Jul 21, 2003 03:30 PM
17005 Views
(Updated Jul 23, 2003 09:52 PM)
I have spoilt myself rotten, and have pampered myself silly. I read One Hundred Years of Solitude by Nobel Laureate Gabriel Garcia Marquez and now I wonder how will I ever like other more plainly written books.
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One Hundred Years of Solitude is without doubt one of the finest pieces of literature of the 20th century. First published in Argentina in 1967 as Cien Anos de Solidad, this English translation was done in 1970 by Center for American Relations.
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Set in Colombia spanning the years 1800 to the mid 1900s, One Hundred Years of Solitude is a story of the formation and growth of a township Macando, and it's founding family, the Buendias.
The novel has a near epic feel as it reflects life not as experienced by just one observer, instead as experienced individually by its multiple and myriad protagonists - different members and descendents of a family caught between modernity & pre-industrialization, a people torn by civil war, ravaged by imperialism, driven by a lust for power, withering in solitude, and facing horiffic deaths.
Though confined in specific social and historical circumstances, the possibility of love and the brooding sadness of alienation runs throughout the novel.
Also reflected are political ideas applying to Latin America - that of the native population adjusting to forced capitalism and unstable, disorganised governments.
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Premise (without details)
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Macondo, an idyllic and isolated hamlet, founded by the Jose Arcadio Buendia gradually starts losing its innocence. Civil wars bring violence and death to Macondo, changing its texture as a township, through the notoriety of various descendents of Buendia family
Imperialist capitalism reaches Macondo as a banana plantation. Its American owners exploit the workers. Angry at the inhuman treatment, the plantation workers strike. The local army crushes the uprising bringing unmitigated destruction and death. Natural calamities confound the town life further, and parallel to the city, the Buendia family, too, begins its process of final erasure.
Ursula Iguaran the matriarch who outlives most of her great great grand children is the binding factor between the later generations and the ghosts of the past.
Ultimately, the few remaining Buendias alienated from the outside world are doomed to a solitary life and a heart-wrenching, unbelievably sad ending.
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Why I loved the novel
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I loved its epic scope. A remarkable number of episodes on a grand scale:-
A gypsy foretelling the future of the township, his ghost living throughout the novel, a local prostitute giving birth to descendents of a set of brothers, husbands deserting their cold wives to live a happier existence with their concubines, sisters vying for the amorous attentions of the same foppish man, a calculating woman driving a man to suicide, colonels facing the firing squads cussing at them, rigging of elections by government appointed magistrates, family members turning to each other incestuously in times of natural disasters and incessant rain, etc.
All these are just a few of the many incidents that make this novel throb with life. Jam-packed with events encompassing over 100 years in merely 335 pages. Thus, no lingering on any matter.
Gabriel Garcia Marquez gives terse, yet flowery descriptions using the most unusually placed words making each sentence to be savored. (This is language at its most tastefully richest) Metaphoric and euphemistic rather than literal and precise. Gabriel Garcia Marquez almost quirkily uses poetic language for mundane things and mundane language for unbelievably magical events.
The novel requires a patient, concentrated and focused reading and will then be most satisfying. It was only recently when I was confined to bed that I actually got down to finishing it off.
And though I'm glad that I did, I have only spoilt myself rotten and would recommend all literature lovers to do so too.
