In comparing the works we read this term, the first thing that comes to mind is each book's readability and our analysis of each. This blog entry is my analysis of the texts from the perspective of the reader. I found Cien anos de soledad to be the easiest to read as well as the easiest to deconstruct. While many works within the realm of magical realism can be tough to follow, understand and truly appreciate, I found CADS to be the most accessible. It may be that it is the most recent, the most similar in syntax to other books that I've read, and most obvious but still important, it is a novel. Leyendas is a compilation of cuentos. Reino de este mundo may be called a historical and anthropological account of the Haitian revolution. While the detail of structure may seem trivial, it plays an important role in how the book reads and what the author is able to achieve.
Leyendas de Guatemala was probably the toughest to read and the toughest to deconstruct. Given its structure, it never achieves the intuitive flow of the other books. It seems abstract, lacks fluidity, cohesion and intuitive structure. For a layperson reader and those without further instruction, Leyendas seems tough to follow, tough to know what Asturias is getting at, and to understand why each tales is important. However, given its aim, it achieves what the author intends: it tells the tales of Latin America, from the epic to the minimal. Each tale aids to weave a strange web of stories of ancient and recent times. Asturias is able to show diversity, depth and splendor in Latin American culture, though he does in a manner that is not easily accessible.
El reino de este mundo is a more intuitive text, though can seem abstract and tough to guage. It jumps through time, between people, between class and between race. It gives a deep look into the Hatian revolution from the perspective of the colonials and of the slaves. I found this book interesting, though not compelling nor exoteric. Again, further instruction aided my understanding of Carpentier's intentions and achievements.
Cien anos de soledad was my favourite of the books, it was the easiest to follow, the most intuitive to deconstruct, though it was not very enjoyable to read. I found the novel fascinating at some points, riveting at others, but dry and boring for the most part. It is riddled with pages of what seems like trivial details and plot points. Simply reading through it, keeping up with who is who, and how things are connected was an exhausting task. However, after a bit of guidance of where to look and on what to focus, Marquez's genius is revealed. His creation of Macondo and the Buendia family is truly astounding. Its no wonder the guy won a Nobel prize.
While each of these texts differ in readability and accessibility, they all, arguably, make up Latin American of magical realism. This style of writing isn't necessarily meant to be accessible, intuitive and easy to read. It is supposed to be simple and sublime, to be real and fantastic at the same time. In this way it displays the marvel that is our world and the genius of human imagination.
Sunday, March 28, 2010
Sunday, March 14, 2010
Cien años de soledad - Round 3
After a third sitting and a few lectures to demonstrate the prominent theme of solitude in Cien anos de soledad, its tough to maintain optimism. No happy ending in sight, I would gander. Its exhausting. Marquez seems to toy with customary literary themes of platonic love and carpe diem, introducing his own style and then choking the characters with solitude. No, this is quite unlike the more classic literature works, for example most of the pieces we read in SPAN 365 like El Cid in which a hero rises to a challenge, wins the girl, all is put right in the world and everyone parties till the final word at an epic wedding. Having had these ideas glorified and re-worked, re-branded and re-shoved down our throats by pop-culture and Hollywood in oh so many shapes and forms, Cien anos de soledad makes for a change like shoving your head in an icy vat of water. While we may be conditioned and expectant of happy endings, weddings, romantic love and free will, and while we may hope and expect these elements in the novel, it fails to deliver .This novel is more like how my father guesses most movies (and LOST) end: "everyone dies in the end." It is an anti-climactic unconventional novel that isn't thrilling, isn't your conventional page-turner, and (so far) doesn't leave you hoping for that happy ending. It is the Oscar winning No Country for Old Men of critically acclaimed great novels: compared to another recent winnerSlumdog Millionaire (much more classic in its themes and happy ending), Cien anos de Soledad is not gratifying, not glorious; it is one of those movies you walk out of stunned, slightly impressed, but leave confused and let down. However comical and optimistic it may seem at the beginning, the novel quickly swats away any notion of joyousness; each character has their own fate, his or her own set course and we are the audience. We watch as they grow only so close to others until succumbing to their own unique form of solitude. After seeing it repeat generation after generation, the reader is exhausted by seeing one character after another drowning in their own world, shut from connection others and closed from the world. I'm now wondering, what's left on the horizon? How will the novel end? At this point I'm going to slip into my own world of solitude, shut from the world and wallowing in my own loneliness until we finish the book and I can get back to Kerouac and wishing I was traveling.
Maybe it is just something conditioned by our culture, an expectancy that something good will happen, an unrealistic optimism, that keeps me waiting and wanting someone to 'win', to triumph and not be left alone in the end. So far, things are looking grim. But hey, one can hope.
Maybe it is just something conditioned by our culture, an expectancy that something good will happen, an unrealistic optimism, that keeps me waiting and wanting someone to 'win', to triumph and not be left alone in the end. So far, things are looking grim. But hey, one can hope.
Sunday, March 7, 2010
Cien años de soledad - Round 2
"Power tends to corrupt and absolute power corrupts absolutely. Great men are always bad men." - John Dalberg-Acton
From the beginning, Colonel Aureliano Buendia seems an acute and curious child bound for greatness. His newborn gaze seems to bore into people, capturing the workings of their mind and soul. He shows supernatural abilities, such as his ability to predict future occurrences. He shows a diligent work ethic as an apprentice to his father and when he begins his own enterprise in metal works. As a reader the character of Colonel Aureliano appears a likable protagonist, one who the reader pulls for to win the girl, the war and to overcome whatever obstacle. His love poems to Remedios show his creative ingenuity. However, as the novel progresses we begin to glimpse the loneliness, confusion and cowardice of the future Colonel. He becomes jealous with Jose Arcadio's 'terremoto' of an affair with Pilar and, to the reader's dislike, beds her in a passion-less scene. The life he shares with his bride, Remedios, is shortlived. He is left alone with his memories, and his work, and remains without love. During this period of mourning, he has formed a connection with Remedios' father, thus opening the world to politics and war. It is this future which will consume him, leaving but a trace of that acute, curious child.
War greatly changes the Colonel. At first, he resists taking part. Later, he is a modest leader, who deters praise of his name. Yet years later, he seems to shrink, becoming gaunt and unrecognizable. His countless battles, escapes, and journeys to the far reaches of the world have left him haggard and disheveled. When faced with the firing squad, he thinks back to that day, long ago, when his father showed him the ice. This was a time of childhood innocence, purity, and the splendor of childhood wonder. This was a time that the Colonel has long since left behind and cannot return to. The war persists, as do the many myths and identities of Colonel Aureliano Buendia. Everywhere he goes he leaves a trace of himself in another, resulting in 17 children, further losing hold of his own identity. It takes another man of war to recognize the toll that it has taken on Colonel Aurelianos. Colonel Gerineldo Marquez is the first to see the emptiness of war. Little by little, his communication with Colonel Aureliano Buendia fades until he feels hes in telegraphic contact with a stranger from another world. Colonel Aureliano Buendia was intoxicated by the glory of his return, by his remarkable victories. He had peered into the abyss of greatness. The rest is history.
From the beginning, Colonel Aureliano Buendia seems an acute and curious child bound for greatness. His newborn gaze seems to bore into people, capturing the workings of their mind and soul. He shows supernatural abilities, such as his ability to predict future occurrences. He shows a diligent work ethic as an apprentice to his father and when he begins his own enterprise in metal works. As a reader the character of Colonel Aureliano appears a likable protagonist, one who the reader pulls for to win the girl, the war and to overcome whatever obstacle. His love poems to Remedios show his creative ingenuity. However, as the novel progresses we begin to glimpse the loneliness, confusion and cowardice of the future Colonel. He becomes jealous with Jose Arcadio's 'terremoto' of an affair with Pilar and, to the reader's dislike, beds her in a passion-less scene. The life he shares with his bride, Remedios, is shortlived. He is left alone with his memories, and his work, and remains without love. During this period of mourning, he has formed a connection with Remedios' father, thus opening the world to politics and war. It is this future which will consume him, leaving but a trace of that acute, curious child.
War greatly changes the Colonel. At first, he resists taking part. Later, he is a modest leader, who deters praise of his name. Yet years later, he seems to shrink, becoming gaunt and unrecognizable. His countless battles, escapes, and journeys to the far reaches of the world have left him haggard and disheveled. When faced with the firing squad, he thinks back to that day, long ago, when his father showed him the ice. This was a time of childhood innocence, purity, and the splendor of childhood wonder. This was a time that the Colonel has long since left behind and cannot return to. The war persists, as do the many myths and identities of Colonel Aureliano Buendia. Everywhere he goes he leaves a trace of himself in another, resulting in 17 children, further losing hold of his own identity. It takes another man of war to recognize the toll that it has taken on Colonel Aurelianos. Colonel Gerineldo Marquez is the first to see the emptiness of war. Little by little, his communication with Colonel Aureliano Buendia fades until he feels hes in telegraphic contact with a stranger from another world. Colonel Aureliano Buendia was intoxicated by the glory of his return, by his remarkable victories. He had peered into the abyss of greatness. The rest is history.
Tuesday, March 2, 2010
Cien años de soledad - Round 1
Having read (most) of Cien años de soledad previously - I admit, so much happens that it wasn't long before I was lost in the seemingly endless storyline - the second time is refreshingly, well, magical. Marquez's style of magical realism differs from the predecessors who's works we've read in class in that Marquez spins a fantastic web throughout but presents it in matter of fact manner. For instance the birth of a child with a pig's tail and the entire town being put under a spell of insomnia are told just as matter-of-factly as Jose Arcadia's eloping with the gitanita. Marquez also plays the role of the omniscient narrator unbound by constructs of time. He is able to transcend chronological boundaries, reaching into the past and foretelling the future. This adds a sense of connectivity of the character of the past to the present and future; a character isn't simply what they are in a moment, they are what they where before and at conception, during all their worldly experiences, at their deathbed and even beyond into the memory they've left to others. Marquez seems to assert that what and who people in Macondo are is be determined by forces that are out of their control and often out of this world; the fates of each person aren't for them to decide. In sum, the depth of the storytelling, the attention to detail and the extreme measures to which Marquez has thought out the fortunes of each character is truly remarkable.
On another note, I wish draw a strange but - I believe - interesting comparison between Marquez's Macondo and the town of Deadwood, South Dakota, or at least as it was during the late 19th century. HBO recently concluded a fantastic television series about the lawless town of Deadwood, South Dakota during the 1870's. Deadwood was a town outside the reaches of US government jurisdiction, amidst warring natives and settled upon fortunes of gold waiting to be mined. Deadwood was settled, like many mining towns of its time, by those seeking the fortune that lay below its soil. The town was, at the time, legally part of Native American soil and therefore out of the reaches of US jurisdiction. After a few settlers struck gold, more people began to arrive and the town grew in size, reaching about 5,000 people. Deadwood flourished for a while, ungoverned by the US and relatively untouched by the natives. Business was booming. Prostitution in brothels and endless drinking in saloons kept the townsfolk content, as did the fact that they didn't pay taxes, didn't abide by state or federal laws - or any real judicial system for that matter - and were free to seek their own fortune and make their own destiny. Yet good times could not last forever. This brings be, finally, back to my comparison of Deadwood to Macondo: the imminent influence of outside forces changes both cities. Just as Macondo was changed by the influx of foreign markets and the government institutions of Mascote and more, so was Deadwood changed by the powers of US government officials and gold tycoons who all aimed to annex the town. However peaceful and picturesque a town may seem on its own, the world has grown much smaller; there seems to be much less left untouched and, however good our intentions are, our outside influence on smaller society may rupture the Eden of the small, secluded Macondos and Deadwoods.
On another note, I wish draw a strange but - I believe - interesting comparison between Marquez's Macondo and the town of Deadwood, South Dakota, or at least as it was during the late 19th century. HBO recently concluded a fantastic television series about the lawless town of Deadwood, South Dakota during the 1870's. Deadwood was a town outside the reaches of US government jurisdiction, amidst warring natives and settled upon fortunes of gold waiting to be mined. Deadwood was settled, like many mining towns of its time, by those seeking the fortune that lay below its soil. The town was, at the time, legally part of Native American soil and therefore out of the reaches of US jurisdiction. After a few settlers struck gold, more people began to arrive and the town grew in size, reaching about 5,000 people. Deadwood flourished for a while, ungoverned by the US and relatively untouched by the natives. Business was booming. Prostitution in brothels and endless drinking in saloons kept the townsfolk content, as did the fact that they didn't pay taxes, didn't abide by state or federal laws - or any real judicial system for that matter - and were free to seek their own fortune and make their own destiny. Yet good times could not last forever. This brings be, finally, back to my comparison of Deadwood to Macondo: the imminent influence of outside forces changes both cities. Just as Macondo was changed by the influx of foreign markets and the government institutions of Mascote and more, so was Deadwood changed by the powers of US government officials and gold tycoons who all aimed to annex the town. However peaceful and picturesque a town may seem on its own, the world has grown much smaller; there seems to be much less left untouched and, however good our intentions are, our outside influence on smaller society may rupture the Eden of the small, secluded Macondos and Deadwoods.
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