A reminder: Read and re-read One Hundred Years of Solitude

This weekend, The Globe and Mail published another in its list of the "50 greatest books": One Hundred Years of Solitude. Excerpt:

Gabriel García Márquez, then a little-known Colombian journalist, wrote One Hundred Years of Solitude over a period of 18 months, in seclusion, in Mexico City. The book was published in Buenos Aires in 1967, heralding a new literary wave from Latin America and becoming the most important novel ever published in Spanish on this side of the Atlantic.

If you haven't read it yet, put down that trashy Dostoevsky thriller and get serious. If you've already read One Hundred Years of Solitude, get it off the shelf and read it again.

It took me two or three tries to get into, but I was young and dumb circa 1970. Once I did finish it, I was young and dumbfounded. Who knew you could write a novel like that? And even if you were allowed to write a novel like that, where would you get the talent? Several re-readings later, I still have no answer.

Everyone who grew up between El Paso, Texas, and Tierra Del Fuego, Chile, thinks it is the story of their own home town. (I spent four years of my boyhood in Mexico City, so I understand that.) North Americans who read it suddenly and rightly worry that they've missed the best part of life.

Some critics call him "Gabo," the nickname for Gabriel. Not me. He's the maestro, the one who breaks the rules we mortals never dare break, and who puts magic in our heads.

When you've finished One Hundred Years of Solitude, get going on the rest of his work, fiction and nonfiction alike. Yes, it will indeed be on the final exam.

Comments

[Shelli]

I read it in college, and it was very difficult for me to read back then, but I loved it after discussing it in class. I will take your advice and reread it someday.

[Sam Taylor]

Tried reading it in college, just to be more edu-ma-cated. I failed within a few pages, got bored, and tried Unbearable Lightness of Being. I also failed to read that one.

I have been meaning to read it again, but have never gotten around to it.