I started reading "One Hundred Years of Solitude."
It sounds even more daunting in Spanish:
"Cien Años de Soledad," as if it will never end.
I read part of this novel before and did not like it.
But hear me out. I was eleven and living in Macondo.
The public library had just open. It was located in
a colonial house. The reading hall was dusty and hot.
The chairs hard. You could not check out books.
To get there, I had to walk about two blocks, passing a
corner lot populated by wild flowers and by butterflies, many
of which had perished at my younger self's hands for the sake
of my small collection.
Beyond the lot, I had to be on the lookout for
one of the town's "mad men" (there were several),
a poor soul that would
scream and scream and apparently took great pleasure in chasing
after children. Once these demons were left behind, I would
spend the afternoon in the library, reading and sweating.
I remember wondering what the big deal was about this book.
So, Aureliano was obsessed with gold? Wasn't everybody? My own
grandfather had been duped into buying a metal detector for
much more than it was worth, and had spent his last, dementia-ridden
years dreaming of unearthing a treasure, a throve of
gold coins, un entierro de morocotas.
I was not impressed.
For us, in Latin America, or at least for me, magic
realism is just reality. You just have to
write what you see. A talented reported and gifted story teller
like García Márquez could certainly conjure up a little extra
magic.
Anyway, here I go, armed with an e-reader and in much cooler climates,
back to Macondo.