One Hundred Years of Solitude by Gabriel Garcia Marquez

Cafe Society
1

I have a problem, actually. I just started reading “One Hundred Years of Solitude” by Gabriel Garcia Marquez. A friend lent it to me. The book is widely acclaimed to be a masterpiece.

I’m finding it dull as dogshit. It consists of micro-episodes, which jump from one point-of-view to another, and which have no meaningful relation to each other.

The characters have no meaningful relation to each other. There are no conversations or dialogues of more than four lines. There are scarcely any conversations at all! The characters wander around like billiards on a table: they bump into each other, but they do not interact. There is not one “meeting of minds” in the book (I’ve only read the first 100 pages, but out of a 380 page book, that’s enough to start making preliminary judgements.)

What the fuck? Am I missing something? Am I a blind man in the Sistine Chapel?

“I don’t see anything.”
“Well, you have to look up.”
“Oh… I still don’t see anything.”

I’m going to finish it, but, damn! I’m going to have to force myself.

I’ve read post-modernist fiction. I generally do not like it.

(John T. Sladek’s “The Mueller-Fokker Effect” is different, because it’s comedy! It’s funny! But it, too, is in this post-modernist “meaningless” style. Sladek, at least, knows how to tie the episodes together into an overall dramatic arc.)

Am I a blind man looking at visual art?

Or am I the kid who says, “The emperor isn’t wearing any clothes?”

This is VERY dismaying. I don’t like to reveal myself as a simpleton, a churl, or a shallow dullard. I don’t want people to say, “Why don’t you just go back and re-read the Sherlock Holmes stories, if you can’t function in the world of real literature.”

But is this “real literature?” To me, it only barely qualifies as “writing!” I was done with it after only fifty pages! And now I’ve got 280 pages more to yawn through!
WTF?

2

How far into it are you?

It was assigned for one of my history classes last year and the class was split down the middle: half hated and half loved. I rather enjoyed it.

3

I have never gotten through that book, despite having tried several times.

The Spousal Unit loved it. LOVED IT. Thought it was one of the greatest books ever written.

Good luck!

4

I don’t think this novel is considered post-modernist.

I’m not sure, I certainly consider One Hundred Years of Solitude to be “real literature”. But there is literature that, even though I’ve read it, I have little to no desire of reading it again, nor did I like it. I can see why someone else considers it a good work, but the writing is just not what I like.

5

I liked it–might read it again some day. I think I had a little trouble getting into the first few chapters, but then I started to enjoy it more. The rest of it is pretty much the same, so don’t expect it to suddenly get much more interesting. It doesn’t build to any big climactic moment or have any final resolution, though there are a few conflicts and deaths throughout.

6

It would help you greatly if you better understood the Colombian historical/cultural/social frame of reference.

To that end, I’d highly recommend at least reading the OYoS-wiki’s entry for Historical Context, and if you don’t think some spoilers would bother you much, maybe also the Symbolism and Metaphors section.

7

I got another 100 pages in, and am more than halfway through. I’m able to read it rather the way I could watch a soap opera on TV: I’m not really interested, but at least there’s something going on.

At this point, I can’t even say I hate it. It’s just doing nothing for me…

I’m vaguely comforted to learn that I’m not the only one!

And, voltaire, I will definitely read both of those web-sites, although I guess I’ll wait until I’ve finished the book.

It may be of vague interest that something similar happened to me when I read “The Life of Pi.” I loved the first section (kid growing up in Pondicherry.) I loved the middle section (kid on lifeboat.) But I DETESTED the last two sections (kid on impossible island, and kid talking to insurance guys.) The post-modernism of these two sections – “Don’t bother looking for meaning, because there is no meaning” – totally undermined the first two sections. I found it personally insulting, as if the author had said, “You suspended disbelief? Really? You suspended disbelief? You fool! Try suspending disbelief NOW! Huh? Huh?”

It (in my opinion) violated the implied contract between writer and reader.

(But, doggone, I really loved the first two major parts of that book!)

8

While you dislike the book, please keep in mind it is not considered post-modernist. It is not post, it is modernist. So perhaps your views at expecting something to fit into something post-modernist clash with this?

Here is an overview on the Latin American boom, of which OHYOS is part.

9

I thought it was post-modernist, in that it attacks meaning. The book is, itself, apparently without meaning…

Apparently, I’m wrong in this, but I had thought the definition of post-modernism was specifically that it attacks the concept of “meaning.” It says, “All of your ideas of truth are formed by your societal upbringing, but someone else with a different upbringing might hold all of your truths to be falsehoods.” This book seems to me to be partaking of that conclusion.

I like the weak version of this idea, just as I like the weak version of the idea that our language helps shape our interpretations. This is why a translation of a book will always be different – sometimes only slightly – than the original. I reject the strong versions of both of these ideas: there really is such a thing as truth, and translators can do a very good job, even if they can’t do a perfect one.

Several people have asked me if the problem I’m having might be the translation. I don’t think so. (But how could I know?) The English language in this version – translated by Gregory Rabassa – is vital, flowing, elegant, and strong. It’s good. I’m almost certain my problems have not been introduced into the story by the translation. (But, again, how could I know?)

10

IIRC, the author claimed that the English translation really got at the essence of what he was getting at. A Spanish friend of mine thought the untranslated version was a little funnier.

I read it long ago and liked it, though I can’t remember why other than it was hallucinatory. The proper phrase for that is apparently, “Magical realism”. Maybe I enjoyed decoding that; if so, I wasn’t particularly successful.

11

I think the whole point of magical realism is that it isn’t hallucinatory.

I read most of Garcia Marquez’s works, and especially liked the short stories, which display magical realism more directly. But I couldn’t really “get” why the people acted the way they do.

Then I moved to the part of Colombia where those stories take place, the northern, Caribbean coast. After living and working there for a couple years, I reread most of those stories and novels, and realized that I now could “get” it. It’s hard to explain, but all the things that drove me crazy, and that I finally just accepted, made the strange behavior in those stories kind of normal somehow. I especially got how he portrays “costeños” (or, should I say, corronchos?) as different from the people in the rest of Colombia, which is culturally very distinct.

I visited Aracataca (aka “Macondo”) several times, and though it’s a pretty unremarkable little town, even that fact somehow makes sense.

As they all say in those stories – ¡Que vaina!

12

FWIW, the book bored the shit out of me also.

13

How old are you? I loved it passionately in my early twenties, but tried to read it again at 30 and couldn’t. I have outgrown the patience required to read lots of “classics”, I find.

Anyway: it is one of those books that pays a lot of dividends at the end, so keep at it. In fact, it’s a book that you may want to read twice through at a go. I did.

14

The first sentence is the best opening sentence in literature and by far the best narrative hook. The rest of the book was just as good.

It’s hardly a difficult book to get into: it consists of the history of one family through the years, and that history is fascinating, and it affects the actions and personality of the later characters, so what someone does 50 years along is an inevitable reflection of what his ancestors did. The magic realism angle is just a device to show this, and if you try to look into explanations for it, then the book isn’t for you: the “magic” events happened with no explanation, nor do they require one.

I’ve read it a couple of times. It’s one of my top five favorite novels of all time.

15

I hated it. And I feel no guilt whatsoever about not liking it. I refuse to agree with the idea that just because everyone else thinks something is great, it’s necessarily great for me, and this isn’t even a book that everyone thinks it’s great.

I have a busy, full life. I’ll spend it reading stuff I like, thank you very much.

16

De gustibus and all that…

I loved that book, and read it several times (not in recent decades though). But I come from Latin America, and very briefly lived in a town that to this day I still call Macondo (dead banana town with a name that starts with M), so I “get” it.

I don’t feel bad because I don’t like a “masterpiece”. The same thing happened when I read Ana Karenina, War and Peace and anything by Yukio Mishima. I didn’t understand the characters and their motivations. Their way of thinking was as foreign to me as if they were aliens from outer space. I found them boring and depressing all at the same time.

I like most of Garcia Marquez’ books, try Chronicles of a Death Foretold, one of my favorite books ever.

17

I’m in my mid-fifties. What’s odd is that, only now in my life, I’m getting into the classics! A bit of Dickens, a bit of Thackeray, some of the more obscure Melville, etc. I used to limit myself pretty much to sci-fi and fantasy – and comic books – but am making the time, now, to make at least a skimming survey of the world’s great literature.

(I’m also spending more time on educational books, history books, science books, even comparative theology!)

I ran my original plaint past a professor of literature, and he said, “Don’t beat yourself up. Some people don’t get Monty Python.” So, yes, I will take what comfort I may from De Gustibus.

(P.S. Is the name Mighty-Girl inspired by Rod Espinosa?) (Well, I mentioned comic books…)

18

I recall really liking it but some characters I liked far more than others and I recall feeling sad when my favourite characters’ stories ended and things moved on. I wanted to stay with them forever.

19

I preferred Love In The Time Of Cholera myself, but like others I read it in my 20s and haven’t revisited it. It may in fact be age-related.

20

I meant to be more clear on this, but I think you should at least read
the (above-linked) “Historical Context” section of the wiki, even before finishing the book. Like I said, not only will it give you a good idea of the general Colombian frame of reference (which is kind of difficult for most people/Americans to grasp), but it will also give you an idea of what kind of stuff was going on in Colombia in the few years before Marquez wrote the book in 1967. Here’s just a tiny excerpt to give you an idea:

Skip the other section I linked in my previous post, Symbolism & Metaphors, if you’re worried about (what some would consider) any/all spoilers. But you should be safe with the just historical stuff - I think it will help you *get *what you’re supposed to be getting.