See, this is why it is useless to keep this up as a literary weblog, for I will never be recognized as such.
My general impression of 100 Years of Solitude thus far, summed up in one word: Delightful!
I will be back with more indepth analysis in a bit. I’m busy making dinner. Literary weblog owners evidently don’t make dinner, or at least don’t admit to it.
September 11th, another day that has added itself to the list of those dates we never forget.
In preparation for change, I am copy & pasteing all entries since the beginning of the year into Word for backup. Prior to that, the backup of Spinning, Talespinning, etc. are lost on the dead hard drive unless I can locate them on another backup drive. Even if I never write another word after September 30th, somehow I care enough about the thousands of thoughts I’ve written in the past two years to save them somewhere, at least as a measure of a time when inspiration and ambition marked a life.
A simple one-liner from Steve’s blog has me thinking: "The days move on and things just grow more and more bizarre." And though he is referring to something else of much greater import, it has me reflecting on my own current state in life.
The other day I sat in judge’s chambers and names bandied about that were part of my past. Referred to G, who is a real estate attorney, and whom I remember from high school as dating my next door neighbor, his brother was in my class and ran around one Easter morning shouting "I have arisen!" Or to J, an appraiser who lived one house up from my dad’s but moved away and who is now interested in returning and buying one of the lots below the house.
On Monday I have an appointment to meet M at the house for a real estate listing. She was a year ahead of me in high school, and had a twin sister named R who broke up with T just before I started dating him and he took me to the junior prom. M also married A, whom my oldest sister dated once or twice, and who was the funeral director who laid out most of my family except my mom and dad. A died shortly after my mother, and is buried right behind her at St. Mike’s.
As I visit this town, a town that is not that small and was in fact known as the largest "town" not designated as a city in the state, I come to glimpses of the past brought in by people I have known who, like I, have a completely separate present yet carry with them moments of themselves wherein we met and meet again. Like Jose Arcadio, I have fled and yet the past returns in fact and memory.
Few books begin with an opening line that affects the reading of the unfolding story, yet this is what would mark a "grabber", a "headline" that is taught in writing. In 100 Years, Marquez opened with a sentence that I have already analyzed for its exposition and imagery:
"Many years later, as he faced the firing squad, Colonel Aureliano Buendia was to remember that distant afternoon when his father took him to discover ice."
As I look back to it, which in fact is looking ahead from where I am in the story which goes into the past, I not only have found that the ice did not hold a reference for climate, but rather is one of many items that the Colonel’s father, Jose Arcadio Buendia, has become interested in in his quest for discovery, but have as well been holding in my mind the character of Aureliano since by writing standards, he has been named as the protagonist in that opening sentence.
Reading of his past, however, I find myself watching him, wanting to understand what brought him to the firing squad of his future, and yet realize that he is overshadowed in his own past by the powerful character of his father. I cannot help but wonder if this is an abuse of writing technique as taught us, or if it is a wonderfully skilled way of letting us know ever so subtly by showing rather than telling us who Aureliano truly is. After all, if I am affected by, can easily understand Jose Arcadio and care for him, would he not have a strong impact on Aureliano as well, regardless of the given facts that he does not appear to be particularly close to Aureliano nor his other children in a usual fatherly manner?
Living is an illusion, an idea, a moment that doesn’t endure.
Not knowing that is disillusion.
The Buendia family is one driven by happenstance. Their lives respond to who wanders into their village, what is brought, what is bought by Jose Arcadio. Meanwhile, the young Jose is evidently astronomically endowed and has discovered its usefulness. He becomes intimate with the housekeeper, unable to stay away from her until she tells him she is pregnant. He then discovers love with a young gypsy girl and leaves with the tribe, solving two problems at once. His mother, Ursula, is distraught and goes by herself after the gypsies, and here is where it gets interesting.
Ursula is gone for five months, leaving her husband Jose Arcadio behind to watch the two children, Aureliano and Amaranta. When she returns, she "gave him a conventional kiss, as if she had been away only and hour." And the kicker:
"Ursula had not caught up with the gypsies, but she had found the route that her husband had been unable to discover in his frustrated search for the great inventions."
We’re not quite sure what Marquez is referring to by this, knowing that Jose Arcadio had left his birthplace with a following that traveled for two years to settle in the little village of Macondo, but his life since had been dedicated to finding, trying, exploring every possibility the gypsies brought with them on their visits. Ursula’s trip had taken her to a town where many of the new things were commonplace and when they came back with her to the town, it came to life, and Jose Arcadio with it.
Here Ursula has come into a more obvious status as savior of the town and her family, and Jose Arcadio once again enjoys being a leader of people as the town grows with people and commerce. And though Ursula, still angry at the gypsies that stole her oldest son away forbids their entry to the village, the one tribe of old Melquiades who was his friend was to be made welcome at Jose’s insistence:
"But Melquiades’ tribe, according to what the wanderers said, had been wiped off the face of the earth because they had gone beyond the limits of human knowledge."
And there is the little twist, the little bit of nonsense of unfathomable depth and meaning that Marquez gives us, sneaking it in among the relating of the mundane.
It is happening as I suspected it would, the male hummingbird has started on his journey south, his son and daughter with him. I missed him the past few days, and knew they’d left. The past week, the female comes to me, hovers in front of me, back and forth to the feeder yet always coming to me if I’m sitting on the step. Yesterday I saw her, today she has gone.
"Due to the increasing costs in petroleum, we are experiencing five times the normal interest in our pricing programs, as well as taking the additional time needed to explain our attractive options to select the plan that works best for them. We apologize for the wait time, and will be with you as soon as possible. We appreciate your business."
Yes, the ten-minute wait has now extended to thirty, and I suspect that the delays are as well in the necessity of giving CPR instructions.
Haven’t decided what to do yet with Typepad vs. Blogger vs. Nada, but right now I’m going through some b.s. that has successfully stemmed the creative flow, got me working with my hands on wood instead of keys, and just about broken my heart.
BUT!–I will be keeping up on the 100 Years thoughts and analysis and as a matter of fact, intend to post shortly about what I read last night before I fell asleep on the couch, woke up, and clomped off to bed.
I’ve mentioned before that one difference between book form and digital is the growing sense of loss–even as so much is gained in the reading of a good book–as the visual end draws near; the last quarter inch diminishing with each page read. I don’t know that I’d been aware of the joy of the inch yet to read, the bulk of a story unfolding that holds such promise of interest and adventure as the marker slices into a spot so near the beginning. Forty pages into 100 Years I am involved in the narrative and there is great pleasure in seeing how much more is available to be read, just by the bookmark sticking out from the slim box form of the book. It is like an assurance that a certain measure of time is promised to me to spend in the storyworld of the Buendia family.
In considering new media and hypertext fiction, where the end is not seen, not known, I wonder at the sudden halt that comes with the resolution, when all paths have been traveled and the story is done. Suddenly, without warning, it is over. But a book shows the visible journey of story, uses guideposts and relative signs: "I’m halfway through; I’m almost finished."
I suppose too, that watching a drama on television, or sitting in a movie theater, applies this principle as well. A two-hour movie on tv can tell us where we are in the story, how close we are to finding out who-done-it, with a glance at the clock.
Does storyspace then, the physical placement of reader and book, reader and laptop and screen, watching a movie, affect the reading?
Sometimes, we come to the line and cross without knowing. More blood is drawn, more damage done, from scratching the itch than the bite.
Writing again, but poetry mood, and nothing I care to share here–much too close, much too revealing, dramatic and charged. Much too tainted with moment. Time will be editor, time will be poet, time will be serious slasher of verse never said, never meant.
Besides, you’ve read my work before and know you ain’t missin’ nothin.
There is so much going on in this book that it feels alive.
It eventually will cover several generations of the Buendia family, who have settled in the little village of Macondo after a two-year trek from Colombia, S.A. In brief, Jose Arcadio Buendia convinces some of his neighbors to leave on this journey because he has killed a man who taunted him for not having consummated his marriage with Ursula after almost two years. There’s a whole story to that one that I won’t get into here, although it very well may affect both the family and obviously, has been the cause of their upheaval and new life in a strange place.
There are touches of absurdity that make the story dear to my heart–as well as techniques or skill to set us up for full suspension of belief when for example, the gypsies that regularly visit bring with them a flying carpet. Unless there is an explanation that I haven’t thought of as yet, it is impossible, no? And yet the style of Marquez’s story does not allow me my usual aggravation at finding something not quite copacetic with a consistency of reality. The storyworld is, at this point, growing larger with its boundaries extended to the questionable.
Another point I’ll make in a separate entry is the weaving of the two generations which have been presented, in a way that affects the reading style of the book.
The Lost Children: A Charity Anthology