Discussion - Week One - 100 Years of Solitude - p. 1 - 105

[Jim]

This discussion covers Page 1 – 105

Facing a firing squad, Colonel Aureliano Buendía reminisces about life in Macondo with his family. Urged into the wider world by the gypsy stories of Melquíades, José Arcadio Buendía hacks his way through an enchanted jungle and discovers to his dismay that Macondo is surrounded by water. José Arcadio runs off with the gypsies, but not before leaving a surprise for his parents. Rebeca arrives with rocking chair in tow, and soon, no one in the village is getting any sleep. When Melquíades dies, José Arcadio Buendía loses his best friend and his mind. Remedios and Aureliano marry, José Arcadio returns totally inked-up and marries Rebeca, and with martial law declared, there’s a new colonel in town.


NOTE: If you haven’t already done so, I would recommend printing a copy of the Buendía Family Tree to use while you’re reading. This one is fairly straightforward:

http://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/Fil...


To avoid spoilers, please restrict your comments to page 1 – 105.

[Casceil]

I'm about half-way through this week's reading. The family tree is helpful, but I feel like I also need a map. The prose is wonderful. In the discussions of life and death with and about Melquiades, and the insomnia plague, I feel like there is a deeper message about the nature of reality that I am not quite getting, but I will keep reading.

[Elizabeth]

No, the last thing Marquez wants you to have is a map! He intends for Macondo to be not only remote, but in an unidentifiable place...it's as if the Buendia family (and their followers) had gone to someplace out of time.

[Jim]

Casceil wrote: "I'm about half-way through this week's reading. The family tree is helpful, but I feel like I also need a map. The prose is wonderful. In the discussions of life and death with and about Melquiades, and the insomnia plague, I feel like there is a deeper message about the nature of reality that I am not quite getting, but I will keep reading..."

I think Elizabeth is right about GGM not wanting us to know exactly where Macondo is, and this mystery and non-specificity makes it possible to be an any-town located in any-place remote. At the same time, he gives us plenty to imagine - good land (the Garden), general peace and contentment (paradise), periodic access to the larger world via the gypsies (annunciation of the angels), but then the disruption to the peace caused by Melquiades' sharing of knowledge (the serpent), José Arcadio runs away (the prodigal son) and so on. But then, that's just one way to look at the place...

BTW, regarding names, notice that even though there is repetition, each is specified by a reduction of names:

First generation - Don José Arcadio Buendia
Second generation - José Arcadio Buendia
Third generation - José Arcadio
Fourth generation - Arcadio

[Casceil]

Thanks for the comments, Elizabeth and Jim. I certainly had not noticed all the biblical analogies. Thinking about Macondo as a place that is simply "other" and outside normal reality makes a lot more sense of the story. It also fits with the idea that nobody dies there (except Melquiades, who is both from outside and on his second pass). I'm still finding the book slow going, but it is enchanting.

[Mala]

@Jim: I thought of the Biblical angle too! But there might be more.
G Garcia Márquez brings into being the mythical Macondo- a paradise-like place where no death has occured so far. It has a worthy patriarch in José Arcadio Buendia & the discovery & settlement of Macondo is given appropriate epic treatment so what if this brave new world is near a swamp cut off from civilisation!
The gypsies bring worldly knowledge & senior Buendia's failed attempts at various harebrained schemes show that in this fictional world wishes don't come true when you desperately desire them but rather magically- as in the discovery of the sea & the connecting route to a wider world.
Ditto for relationships- Aureliano's longing for a child bride or Rebeca's volte face from "sugary dandy" Pietro Crespi to that "protomale" José Arcadio.

Now that both administration & religion have crept into Macondo,things are changing- death finally comes to paradise!

Any thoughts on the much-applauded magical realism of Márquez?
What do you think of the male-female relationships in the book so far & characterisation in general?What are the themes that have come up in this section?

[Mala]

Also that insomnia plague portion was some masterful writing-
"With an inked brush he marked everything with its name: table,chair,clock...he realized that the day might come when things would be recognized by their inscriptions but that no one would remember their use...Thus they went on living in a reality that was slipping,momentarily captured by words,but which would escape irremediably when they forgot the values of the written letters." P 48-49

Contrast it with the Borgesian world of Tlön where there are no naming words- language does shape our perception of the world!

[Jim]

Mala wrote: "@Jim: I thought of the Biblical angle too! But there might be more.
G Garcia Márquez brings into being the mythical Macondo- a paradise-like place where no death has occured so far. It has a worthy..."

RE: The biblical angle - being the first man, Adam supposedly lived nearly 1000 years - talk about magical realism! And so, in paradise/Eden, there is no death until knowledge in the form of religion and government arrives. It's hard to avoid the garden metaphors in this book.

There is a lot of low-brow humor in this book, especially the priapic prowess angle of José Buendia. Pilar takes the first ride on José grande and gives him a son. Later, when the gypsy girl feels his giant penis pressing against her back, she instantly falls in love and they hit the road together. And when the prodigal, prodigious prick returns, Rebeca abandons the big brain for the big penis. Kind of low bawdy humor, really. Looking forward to how this all plays out over the remaining chapters.

[Elizabeth]

Mala: here's what many South Americans say about the concept of "magical realism." "Heck, for us it's not magical; it is realism!"

Male-female relations: ask yourself: how many of them are happy?

[Mala]

Jim wrote: "There is a lot of low-brow humor in this book."

Humour or perversion? Sometimes with Márquez it's hard to tell. I had bought this book in April 2001 & hadn't turned a page cause I happened to have read earlier his Love in the Time of Cholera & Of Love and Other Demons,both of which had very strange depictions of sexuality. I'm no prude but some how it aways seemed that he was using magical realism as a pretext for showing deviant behaviour,behaviour which had no rhyme or reason or furthered the plot in any way. Here for example,what excuse is there for Aureliano's desire for a nine-yr old child other than the writer's Nabokov fixation? Or that "adolescent mulatto girl" servicing like what 67 or 73 clients per nite?

@ Elizabeth wrote: " Here's what many South American...it is realism!"

Could you pls elaborate on that? Maybe my not getting this writer is a cultural thing! But I think any woman would be revolted by his portrayal of women.
As for relations among his male-female characters- most seem resigned to fate or petty compromises. In India,arranged marriages are the norm so we understand that "compromise" factor.

[Mala]

And Jim did you notice the similarity between Rebeca & Robin Vote of Nightwood? Both are presented as primordial forces of nature- Robin is a " woman who is a beast turning human"," The perfume that her body exhaled was of the quality of that earth-flesh, fungi...Her flesh was the texture of plant life" etc & compare that to Rebeca's fondness & craving for soil & whitewash chalk & no wonder she opts for the physical man.
And here are these article,which,in a way,also throw light on The Golden Ass discussion:

http://www.guardian.co.uk/artanddesig...

http://www.guardian.co.uk/books/2012/...

[Elizabeth]

Mala: I don't know about that...Look at Ursula Iguaran. And, really, if he paints the women in a bad light, he does not spare the men, either.
Magical Realism: I think what they're saying is that life in South America is totally different, and--yes--more "magical" than life anywhere else.