Solitude

[E10 Rifle]

Wot, no thread on the passing of Gabriel Garcia Marquez?

Anyway, I found 100 Years a real mind-blower when I read it. A wonderful, lyrical writer. RIP

[Sits]

Solitude

Must admit I expected a mega-thread already. Whilst I didn't experience as strong a reaction, and only read The Famous One, clearly a massive talent and a big loss.

[Duncan Gardner]

Solitude

I prefered fellow Latino Vargas Llosa. Magical realism's all very well, but what about the actual story? Never actually finshed 100YoS, it's like a modern Ulysses.

[imp]

Solitude

What do you expect? This is a board where Peter Matthiessen's death gets spanked by Sue Townsend's.

I had a magical realism phase in my early 20s and was, I suspect, enjoying books like '100 Years of Solitude' and 'Midnight's Children' without actually having much of a fucking clue what the writers were trying to achieve. Fantastical, lyrical story-telling, to be sure, but I can't actually recall much about the books, or any way in which they altered my consciousness. Then again, at that time I could well have been reading them while at least half drunk. I definitely remembering reading Garcia Marquez in my quiet cubicle while temping at BP, in between naps, and after an extended lunch time session conducted with the sole purpose of trying to forget that I had to return to my cubicle and work amidst a conglomerate of unremitting wankers.

[Amor de Cosmos]

Solitude

Spoiler I suppose

The child being taken by the ants at the end is branded in my brain forever. The ship in the jungle, the repeating family names, they stick too, but not any continuous narrative it's true. But that can be OK, while you're reading. Most movies are like that, for me anyhow.

[Sam]

Solitude

As I mentioned on Facebook, One Hundred Years Of Solitude was one of very few books that I wished wasn't coming to an end when I finished it, and it didn't even end up being my favourite book by him (Love In The Time Of Cholera, in case you were wondering).

The other point, made by one of my mates, was that the reactions to it both positive and negative ever since have tended to mean that its influence on Latin American and post-colonial literature more generally have got forgotten. And of course it's not only literature; his influence on journalism has been profound as well, at least in the hispanophone world.

[steveeeeeeeee]

Solitude

I can appreciate why people like him, but I forced myself through OHYoS and got about 80 pages into LitToC before finally realising this guy ain't for me.

A far better experience than my attempts with Paulo Coelho, but he generated the same "you're just making it up as you go along" feelings I got from Gabriel Garcia Marquez.

[Borracho]

Solitude

Don't all novelists make it up as they go along?

[Jon]

Solitude

Well I loved it, although it is over 20 years since I read it. Never read anything else by him though and I didn't even know he had died.