Cien Años de Soledad/ 100 Years of Solitude

I’m not sure why I chose to pick up One Hundred Years of Solitude this year. I’ve a running list of classic literature that I incorporate into my regular reading. Primarily to compensate for my lack of education, but also because I enjoy understanding cultural references in art that have had an impact on society and culture. Marquez’s novel, widely considered one of the most important works of the 20th century and a preeminent example of the Latin American Boom, definitely qualifies as impactful, and it’s been on my ‘to read’ list for years.

Often, when I read classic lit, I end up finishing it out of obligation. I appreciate the art form and recognize that literature isn’t necessarily made for “the masses” to enjoy. So, even though I’m comfortable not finishing contemporary or genre fiction that doesn’t spark my interest, I’ll push through on the classics because it’s more about self-educating than entertainment for me. That said, when I actually do come across a piece of classic literary fiction that grabs hold of me, capturing my imagination and my heart, it’s nothing short of an epiphany. Such is my experience reading One Hundred Years of Solitude.

I’ll start by saying that I did no preparatory reading and went into it completely ignorant of the plot, style, and meaning. Just picked it up like an ordinary, everyday rube and started reading. Almost immediately, the words cast a spell.

I quickly discovered that it is filled with so much sensual detail you get sucked into it without any effort. It’s exactly like a dream – surreal, and even though you know it’s not actually happening, you’re experiencing it as if you’re there. So caught up do you become in the details that you don’t realize until the very end that this is not a dream, but a vision. It’s a whole knowing that you arrive at. You feel like you’ve been wandering, exploring the whole time, only to discover that the conductor of the train has been taking you to a particular place.

The story follows the Buendía family through several generations in their hometown of Macondo. During this time, we see the march of ‘progress’ and the impact of colonialism, technology, and modernity. It’s written in the style of magical realism, treating time as a circular and malleable entity, giving the reader a profound sense of déjà vu throughout. Additionally, the names of the characters are reused in each generation, which adds a delicious layer of disorientation to the narrative. As the years pass, we see the common threads in these characters, repeated symbolism and imagery that fire the imagination and tell another story beyond words, between the lines.

While all the characters were fascinating, the one who captured my heart was the matriarch, Ursula, who is the common thread through each generation of Buendías. This is her story, because this is her family. She sets the terms of belonging, enforces or expands boundaries, and keeps everything running for a century while those around her rise and fall. Marquez has managed to produce the most powerful portrait of womanhood I’ve read in years: a mother willing to compromise almost anything to survive and support her family.

Honestly, I’m overwhelmed. It’s beyond any hype I’ve ever heard. It ensnares you before you realize how deep you are into it. Every word, every detail feels important, because it is. Because it’s about what it means to exist, and also, to not. This book is an actual masterpiece. I not only love it, I’ve fallen in love with it, and consider it one of the best books I’ve ever read. It has changed my perception of writing and storytelling in general. What a gift.

As an aside, I went to check Goodreads after finishing the book and was shocked to discover that there are almost 40,000 one-star reviews of what I consider to be a work of pure genius. Of course, there are many, many more glowing reviews, but this little exercise brought home the reality that not everything is for everyone. We have a need for diverse artistic expression because people have different ways of seeing the world, and of perceiving or taking in new ideas.

Anyway, read this book. It’s incredible.

p.s. There is so much to this novel that I found it helpful to watch the following online commentary video after finishing: “How to Read One Hundred Years of Solitude by Gabriel Garcia Marquez” by Benjamin McEvoy.

I have had One Hundred Years Of Solitude on my kindle for nearly a year now, since I enjoyed losing myself in my first Gabriel Garcia Marquez novel, Love In The Time Of Cholera. One Hundred Years is equally as immersive a novel which tells the story of a remote South American village from its inception to its happy years, on through a nationwide civil war, to its near destruction by greedy white industralists, and through years of constant monsoon-like deluge. I love the huge scale of the story, especially as it is contained within a single small village and, a lot of the time, in one large house.

The extended Buendia family are the central pivot and their matriarch, Ursula, is a great character. She sees several generations live and die, stay near or travel away, and all named for the generation before which leads to incredible potential confusion for the reader. It seemed at times as though all the many male characters were named either Jose Arcadio or Aureliano! Initially I tried to remember the familial relationships of each as they were mentioned, but this became far too baffling so I instead just kept reading and found that discreet indications in the text allowed me to know about whom I was reading as I got to know the family better.

Marquez' knack for language and description is fabulous. I loved imagining the invasion of the schoolgirls, Aureliano playing the accordion at his parties, the Colonel becoming wearied of endless war, Melquiades continuing despite death, the old Jose tied to the tree, the candied animals and the little gold fishes, the gringos locked behind wire fencing in their chicken coop houses, the people becoming moss-covered in the endless rain. One Hundred Years Of Solitude is worth reading for its imagery alone, but when so many human stories are threaded through as well, the novel transforms into a superb experience.

One Hundred Years of Solitude is Ulysses, except instead of following one peep while he rehashes a Greek epic in the span of a day, all while experiencing the whole of the Irish culture and the beauty of Dublin, we are following a whole family, generations, of odd peeps rehashing a very dramatized version of Colombian history and culture. Hope, imperialism, war, love, death, sex, the beginning, and the end. It is all in there and it all flows surprisingly well. I even dare say that what Márquez did here takes far more skill than what Joyce did in Ulysses. I admire it, especially for the anti-utopianism, I do, I just cannot love it. I suppose I did find Márquez's writing style a bit tedious. And although this admittedly is simply a preference, it did prevent me from truly immersing myself into the work. I must confess, at times I did wish that this book was written by some lunatic like William S. Burroughs on one of his drug-fueled benders, for at least then I could really feel like I was on some all-encompassing trip. Yeah, sue me, but this work could have, indeed, should have been more asinine. But then again, not every book is written for me. And from what I've heard, the people it was written for, they loved it. So there's that.

1) ''Many years later, as he faced the firing squad, Colonel Aureliano Buendía was to remember that distant afternoon when his father took him to discover ice.''

2) ''Upset by two nostalgias facing each other like two mirrors, he lost his marvelous sense of unreality and he ended up recommending to all of them that they leave Macondo, that they forget everything he had taught them about the world and the human heart, that they shit on Horace, and that wherever they might be they always remember that the past was a lie, that memory has no return, that every spring gone by could never be recovered, and that the wildest and most tenacious love was an ephemeral truth in the end.''

3) ''Before reaching the final line, however, he had already understood that he would never leave that room, for it was foreseen that the city of mirrors (or mirages) would be wiped out by the wind and exiled from the memory of men at the precise moment when Aureliano Babilonia would finish deciphering the parchments, and that everything written on them was unrepeatable since time immemorial and forever more, because races condemned to one hundred years of solitude did not have a second opportunity on earth.''

I have read this a few times. I don't quite recall the first time I read it (probably sometime in the 80s back in high school when mom first gave it to me), but I make it a point to reread this book every so often (about a year or two give or take in between readings). It is simply an amazing novel. The edition I list was my mother's copy, an old paperback from Argos Vergara publisher. It is falling apart by now, but so far, I have not caved in to buy a new copy yet. The Buendia family always shows me something new everytime I visit with them. If I get stranded someplace, I want this to be one of the books I have with me.

*

I read it again, finishing it on June 20, 2009. This time I did some update notes in GR as I went along. That ending still moves me no matter how many times I read it.