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One Hundred Years of Solitude
100 Years of Solitude - MR 2013
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Questions, Resources, and General Banter - One Hundred Years of Solitude
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http://www.oprah.com/oprahsbookclub/C...
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http://www.nytimes.com/books/97/06/15...
Paris Review interview from 1981:
http://www.theparisreview.org/intervi...
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Wikipedia entry for the utopian idea of Arcadia:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Arcadia_...
Also, if you separate Buendia into two words - beun dia - it becomes "good day" in Spanish...
A pertinant reflection on the 'forgetfulness' of the Macondo residents:"This point about experiencing one's history as fantasy has been stressed also by Marxist critics, who insist that, since the rules which govern a society are those of the ruling class, those places which have no control over their own destiny live without such rational guidelines. Thus, they argue, Marquez's novel is not saying that life is a dream but rather that Latin American life is a dream--"the unreality and unauthenticity imposed by almost five hundred years of colonialism--and that when a dream becomes a permanent living nightmare it is probably time to wake up"
Lecture on One Hundred Years of Solitude
http://records.viu.ca/~johnstoi/intro...
An analysis of the rain from online sources:"The rains that follow the massacre are symbolic in three different ways. The first reference, and the most obvious one, is the reference to the flood in the book of Genesis. As in Noah's time, the land had become full of wickedness, and the flood gave rise to a new world. The reason why this symbolism does not completely explain the flood of Macondo is that, in the book of Genesis, the flood was an opportunity for rebirth and regeneration, whereas in Macondo it merely leads to a swift decline. This leads to the second reference for the flood: the book of Exodus, and the story of Moses, who with God's help invokes a series of plagues on the Egyptians. It is certainly the case that Macondo is suffering from a series of plagues: first water, then heat, and then the appearance of strange, inhuman visitors and prophets. With this reference, Marquez opens up the possibility that the residents of Macondo and, by extension, the natives of Latin America are slaves to the colonial, imperialist order, waiting for a Moses to set them free.
The final reference is hinted at in the novel: the possibility that the gringos and the plantation owners, who have powers that were formerly reserved for God, brought down the flood as punishment. This is certainly a possibility, since the flood has the long-term effect of wiping out the town. It has the added bonus of erasing the town's memory and even the plantation itself, so that no one will ever know what really happened there."
P.S. I've no idea what these two boxes are,they are not getting removed in edit feature!
A religious interpretation of the text: "When the book was translated into English in 1970, the great writer and critic William Kennedy wrote that it was “the first piece of literature since the Book of Genesis that should be required reading for the entire human race.” Many years later (the novel’s opening words are “Many years later”), after I’d graduated with a minor in Religious Studies and was doing a systematic study of the Bible on a long trip across Europe, I began to see more than just Genesis in García Márquez’s vast novel-scheme.
The rise and descent of the Buendía family, with all of its endlessly repeating name-variants of the family’s first-generation patriarch, José Arcadio Buendía, mirrors the Bibles’ arc from the Book of Joshua to the Book of Judges to the Second Book of Kings. Coming after the Torah (Genesis through Deuteronomy), this second major section of the Bible (called the “Deuteronomical History”) leads toward the establishment of the House of David over the land of Israel and then follows toward the nation’s inevitable disintegration.
When Israel can’t hold any longer and breaks into two parts (the northern Israel, which God dislikes, and the southern Judah, which God favors because it’s still ruled by David’s ancestors, whose supporters were the people who compiled and redacted the Bible), the names and trajectories of the parallel kings mirror each other (e.g. Jereboam/Reheboam) and sometimes even have the same name (and diminutive nickname).
Eventually God “allows” the northern nation to fall to the Assyrians, but Judah endures long enough to have a kind of renaissance, when king Josiah has the high priest clean out the temple treasury so they can repair the temple and the priest discovers “the book of the law” (presumably an early version of Deuteronomy, which contains all the rules that the Israelites have supposedly forgotten).
But then after another brief golden age, Judah eventually goes the way of all flesh too and is conquered by the Babylonians as God decides that the nation has been sinning for way too long and that it’s too late to make up for it now. But the thread of Israel’s Davidic lineage continues in the Babylonian exile, because God has promised to let David’s descendants rule forever.
García Márquez mimics many of these biblical complexities and absurdities as Macondo rushes toward disintegration, and he has a mysterious Gypsy named Melquíades write it all down in a book of parchments—a book the memory of which is taken into exile by a minor character named Gabriel García Márquez, who had been friends with the last of the Buendías: Aureliano Babilonia Buendía (note his middle name), who translated Melquíades’ book.
Near the end of the real Gabriel García Márquez’s book, which is the one we read and whose fictional original is Melquíades’ book, nobody but Aureliano Babilonia Buendía and Gabriel García Márquez even believe in the existence of the forgotten town anymore. Thus the character Gabriel García Márquez goes into a kind of “Babylonian” exile, and his real-life counterpart, the author Gabriel García Márquez, is the only one left to tell the tale when it’s all over."
Courtesy: classiclit.about.com
Henry wrote: "Mala wrote: "A religious interpretation of the text: "When the book was translated into English in 1970, the great writer and critic William Kennedy wrote that it was “the first piece of literatu..."
Thank you.Glad you liked it. This book is one of my all-time favourites.
Ok, this is very late in the day, but does anyone have any opinions about the effectiveness of the novel in telling the Columbian experience?
A lot of what happened in this novel are actual historical events. La Violencia. The outrageous number of wars. The united fruit company. The massacre (which interestingly is not documented anywhere - or at least not officially). Does magic realism render the horror mute and hide its reality, or does it make it accessible?
I'm genuinely interested in this. I read a series of interviews with Roberto Bolano, who railed against the Magic Realism / Realism dichotomy that had taken residence in Latin American literature. Hence his whole thing about Infra-Realism in the Savage Detectives. But even the realist Mario Vargas Llosa employed quite challenging techniques in order to tell his own country's story (Peru). There's a lot of layering in his great novels, like Conversation in the Cathedral, The Green House, or War to the End of the World (about a period in Brazilian history). Think of Faulkner to get an idea of the complexity.
You see, (like the reference to Genesis above) I think of One Hundred Years of Solitude as a kind of origin myth, sort of like Growth of the Soil (Knut Hamsun), but for a messed up nation. But it's a thoroughly modernist text. It doesn't have that bleak horror of say 2666, nor the outrage of Eduardo Galeano's polemic (The Open Veins of Latin America). And I can't help wondering if he could have written it any other way.
A lot of what happened in this novel are actual historical events. La Violencia. The outrageous number of wars. The united fruit company. The massacre (which interestingly is not documented anywhere - or at least not officially). Does magic realism render the horror mute and hide its reality, or does it make it accessible?
I'm genuinely interested in this. I read a series of interviews with Roberto Bolano, who railed against the Magic Realism / Realism dichotomy that had taken residence in Latin American literature. Hence his whole thing about Infra-Realism in the Savage Detectives. But even the realist Mario Vargas Llosa employed quite challenging techniques in order to tell his own country's story (Peru). There's a lot of layering in his great novels, like Conversation in the Cathedral, The Green House, or War to the End of the World (about a period in Brazilian history). Think of Faulkner to get an idea of the complexity.
You see, (like the reference to Genesis above) I think of One Hundred Years of Solitude as a kind of origin myth, sort of like Growth of the Soil (Knut Hamsun), but for a messed up nation. But it's a thoroughly modernist text. It doesn't have that bleak horror of say 2666, nor the outrage of Eduardo Galeano's polemic (The Open Veins of Latin America). And I can't help wondering if he could have written it any other way.
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A lot of what happened in this novel are actual histo..."
Short answer is Garcia uses a microcosm to tell the story of the macrocosm. He stays with one family in one town and tells the story of the events from that perspective. As far as muting the horror, I don't think the specifics of the MR genre are particularly special. This distancing from events could also have worked in straight realism.
"So yes, he could have written it in a different way, but then we would be talking about a different book."
I suppose that's what I was aiming at. But I guess something else also. I suspect magic realism is often dismissed too easily. It almost lends itself to dismissal. But does it not also create a space for the readers imagination that doesn't quite exist with realism? I think it was Mario Vargas Llosa who said that dictators know good competition when they see it. He was referring to the almost totalitarian mindset that writers, or at least the best, invoke.
With realism, it's by and large the details that create this mindset and bring it all together, whereas with magic realism it's the ambiguous relationship between what's real and what's magic that drives the narrative. It's a sort of creative space that the reader steps into.
Another brilliant practitioner of this was Kafka. Metamorphosis as a study in alienation is a phenomenon.
To be honest, I'm in two minds myself. That's the thesis I'm working with at the moment. Any thoughts?
I suppose that's what I was aiming at. But I guess something else also. I suspect magic realism is often dismissed too easily. It almost lends itself to dismissal. But does it not also create a space for the readers imagination that doesn't quite exist with realism? I think it was Mario Vargas Llosa who said that dictators know good competition when they see it. He was referring to the almost totalitarian mindset that writers, or at least the best, invoke.
With realism, it's by and large the details that create this mindset and bring it all together, whereas with magic realism it's the ambiguous relationship between what's real and what's magic that drives the narrative. It's a sort of creative space that the reader steps into.
Another brilliant practitioner of this was Kafka. Metamorphosis as a study in alienation is a phenomenon.
To be honest, I'm in two minds myself. That's the thesis I'm working with at the moment. Any thoughts?
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I suppose that's what I was aiming at. But I guess something else also. I suspect magic ..."
As I responded to another question of yours re: The Wind-Up Bird Chronicle, Murakami's use of magic realism allows him to interrogate Japan's actions in Manchuria, and their eventual surrender at the end of the war. He uses a married couple in 1984 to explore the Japanese psyche of 1944. An awesome effort on his part.
So yes, introducing magic elements allows the author to explore what-ifs that are harder to confront when sticking to the "facts" of realism.
Ah, I haven't read Autumn of the Patriarch.
I think to a large extent, it depends on the reader. Some readers love to absorb every detail they can get, whilst with others it's the narrative drive that keeps them engaged.
That's the art I suppose. Some writers use complex techniques, some beautiful wordplay. For the lucky writer there's the inspired tale.
Have you ever read Tinkers, by Paul Harding?
I think to a large extent, it depends on the reader. Some readers love to absorb every detail they can get, whilst with others it's the narrative drive that keeps them engaged.
That's the art I suppose. Some writers use complex techniques, some beautiful wordplay. For the lucky writer there's the inspired tale.
Have you ever read Tinkers, by Paul Harding?
Liam wrote: "Ok, this is very late in the day, but does anyone have any opinions about the effectiveness of the novel in telling the Columbian experience? A lot of what happened in this novel are actual histo..."
Liam,
I wondered the same when I was reading Luisa Valenzuela's "The Lizard's Tale." At some points, her technique (MR) made it difficult to separate fact from fiction, but overall, her novel brought me closer to an understanding of Peron's regime and the horrors of living in Argentina at the time.
"...Luisa Valenzuela's "The Lizard's Tale."..."
Oooh, I don't know that one. I have to look it up. Thanks Tia.
Oooh, I don't know that one. I have to look it up. Thanks Tia.
Wikipedia page for Gabriel García Márquez:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gabriel_...
Wikipedia page for One Hundred years of Solitude:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/One_Hund...
Feel free to use this thread to ask questions and post links to resources for Gabriel García Márquez and One Hundred Years of Solitude.
Also, if you’ve written a review of the book, please post a link to share with the group.