100 years of solitude. Comments???

[xaworld]

Yesterday I finished reading 100 years of solitude by Gabriel Garcia Marquez. I loved it!!!
Have you read it??? Any comments?????

[Craft Forums]

i've never read it, but i LOVE the title. as a major bookworm, i've always been fond of solitude (imagine 100 years of it!).

but what's it about? what are some of the themes? i'm interested to learn more...

roxy the inquisitive

[roxy_fondue]

oops, forgot to sign in. just wanted to post that i'm the inquisitive "guest".

but what's it about?

It's a Latin American classic -- I've read it two or three times but not in years, so I don't remember it well. Basically it's about several generations of a family and a sort of generic "national" history (I say this b/c the specific nation is never mentioned and the details are fuzzy enough that it could be one of many nations, though the author himself is from Colombia) told from the perspective of this one family.

I had a professor who once described the book as one of the three he would pick if he could only read three books for the rest of his life. He said the Bible is the original creation of a human myth, Don Quixote is the first tearing-down of the original myth, and 100 Years of Solitude is the first serious attempt at re-creating the myth in an age when myths aren't really felt to be needed. I always liked that description.

But I highly recommend you read something by the author (Gabriel Garcia Marquez) at some point ... he's amazing. I'm especially fond of his stories.

In fact, one of my favorite short stories ever written is by Garcia Marquez -- it's called "Un dia de estos" (which I think is translated to English as "One Of These Days"). It's about a small-town dentist with leftist politics who has the mayor of the town come to his house for treatment. The mayor is this evil guy, a total tyrant. So the dentist refuses him treatment, and the mayor says he'll shoot him if he doesn't treat him. So the dentist gets out his gun, but then he looks over at his young son and decides not to shoot the mayor. Instead, he tells him he has no anasthetic and takes out the mayor's teeth without using anasthetic. It's an incredibly simple story, but so beautifully told and so full of righteous anger over oppressive governments. Its about how to find creative ways to resist in the most dire of circumstances.

[xuli]

The guest above was me. Sorry. It really annoys me that I don't get prompted to log in before replying!

[artemis.sun]

Hmm, I'm going to dissent and say that I didn't especially like 100 years of solitude. Maybe because of the stage of life I was in, or because of the teacher who recommended it to me (a mildly creepy though well liked teacher who flirted with his students). I don't remember the book too well, as I read it five years ago. I keep thinking I should reread it because I'd probably like it better now.

Xuli, the short story you mentioned sounds really cool.

[stella]

i loved 100 Years of Solitude. after reading it, i was disappointed by Love in the Time of Cholera.

one of the first "real" stories i read when i was studying Spanish was a Marquez story... A Very Old Man with Enormous Wings.

[craftytricks]

I didn't particularly like 100 Years of Solitude--it was alright but not great. I've heard Love in the Time of Cholera is better - more emotional and that sort of thing. Is this true?

[naturallysteph]

I loved Love in the Time of Cholera, but I haven't read this one yet. It's on my (quite long) "read soon" list. I'm glad to hear so many people here enjoyed it! I have a coworker who raves about it all the time.

I think Garcia Marquez is brave. He writes things that I don't see in modern American or British literature. I remember in Love he described a character who enjoyed the smell of his urine after eating asparagus - but the way he wrote it was beautiful, not disgusting at all. And he is so talented with setting - the smells, the sights, the sounds, the feeling in the air . . .

I am jealous! I wish I had half his talent!

- Steph