look, but business will be slow for an item whose sexual politics will be just too retro for many to handle.
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http://www.variety.com/review/VE1117947573/
 
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kpjayan

Reader
Daniel del Real said:
Cannot avoid thinking that if this gem took 25 years to be translated to Chinese, what other amazing pieces of literature from China we are missing right now.
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Apparently, they sold over a million copies of 'pirated' book in china before the official translation and release. Not sure if the pirated was translated by whom ?

I agree on your second point. We should be missing whole lot of literature due to the issues related to translations. I, can vouch for Indian Languages. The complicated scripts make it harder for others to learn this, to begin with, before thinking about translating.
 
pesahson

pesahson

Reader
I just saw the news! I was first surprised to read your post about his illness and now this? Terrible news.

He truly is one of few authors of quality who somehow reached world stardom I dare say. Even people who don't read would have heard his name. "A 100 years of solitude" would be a standard reference used on TV shows to imply that someone is well-read, etc, for years now.
 
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Cleanthess

Cleanthess

Dinanukht wannabe
Those are sad news. Que tristeza mas grande. I must have read his 100 Years of Solitude when I was 14 or so and I still remember the experience. Thank you Don Gabo for all your great books.
 
Heteronym

Heteronym

Reader
One Hundred Years of Solitude was one of the earliest novels of my life to have a deep impact on me: there was a before and an after; I had never read anything like it before, and it changed, widened, enriched my perception of literature. For some time I considered it the greatest novel ever written, and I didn't stop reading his books until I had exhausted all his fiction, and it's a marvellous body of work: Nobody Writes to the Colonel, Chronicle of a Death Foretold, The Autumn of the Patriarch, Love in the Time of Cholera... Thank you so much, Gabo!
 
Liam

Liam

Administrator
Yes, very sad. Even his "minor" works were masterpieces. And his "great" novels were purely that--Great. He will always be read.
 
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Peeping Tom

Reader
One of my all-time favorite writers. One Hundred Years of Solitude was such a revelation when I first read it many years ago. It was as if I had discovered literature for the first time. Rest in peace, Gabo.
 
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