What an amazing book! My second favorite next to "As I Lay Dying."Does Garcia Marquez visit America very often?My favorite characters were Jose Arcadio Buendia and the Segundo twins. Amaranta is one of the most evil characters I've ever read. The episode of Remedios ascending into Heaven was brilliant.I remember one of my professors mentioning a part where someone's relative emerges from the sea, but I don't remember anything like that except for the boat being hauled in by ropes. Did I read over that part? It was one of the reasons I wanted to read the book...Is this Garcia Marquez's best novel?What did you other readers think about this one?
Mad Drama Teacher
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Chapter by chapter is the best method, I found. At least he keeps it to roughly 20 pages per.
Although I routinely slip up my marquez with bernal.
Love In The Time Of Cholera is one of my all time favourites, but I just can't seem to get into 100 years of...
I think it might be a bit too fast for my tastes.
But after speaking to some friends about Marquez, there seems to be a pattern where you absolutely love the first book of his that you read, but aren't as taken by the second.
Anyway, the last book I loved was "Here Is Where We Meet" by John Berger. The second half of it is amazing.
Excellent.
It couldn't possibly be both liberal and good.
Seriously boring book.
Im assuming everything was lost in translation.
i know a number of people in the academic world who don't particularly care for ggm, though, because they see his as cashing in on or exploiting a style - "magical realism" - that is 1) not really his own, 2) that goes in line w/ the consolidation of the neoliberal lat am nation and the capitalist market, and 3) that tends to play into the notions of lat am as some sort of exotically backwards magic land. though i think all the banana plantation refernces in 100 years do give it enough material grounding to debunk the second claim from above and that this is kinda just an academic's way of playing it cool, trying to cut down something that is both massively popular and very well-written. lest we forget, 100 years was part of oprah's book club.
whatever. dude has an amazing aptitude for first lines.
100 years - "many years later, as he faced the firing squad, colonel aurelanio buendia was to remember that distant afternoon when his father took him to discover ice."[/b]
love in the time of cholera - "it was inevitable: the scent of bitter almonds always reminded him of the fate of unrequited love."[/b]
and i think the translation is fine. the og spanish is exceedingly difficult to read, however, esp due to the (sometimes heavy-handed) lyricism of the prose.
jorge luis borges anyone???
julio cort??zar?
juan rulfo?
Absolutely. "The Garden of the Forking Paths" is utterly brilliant. I was like
I have only read the Spanish. Muy deficil. But I loved it.
I need to read it again, in English.
hey tiger
Is that directed at me or the reviewer?
You. But not with any kind of seriousness. It's been more than a decade since I've read this book, so I really have no opinion on the accuracy of the reviewer's characterization. I just think your vehemence is funny.
Some of the highlights include:
It is the author's intent to destroy the West's reliance on reason and realism.
Fantasy plays no important part in the story other than to promote an anti-Western perspective -- magic realism.
The Nobel was granted to Marquez by a politically corrupt organization trying to stick it to Ronald Reagan.
That's not the book I read nor is it the one you read. If anything, Marquez makes both sides look barbaric.
I don't see this book being pro-Left or pro-Right. I do think that the Conservative regimes end up looking far, far worse, though (the Banana company massacre, for example), which I think is fair considering their role in Latin America.
The reviewer mirrors one of the characters in the book, who describes the Conservatives as protectors of God. Unfortunately, the reviewer seems to be blissfully unaware of the whole Oscar Romero assassination.
I seriously have to watch how I sequence my images.
HOT STATEMENT WAS PURELY LITERARY.
Hot dub bookwise!!!
I'd like to be able to point to that source, and I'm having trouble finding it. Any recollection?
no fucking clue; not being difficult, but this was probably 6 years ago, when i was a drunk college student, and reading Love in the Time of Cholera.
May have been a professor conversation for all i know.
I especially love the passages that read like they were lifted out of some kind of alternate version of the Bible. My favorite is the one about Satan winning his battle with God a long time ago, and it's been him on the throne of Heaven all along. And how about that girl who carries here parent's bones around in a trunk? WTF, crazy shit. The only knock I have is too many characters named the same thing, or close to the same thing.
Which might be why the reviewer on the flap of my copy mentions something like "Required reading for every human along with Genesis." I kinda agree.
true.