6 ms·

Oh my. A paragon of magical realism and my second favorite author. Rest in peace. Liking storytelling alone is sometimes not enough to like Marquez, you have t

Oh my. A paragon of magical realism and my second favorite author. Rest in peace. Liking storytelling alone is sometimes not enough to like Marquez, you have to love language too. He uses (some might say abuses) language to impact his storytelling, often using incredibly long, convoluted sentences to weave his narrative. It can be hard to follow, sometimes intentionally, but I find it enormously satisfying to read and follow along with his brain. Like slowly drinking a maple syrup of words. One of the best examples is the first 15 or so[1] pages of Autumn of the Patriarch[2], where the narrator winds this thread of what has happened slowly, using sentences that span pages, until you realize a shift from what has happened to a sort of what is about to happen. Then a fist slams on the table and the realization strikes you that the first part of the description was a kind of set up, this beautiful ruse. I wish I could be more descriptive but it would give away the delight. It's a great book about terror and despotism. Marquez is not the kind of thing you can read in a noisy environment. At least I can't. I adore him so much. I could write a eulogy for days. If you've never read him, please take a moment to read one of my favorite short stories, A Very Old Man With Enormous Wings http://simonsarris.com/lit/a-very-old-man-with-enormous-wings http://simonsarris.com/lit/a-very-old-man-with-enormous-wing... (I've hosted a copy of it (and many more short stories) for ages because most of the copies on the web are plagued with ads and miserable formatting) If One Hundred Years of Solitude seems too long for you, I urge you to look into some of his very excellent shorter books, such as Autumn but also Of Love and Other Demons[3] and Love in the Time of Cholera.[4] (Chronicle of a Death Foretold is even shorter, but I do not recommend it as the first Marquez book you read!) [1] It could be the first 10 or 30 pages, it's been several years, but I am certain it's one of the better (and shorter) examples of his style. [2] http://www.amazon.com/dp/0060882867 http://www.amazon.com/dp/0060882867 [3] http://www.amazon.com/dp/1400034922 http://www.amazon.com/dp/1400034922 [4] http://www.amazon.com/dp/0307389731 http://www.amazon.com/dp/0307389731

ryanpardieck 13y ago
I'll always love Autumn. I usually keep a small pile of "guiding light" books around, and Autumn has been in there ever since I first read it ~7 years ago. I use them kind of like reference manuals for the craft, kind of like how we might look through the docs off and on as we code. One of my most cherished book piles.
igravious 13y ago
Go on so. I'll bite. First favourite author? (If we can even rate and rank so crudely.)
- simonsarris 13y ago
  I sorta regret writing that in retrospect because its a somewhat reply-bait thing to write. But I was thinking of Bohumil Hrabal as my most dear author. In some respects they are very different, in that Hrabal doesn't quite have the same magical realism bent. But in their writing itself, in their structure, they are often similar: Hrabal also favors extremely long sentences. Hrabal's book Dancing Lessons for the Advanced in Age is actually just one long run-on sentence that spans 160 pages. Even when Hrabal's sentences are not long, his paragraph breaks are few. It drives some people mad, but I think if you can follow along, it is an immense pleasure to read. Both of them adore language: > "Because when I read, I don't really read; I pop a beautiful sentence into my mouth and suck it like a fruit drop, or sip it like a liqueur until the thought dissolves in me like alcohol, infusing brain and heart and coursing through the veins to the root of each blood vessel." An example of those beautiful sentences: https://gist.github.com/simonsarris/11014861 https://gist.github.com/simonsarris/11014861 (made a gist so I stop polluting comment-space so much) That's from Too Loud a Solitude by Hrabal, a short book, probably the most beautiful pamphlet I have ever read.
  - igravious 13y ago
    Thoughtful response. An unknown to me. Thanks. Will start digging.
  - dfc 13y ago
    It is so strange that people can have such varied responses to language. By the time my eyes alighted on the period/full-stop after "kilo" I was experiencing a significant amount of anxiety. Which is not to say that I did not enjoy the prose, because once I reached the period I did enjoy the writing. But I do not know if I could enjoy reading a book that contained a lot of marathon sentences.
  - wfn 13y ago
alvare 13y ago
http://www.literatura.us/garciamarquez/enormes.html http://www.literatura.us/garciamarquez/enormes.html
selimthegrim 13y ago
Which was the short story with the sadistic dentist torturing the mayor?
- simonsarris 13y ago
  You're recalling One of These Days http://www.classicshorts.com/stories/ootdays.html http://www.classicshorts.com/stories/ootdays.html (Slightly sad to see his life written as Gabriel Garcia Marquez (1928-____ ) on the page. Today we know the answer to the blank.)
  - lexcorvus 13y ago
    "Es la misma vaina."
- 0xdeadbeefbabe 13y ago
  The mayor was the sadist. The dentist practiced regular dentistry for the time.
ballard 13y ago
Similar genre to Rushdie, how might you contrast their styles?
miked 13y ago
> Rest in peace. I, on the other hand, hope that the three men that Marquez's close friend Castro had executed for trying to get to the US on a boat will rest in peace. Not to mention all the dissidents who died in his prisons. Marquez lived in Cuba and for decades witnessed the daily suffering and poverty of the Cuban people. The endless monitoring of Castro's secret police. The constant rationing of basic necessities (though not for Castro or Marquez, who lived lives of luxury). He was a master of writing about the lives of the people of Latin America. But he walked the streets of Havana, saw what anyone could see, and never wrote about any of that. Perhaps he was too busy sharing a fine repast with Fidel and Raul to get around to it.
- Uhhrrr 13y ago
  I have no love for Castro (maybe some contempt), but I think Marquez here is approximately as culpable as Shostakovich, which is to say not. He was a writer, not a reporter, and if we try to pull an artist down to the level of politics it's a lose-lose if we're successful.
  - mcguire 13y ago
    On one hand, I largely agree with you, about the utility of holding someone responsible for what they didn't do, which would have been at great personal cost. On the other hand, I believe Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn would like to have a word with you. Out back, in the alley.
- pseingatl 13y ago
  Marquez pointed out that he was able to assist some political prisoners but he knew that with Castro he could only go so far.
- tremols 13y ago
  Seeing your comment downvoted just shows this cliched simpathy for the left that was a fad in the 60's and 70's for anyone who wanted to be perceived as an intellectual (sure it worked to get chix by then); its still kicking and alive it seems. By that time you could sell a scam that steals a nation resources as love for the poor. But today after we know what happened in Cambodia, Ethiopia, North Korea - to cite a few - under comunist regimes; being a simpathizer of communism just can evidence either ignorance, lack of empathy and sensibility or attachment to an old hungover hipster fad. That said, I enjoyed reading cien años de soledad but I also know that Macondo would be no better under communist rule.
ScottBurson 13y ago
Lovely story! I'm guessing you hand-transcribed it because I noticed some typos: "took away and sense of grandeur" "as if weren’t a supernatural creature" "determining the different" "a poor woman who since childhood has been counting her heartbeats" ["has" might be intentional, but it also might have been "had"] "a her taking his ease" ["hero"???] "finding out in the prisoner had a navel" "rent the sky in tow" ["two", I'd guess] "have up his job" "he’d be duplicated" ["been", probably]
Trufa 13y ago
This has got to be one of the most impossible to translate Spanish writing authors ever.
- HeyLaughingBoy 13y ago
  By the end of the first page of Love in the Time of Cholera I was already wondering how amazing the book must be in its original Spanish and how much could be lost in translation. One Hundred Years of Solitude made me decide to improve my Spanish so I could read it in the orginal language. Still haven't yet :-(
  - EvanKelly 13y ago
    Gregory Rabassa does a phenomenal job with the translation. My spanish is decent enough to have read a few of Marquez's books in the original language, but not good enough to appreciate them as much as I did in English. I'd recommend starting with "El Colonel que no Tiene que Escribe". It was used in my AP Spanish class in high school and is short enough so you don't get frustrated with the slow going of reading in a new language.
  - Trufa 13y ago
    I didn't mean to sound snob though sorry if it came through like that, I would definitely recommend to read them either in Spanish or English, however you can enjoy them the most. It's just that you'll have to accept that some thing just get lost in translation, I mean, even if your mother tongue is Spanish, you'll miss things.

ryanpardieck 13y ago

I'll always love Autumn. I usually keep a small pile of "guiding light" books around, and Autumn has been in there ever since I first read it ~7 years ago. I use them kind of like reference manuals for the craft, kind of like how we might look through the docs off and on as we code. One of my most cherished book piles.

igravious 13y ago

Go on so. I'll bite. First favourite author? (If we can even rate and rank so crudely.)

simonsarris 13y ago
I sorta regret writing that in retrospect because its a somewhat reply-bait thing to write. But I was thinking of Bohumil Hrabal as my most dear author. In some respects they are very different, in that Hrabal doesn't quite have the same magical realism bent. But in their writing itself, in their structure, they are often similar: Hrabal also favors extremely long sentences. Hrabal's book Dancing Lessons for the Advanced in Age is actually just one long run-on sentence that spans 160 pages. Even when Hrabal's sentences are not long, his paragraph breaks are few. It drives some people mad, but I think if you can follow along, it is an immense pleasure to read. Both of them adore language: > "Because when I read, I don't really read; I pop a beautiful sentence into my mouth and suck it like a fruit drop, or sip it like a liqueur until the thought dissolves in me like alcohol, infusing brain and heart and coursing through the veins to the root of each blood vessel." An example of those beautiful sentences: https://gist.github.com/simonsarris/11014861 https://gist.github.com/simonsarris/11014861 (made a gist so I stop polluting comment-space so much) That's from Too Loud a Solitude by Hrabal, a short book, probably the most beautiful pamphlet I have ever read.
- igravious 13y ago
  Thoughtful response. An unknown to me. Thanks. Will start digging.
- dfc 13y ago
  It is so strange that people can have such varied responses to language. By the time my eyes alighted on the period/full-stop after "kilo" I was experiencing a significant amount of anxiety. Which is not to say that I did not enjoy the prose, because once I reached the period I did enjoy the writing. But I do not know if I could enjoy reading a book that contained a lot of marathon sentences.
- wfn 13y ago

alvare 13y ago

http://www.literatura.us/garciamarquez/enormes.html http://www.literatura.us/garciamarquez/enormes.html

selimthegrim 13y ago

Which was the short story with the sadistic dentist torturing the mayor?

simonsarris 13y ago
You're recalling One of These Days http://www.classicshorts.com/stories/ootdays.html http://www.classicshorts.com/stories/ootdays.html (Slightly sad to see his life written as Gabriel Garcia Marquez (1928-____ ) on the page. Today we know the answer to the blank.)
- lexcorvus 13y ago
  "Es la misma vaina."
0xdeadbeefbabe 13y ago
The mayor was the sadist. The dentist practiced regular dentistry for the time.

ballard 13y ago

Similar genre to Rushdie, how might you contrast their styles?

miked 13y ago

> Rest in peace. I, on the other hand, hope that the three men that Marquez's close friend Castro had executed for trying to get to the US on a boat will rest in peace. Not to mention all the dissidents who died in his prisons. Marquez lived in Cuba and for decades witnessed the daily suffering and poverty of the Cuban people. The endless monitoring of Castro's secret police. The constant rationing of basic necessities (though not for Castro or Marquez, who lived lives of luxury). He was a master of writing about the lives of the people of Latin America. But he walked the streets of Havana, saw what anyone could see, and never wrote about any of that. Perhaps he was too busy sharing a fine repast with Fidel and Raul to get around to it.

Uhhrrr 13y ago
I have no love for Castro (maybe some contempt), but I think Marquez here is approximately as culpable as Shostakovich, which is to say not. He was a writer, not a reporter, and if we try to pull an artist down to the level of politics it's a lose-lose if we're successful.
- mcguire 13y ago
  On one hand, I largely agree with you, about the utility of holding someone responsible for what they didn't do, which would have been at great personal cost. On the other hand, I believe Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn would like to have a word with you. Out back, in the alley.
pseingatl 13y ago
Marquez pointed out that he was able to assist some political prisoners but he knew that with Castro he could only go so far.
tremols 13y ago
Seeing your comment downvoted just shows this cliched simpathy for the left that was a fad in the 60's and 70's for anyone who wanted to be perceived as an intellectual (sure it worked to get chix by then); its still kicking and alive it seems. By that time you could sell a scam that steals a nation resources as love for the poor. But today after we know what happened in Cambodia, Ethiopia, North Korea - to cite a few - under comunist regimes; being a simpathizer of communism just can evidence either ignorance, lack of empathy and sensibility or attachment to an old hungover hipster fad. That said, I enjoyed reading cien años de soledad but I also know that Macondo would be no better under communist rule.

ScottBurson 13y ago

Lovely story! I'm guessing you hand-transcribed it because I noticed some typos: "took away and sense of grandeur" "as if weren’t a supernatural creature" "determining the different" "a poor woman who since childhood has been counting her heartbeats" ["has" might be intentional, but it also might have been "had"] "a her taking his ease" ["hero"???] "finding out in the prisoner had a navel" "rent the sky in tow" ["two", I'd guess] "have up his job" "he’d be duplicated" ["been", probably]

Trufa 13y ago

This has got to be one of the most impossible to translate Spanish writing authors ever.

HeyLaughingBoy 13y ago
By the end of the first page of Love in the Time of Cholera I was already wondering how amazing the book must be in its original Spanish and how much could be lost in translation. One Hundred Years of Solitude made me decide to improve my Spanish so I could read it in the orginal language. Still haven't yet :-(
- EvanKelly 13y ago
  Gregory Rabassa does a phenomenal job with the translation. My spanish is decent enough to have read a few of Marquez's books in the original language, but not good enough to appreciate them as much as I did in English. I'd recommend starting with "El Colonel que no Tiene que Escribe". It was used in my AP Spanish class in high school and is short enough so you don't get frustrated with the slow going of reading in a new language.
- Trufa 13y ago
  I didn't mean to sound snob though sorry if it came through like that, I would definitely recommend to read them either in Spanish or English, however you can enjoy them the most. It's just that you'll have to accept that some thing just get lost in translation, I mean, even if your mother tongue is Spanish, you'll miss things.