I just read 100 Years of Solitude this week. . .
 

And I think I might be insane now because of it.

There's something indescribable about it that's sort of chilling in a spiritual way. Like Marquez took all kinds of literary archetypes and motifs and distilled them into a profoundly lucid text. So much so that I find everything in the book believable. It seems to true to be fiction.

My favorite book- The Brothers Karamazov seems to be a true representation of mankind on a psychological level.

100 Years of Solitude on the other hand, seems to take it one step further into a true representation of mankind and human history. I feel like Macondo is analogous to Mercerism from PKD's "Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep?" or to the time of Christ in his essay "How to Build a Universe that Doesn't Fall Apart Two Days Later"

At times reading the book and even after reading the book I felt like I was actually part of it. . . an Aureliano locked up in the chamber pot room trying to decipher Melquiades' texts.

This isn't the first time that I've got that into a book. I felt while reading Crime and Punishment that I was being transformed into Raskolnikov.

I don't know though. . . maybe I'm just a fool speaking gibberish.

Can anyone relate?

What the fuck, why you gotta make me want to read a book?

How's that a bad thing?

Because:

1) Now I'm interested in something.
2) Now I gotta transcend my ignorance. I work hard at bein' so ignorant bro.
3) You touched me. Like, genuinely. And we're two dudes.

:D haha

It's an amazing book. I love him. Have you read love in the time of cholera?

I do know what you're saying about 100 years. It's all so complicated and you become so involved that it becomes personal.

No, this is the first Marquez I've read

read it! i think i like it better. i also read all my melancholy whores (?) and didn't care for it too much.

Well, I will say that this pretty much is, and has been for a long time, my default answer for 'greatest novel ever written'. The sheer magic, surrealism, beauty and scope of Marquez's creation is astounding, especially in the way that he somehow manages to put it all together in a way that is somehow intensely moving and 'real', which so completely transcending reality. I really need to find the time to reread it. Oh also, possibly the greatest ending of any work of fiction...

Oh, also, in a vaguely related way, this is amazing.

One of these days there will be a thread dedicated Latin American literature...

almost all the papers i did in english were about marquez.

read that first when i was 12 then have reread it again a couple of times since. brilliant motherfucking libro, man. blew my mind. wish you could read it in spanish. gregory rabassa is ok translator, but the language of garcia marquez is like fucking fireworks. plus, there are a lot of jokes in it that supposedly only truckdrivers from barranquilla get.

this woman by the way is from barranquilla



read up "el olor de la guayaba" if you can find it. a great interview.



and demonrail will say "magical realism! magical realism!"

unfortunately, this board has too much of an anglosaxon literary bent but one can hope that one day the kids will learn to hate eggers and love kafka. yeah, he wasn't latin american i know. ha ha haha. but he was a big influence and fuckit, we should read all from everywhere.

btw thanks to you i've been hunting down copies of bolaño's novels but i can only find in translation. which reminds me, i should call my mom & see if she can investigate some bookstores por allá.

have you ever read lezama lima's "paradiso" by the way? oh man... what a book!

There was a thread dedicated to senor Bolano a few weeks back. I LUV him.

I've immersed myself in Latin American literature/poetry over the past few years, Starting with Octavio Paz, whom I see as the gateway, master of the Mexican section of surrealists. Maybe extend that to all 'new world' literature.

Again, one of these days...