One Hundred Years of Solitude - January 2022 Book Club Reading

[Falselogic]

One Hundred Years of Solitude (Spanish: Cien años de soledad) is a 1967 novel by Colombian author Gabriel García Márquez that tells the multi-generational story of the Buendía family, whose patriarch, José Arcadio Buendía, founded the fictitious town of Macondo. The novel is often cited as one of the supreme achievements in literature.

The magical realist style and thematic substance of One Hundred Years of Solitude established it as an important representative novel of the literary Latin American Boom of the 1960s and 1970s, which was stylistically influenced by Modernism (European and North American) and the Cuban Vanguardia (Avant-Garde) literary movement.

Since it was first published in May 1967 in Buenos Aires by Editorial Sudamericana, One Hundred Years of Solitude has been translated into 46 languages and sold more than 50 million copies. The novel, considered García Márquez's magnum opus, remains widely acclaimed and is recognized as one of the most significant works both in the Hispanic literary canon and in world literature.

Excited to be reading this with you all. Will you be reading it in the original Spanish or in translation? I don't know if the book can be spoiled but per our usual custom please don't discuss the plot of the book until the last part of the month!

 

[John]

I will be reading the English translation, since my Spanish stopped after two years in high school, and I aggressively forgot everything. I'm also reading from a physical copy, which is not the norm for me, but from reading the first few pages I have a feeling I'll be flipping back to the family tree quite a few times.

 

[Violentvixen]

I will be reading the English translation, since my Spanish stopped after two years in high school, and I aggressively forgot everything. I'm also reading from a physical copy, which is not the norm for me, but from reading the first few pages I have a feeling I'll be flipping back to the family tree quite a few times.

This is an important thing for new readers: the names repeat throughout the family line and there are some themes associated with certain names. Definitely keep track of which one you're reading about at the moment. It's worth it, this is one of my absolute favourites.

I only took two years of Spanish so I know I'd miss a lot of the nuances of the prose, but you've made me curious as I also took many years of Latin. Since it's a re-read for me anyway maybe I'll give it a shot and have my English copy nearby to reference.

 

[John]

This year, I'm making a concerted effort to read for this club at least every other day. Today I read 68 pages, which is good for me nowadays. No spoilers, but I'm liking the book's style. I was definitely correct that I'd have to keep flipping to the family tree, and was pleasantly surprised at both how much information is referenced there, but hidden at a first glance. I can see how he's compared to modern magical realism authors like Haruki Murakami.

 

[Violentvixen]

Turns out my library has this in Spanish, which is exciting. Trying the Kindle version instead of the physical book since I feel that might make looking things up as I go easier.

 

[John]

Turns out my library has this in Spanish, which is exciting. Trying the Kindle version instead of the physical book since I feel that might make looking things up as I go easier.

Huh, I can see that being easier, if their Spanish dictionary or link to wikipedia works well (and you have enough proficiency to understand the definition!). I appreciate just pressing on a word and getting a brief blurb about it, and would be curious how well it works with non-English texts. I just checked my physical Kindle, which lets you select your overall language (and they have Colombia as a specific region for Spanish!) but even after shifting to that, I couldn't see how to set a Spanish dictionary. It's probably just my poor Spanish comprehension though!

 

[Violentvixen]

Huh, I can see that being easier, if their Spanish dictionary or link to wikipedia works well (and you have enough proficiency to understand the definition!). I appreciate just pressing on a word and getting a brief blurb about it, and would be curious how well it works with non-English texts. I just checked my physical Kindle, which lets you select your overall language (and they have Colombia as a specific region for Spanish!) but even after shifting to that, I couldn't see how to set a Spanish dictionary. It's probably just my poor Spanish comprehension though!

I admit I haven't tried to do that but have heard it's possible! And it's easier to hold my place in an ebook while I go to another computer to look something up too. Also I can make annotations in that but not in a physical library book.

 

[Violentvixen]

Huh, I can see that being easier, if their Spanish dictionary or link to wikipedia works well (and you have enough proficiency to understand the definition!). I appreciate just pressing on a word and getting a brief blurb about it, and would be curious how well it works with non-English texts. I just checked my physical Kindle, which lets you select your overall language (and they have Colombia as a specific region for Spanish!) but even after shifting to that, I couldn't see how to set a Spanish dictionary. It's probably just my poor Spanish comprehension though!

Started yesterday after finishing The Inheritance of Orquídea Divina (which I can't help but draw comparisons to, but more on that later in the month) and can confirm that pressing and holding on Spanish words shows their English definitions which is very cool. Only got about five pages in last night and am definitely relying on my memory of the book as a crutch but was excited by how much I could follow.

 

[John]

That's awesome, seems to be a great way to improve. I'd be curious if his Colombian dialect is very different from other Spanish speaking areas. I'm sure it's different from modern novels just based on the time it was written.

I've kept with my commitment of at least 25 pages a day, on page 108. I should be wrapping up by the time we open up for spoilers.

 

[Paul le Fou]

Oh mannnnn I wanna reread this but I'm trying to finish up the series I've been reading for half a year, and it's been really hard to get reading time... And I know this isn't a quick read either, but... It's so gooooood...

 

[John]

Oh mannnnn I wanna reread this but I'm trying to finish up the series I've been reading for half a year, and it's been really hard to get reading time... And I know this isn't a quick read either, but... It's so gooooood...

It's a quicker read than I initially thought, the hardest part is keeping all the similar names and their relations straight. It's taking less time for me than a typical Gene Wolfe novel, which is my standard for something that requires close attention.

 

[John]

I was watching a new episode of the trivia game show The Chase, and am pretty sure we would've done well on this question.

 

[Violentvixen]

If "puns about classic literature" was a trivia category I think I'd do pretty well, nice.

 

[Violentvixen]

Was poking around on Goodreads at reviews for this out of curiousity and this one had me howling:

Reading this book is kind of like a really weird game of The Sims - it’s about a family that keeps getting bigger and bigger, and something happens to everybody. So, the narrator moves around from one character to another, giving them their moment for a little while, and then it moves on to someone else, very smoothly and without much fanfare. There’s very little dialogue, so the story can shift very easily, and it often does.

It's not wrong and now I want to reinstall the Sims and make this game.

Anyway I've bit off more than I can chew with going through it in Spanish and definitely won't finish the book that way but am having fun. Mainly waiting to get out of the spoiler time frame since most of what I'd say about this book is spoilers.

 

[John]

I’m just over halfway through, page 238 out of 422 in my copy. Haven’t quite met my goal on pages per day, but I haven’t forgotten about it, and am planning on making some progress this weekend.

 

[John]

I'm up to page 339, and think I will finish it today or tomorrow. Either way, it's now the last two weeks of the month, minus a day, so I think spoiler talk is fine.

So far, I think the first half of the book was stronger than the last half. I just don't have a full mental picture of the descendants of the first family like I do of the first crop. There's just so many Aurelianos and Arcadios that they all run together, which had to be intentional but doesn't lend itself to clarity, at least on a first read. Probably becomes clearer on a reread, when you don't have to pay attention to the Plot (whatever that is) and can just enjoy the vignettes.

It's got a folklore quality to the stories, like Paul Bunyan and Johnny Appleseed in American tall tales. One quality I liked the most was seeding future events, and not getting to them until much later in the story. For the first quarter of the book, I felt like Milhouse, wondering when are they going to get to the Fireworks Factory Firing Squad. It's a good technique, one that I've seen other authors use, but not always to this level.

So far I like it, but I'm not in love with it. If he would've tied this literary technique into something with more of a plot than "some stuff that happened" I would like it more. In film terms, I see this like David Lynch's Inland Empire, where I wish it was more of Twin Peaks: The Return. Who knows, maybe the final 80 pages will wrap everything up nicely! It could also be that I don't have the cultural context of Columbian history to know if the specific vignettes/individuals are actually metaphors/references to specific real world events/people. If they are, please point them out!

 

[Violentvixen]

It could also be that I don't have the cultural context of Columbian history to know if the specific vignettes/individuals are actually metaphors/references to specific real world events/people. If they are, please point them out!

One thing I do want to note that I learned when we read the book in school is that the Banana Massacre is real. It's horrifying.

 

[John]

One thing I do want to note that I learned when we read the book in school is that the Banana Massacre is real. It's horrifying.

Thanks for the context! That seemed like a ripped from the headlines item, too bad it was real.

I finished it this morning, and quite liked the destruction of everything at the end. Overall I would've liked the novel better if it used the time shifting and perspective confusion to tell a hero's journey, but that's more my personal tastes. It was good at what it was trying to do, which I see it as trying to create some folklore around Columbian history, while pointing out that everything is ephemeral (and written by the victors). Also the cyclical nature of humanity and mistakes, eventually leading to insanity, death, and haunting as ghosts to continue their endeavors.

There was much more incest and sex working than I expected! I don't know how much of that was commonplace in that era/location, but it definitely stood out to me. Unfortunately, I could see a PTA Mom reading some passages aloud to a school board and getting it removed from school libraries.

 

[Violentvixen]

I finished it this morning, and quite liked the destruction of everything at the end. Overall I would've liked the novel better if it used the time shifting and perspective confusion to tell a hero's journey, but that's more my personal tastes. It was good at what it was trying to do, which I see it as trying to create some folklore around Columbian history, while pointing out that everything is ephemeral (and written by the victors). Also the cyclical nature of humanity and mistakes, eventually leading to insanity, death, and haunting as ghosts to continue their endeavors.

I remember this topic coming up in class and there being a discussion about it. At the time my teacher said that Latin American literature and culture as a whole always has more of a focus on the family journey rather than on an individual one. This is a trend I could certainly see, but also seems to be right on that line of celebrating a culture versus stereotyping it. Anyone have thoughts on this?

My classics book club did this last year and we ended up going through the Oprah's book club questions on it. There are a lot of them in four parts in that link but here are my favorites that I think could be fun to discuss:

Read the first sentence very closely. How many time periods are covered? The beginning of this novel is considered one of the most fabulous openers in the history of literature. What do you like about it? Why do you think it's considered to be so unique?

I love this line so much and have memorized it. I think that's what gave me false hope I'd be able to read the book in Spanish, oops. The main thing is the beautiful rush across time periods in one sentence. I have so many questions and am so intrigued just from this first line. It's so fucking good.

Plagues that have affected humanity throughout the ages have been diseases that impact the body. What is the significance of the fact that the insomnia plague is a plague of the intellect? How do you read the fact that even though they can't sleep, the inhabitants of Macondo don't die?

The Insomnia Plague is the first thing from 100 Years of Solitude that pops into my head whenever anyone mentions the book. It's so striking and tells you so much about the book. It's a wonderful and pure example of magical realism, because here is a real symptom but spread and manifested in such a magical way. The descriptions of the candy animals as the disease vector. The odd usage of the bells. The mundane labels on everything. The fact that the cure comes from a man who has returned from the dead due to loneliness. There's so much in that sequence.

Talk about Úrsula. In the first section of our reading, you learn of her strength and cunning. How does that continue to show itself throughout the book? In what ways is Úrsula innovative? If she is the natural Matriarch of the family, what decisions does she make that you agree with? Does she make any that you disagree with or are confused by?

If you had to pick one character to try to fit in the Hero's Journey archetype as noted above, you could probably pull it off with her. I will always love love that she just wanders off and figures out the path to link Macondo to civilization despite the men trying and failing for so long.

Discuss the complicated, fecund and very unusual sexual patterns of the Buendía clan. Do you find them to be different from the sexual mores of the United States in the 21st century? If so, how?

There was much more incest and sex working than I expected! I don't know how much of that was commonplace in that era/location, but it definitely stood out to me. Unfortunately, I could see a PTA Mom reading some passages aloud to a school board and getting it removed from school libraries.

These are similar topics, it not an unintended answer to the question. Fernanda is totally a PTA mom though.

Spend some time thinking about all the different kinds of love that exist in the novel. Are there loves that seem to transcend the ravages of everyday life, warfare, history, and time itself? What kind of love is the most prevalent?

Carnal. I feel there is far more lust than love in this novel. Also an obligation to procreate and a social obligation/need to appear powerful/masculine, which causes the death of Prudencio early on.

Talk about the many jubilees, festivals and other kinds of celebration that occur in Macondo. Do there seem to be more of them in these pages than there were at the beginning of the book? If so, why do you think that might be?

I remember not getting this question last time and can't remember if we even discussed it. More leisure time? I'm really not sure!

Take some time to consider the way that the government has changed or developed over the course of the novel. Do you feel that the way the Buendía family is "governed" has shifted? Do they have less or more power than they did in the beginning of the book?

There's a complete loss of the family's control/governance of every aspect of their lives, even self-control.

"It rained for four years, eleven months and two days." What does the rain represent?

I feel like this is a Biblical reference that's going over my head. Anyone have thoughts on this?

 

[John]

There's some great questions in there! Many of them are better suited for a re-read, because much of the book has been smushed together in my head with the delirium of the Aureliano/Arcadio/Remedios multigenerational copies.

I don't know of a specific reference to a 4 year 11 month 2 day rain, but didn't the rain come pretty soon after the banana company massacre? I can see that being something to cleanse the ground of the atrocity, after the government struck it from the public consciousness. It was still in the Buendia collective unconsciousness though, I think many members of the family commented on it, even some who didn't have any first or second hand knowledge about it. Epigenetics runs deep with the Buendias.

 

[Violentvixen]

I don't know of a specific reference to a 4 year 11 month 2 day rain, but didn't the rain come pretty soon after the banana company massacre? I can see that being something to cleanse the ground of the atrocity, after the government struck it from the public consciousness. It was still in the Buendia collective unconsciousness though, I think many members of the family commented on it, even some who didn't have any first or second hand knowledge about it. Epigenetics runs deep with the Buendias.

Yep, it's the rains right after that. I'm wondering if 4y 11m 2d is a reference to a significant time jump in some other media but maybe not? In a book that is often so vague is seems so weirdly specific.

This continues to be a great book and I'm glad we started the year with it!