Beginning One Hundred Years of Solitude by Gabriel García Márquez
“Many years later as he faced the firing squad, Colonel Aureliano Buendía was to remember that distant afternoon when his father took him to discover ice.”
This week I started reading One Hundred Years of Solitude by Gabriel García Márquez, through the Hardcore Literature Book Club with Benjamin McEvoy. This will be my first novel of magical realism and my first real foray into Latin American literature. It’s refreshing to have this new literary territory to explore.
My initial plan is to simply let the novel do its work on me, without giving in to the temptation to analyze everything, but to simply enjoy and savor it. John Gardner says that a true work of fiction “creates a vivid and continuous dream in the reader’s mind.” I am going to try to abandon myself to the fictive dream that is One Hundred Years of Solitude.
Ben often recommends complementary readings to go along with the novels we read, and one of the things he suggests for beginning to appreciate the Latin American literary tradition is to read the short story “The Library of Babel” by Jorge Luis Borges. I read it last night and, wow, what an experience. I don’t want to say much about the story in case you haven’t read it, but it touches on books, knowledge, chaos, meaning, and infinity, to name a few of its themes. I came away from it grateful for a world in which stories like this exist. But at the same time it made me a bit melancholy as I thought about how many great books there are that I will never get to read because of the brevity of life. “So many books, so little time,” right? But it’s not only books: there is so much to experience in this world and so little time to experience it. “The Library of Babel” serves as both a celebration and a reminder of the vastness of creation, prompting us to appreciate the moments and encounters of our lives while acknowledging the infinite possibilities we will never fully explore. In the end, it’s the journey itself—through stories, experiences, and understanding—that makes life meaningful.
