In Latin America, magical realism is something we live daily, Gabriel García Márquez himself explains it. It is the first time that I see someone my age talk about this book from another language and therefore another perspective. It is the great book of everyday mythology that is lived in Latin America, our legends and anecdotes configure a different reality that will always be difficult to understand from other places. Great channel! See you from Chile ✌️
Pablo that’s a really interesting perspective! I appreciate the comment. You don’t know how badly I wished I could have read the book in Spanish and even had a better context for what it meant. But I knew my ignorance for the world that made Márquez would affect my reading. Thanks for sharing your thoughts :)
Your reading is great and that's the interesting thing. Great literature always transcends Languages 5 great Latin American books that I recommend -Conversation in the cathedral by Vargas Llosa -Pedro paramo by Juan rulfo -Bestiary by Cortazar -The Obscene Byrd of night by Donoso - Humiliation by Paulina Flores -None of them is magical realism, maybe Pedro Paramo. However, the first 4 are contemporaries of García Márquez (Latin American boom) -Paulina Flores is in my opinion one of the best Spanish language writers of the moment. -Sorry for my English
Pablo thanks so much for the suggestions! I really appreciate it. I agree great literature transcends language, but I do always wish I could read everything in its original language. Each language is so uniquely beautiful and carries with it its own connotations that only native speakers would really feel.
Don't feel bad about the fact it's hard to understand. It's hard for everyone really. Some people really like the fact that it's hard and others don't. Either way it's not easy for anyone.
I didn't understand it that well but it is still in my top 5, because it's just the vibe of it. When you finish, it feels as if you are waking from a dream
@@ilqar887 It's about a lot of things. It's about memories of a people. It's about love, loss, and living. It's about life. And it's about what makes life magical.
@@astermos-6616 100 Years of Solitude Atlas Shrugged Neuromancer The Great Gatsby War and Peace Farewell to Arms (* I mean anyone of the major works by Hemingway) Arabian Nights On the Road The Catcher in the Rye The Count of Monte Cristo To me every one of these books is uniquely interesting and worth reading.
Could you please help me understand this phrase “startlingly regulated cyclonic power lifted her up by the waist and despoiled her of her intimacy with three slashes of its claws and quartered her like a little bird”..!?
I like your take here. The book is not long, but dense with rich characters and history. It is hard to keep up with sometimes. It was interesting your thoughts on the way fantastical events are told so matter of factly. SPOILERS: for example, Rebecca arriving brings the insomnia plague or how it starts raining and doesn’t stop for 4 years. All fantastical but you just get so used to it like yep that’s cool. I loved this book and could not put it down despite its dense nature. The ending is wild.
Hi! You made me feel SO much better. I'm reading this now and while I completely see the genius of this work, I am REALLY struggling with this. I'm about half through after a month and I'm going to start over and read along with SparkleNotes or Cliffsnotes so I can follow better. I'm glad you read some selections because I feel the same way - this book is bursting with absolute brilliant and griping writing that just left me in awe. But I can't follow the plot! I was thinking of baling and trying another of his books (General in his Labyrinth caught my eye) to get my feet wet. I hate giving up on a book so I'm sticking with it. Anybody have thoughts on maybe trying another of his works first? Great channel! Glad I found this!
The other thing I found FASCINATING about this book is the story of how he wrote it. He basically shut down his life, went into seclusion, incurred huge debt, got behind on all his bills and had to live off of gifts from friends. He really sacrificed to write this and risked ALOT on this. Inspirational I thought.
Just finished this book and have to say this video was so relatable. You’re probably over the feeling by now but I’m basically at the stage where I need someone to talk this out to/with, so forgive the rant lol. I was turning back to the family tree often and finished the book in about a month because of the density. I also kinda felt like the stakes were lessened when he would explain what happens to the characters early. BUT I think he was keeping the focus on the whole family by removing the stakes on the individuals. Sometimes the way he takes this crazy far and alludes to the firing squad, or the train, banana company, hurricane etc. way beforehand contributes to the feeling of inevitably and time as a circle. I remember noticing these as I read but I didn’t understand their significance yet. Because of that I feel like this would be a great reread or maybe even read in a weird order as some sort of project. I guess the last thing I’ll say is that I’m intrigued by magical realism but it definitely strains my suspension of disbelief as well. I wonder that if this magic exists why nobody has attempted to harness its power and direct it for human endeavors like we see in a normal fantasy setting. Yet, the lack of acknowledgement also lends an ancient allure to the world that really touches me to the core and reminds me of childhood fantasies. I remember certain moments such as Rebeca eating earth, or the OG JAB being tied to a tree and speaking Latin into insanity giving me a reverence for the genre, while at other times it seemed strange. Given that it’s one of the first examples of magical realism I’m sure the genre still has a ways to go and that doesn’t lessen Marquéz’ achievement. Even if you felt like you didn’t know what to say in this video I kind of feel the same way as you did having just finished it myself. I have a lot to think about but don’t feel moved quite like I thought I might. The detachment makes it more like a marvel than a drama. End rant.
I always thought that the first Jose Arcadio Buendia's pursuit of alchemy was an attempt to harness the power of magic. Alchemy itself is kind of a marriage between magic and science and I took the madness of Jose Arcadio Buendia as proof that magic could not be calculated scientifically without the alchemist becoming beholden to the greater sense of meaninglessness inherent to the setting, observable in Jose Arcadio Buendia's insistence on Monday repeating itself day after day: as if he had begun to see time as God sees it, without beginning or end, one cyclical series of mystakes after another bound up in concentric cycles of mistakes.
I read this in Spanish and you are not missing much. Some words and phrases are hard to translate but the overall feeling of the book is the same in English. Marquez's prose style lends itself well to translation because it relies more on concrete imagery and ideas than flares of language.
This book reminded me of Buddenbrooks. Reading the long obvious decline of a family bored me to death. Each new generation was onto the same mistakes until the end.
As a Latino I guarantee that knowing spanish would make absolutely none difference, neither knowing Colombia. Plus. My father was called Jose Ramos, his father was called Jose Ramos, and they thought that I was also should be called Jose Ramos. Thats common in south America.
This is the first I’ve heard of magical realism. Would Welcome to Night Vale qualify as the same genre? It sounds similar. I may have to add this to my future-reading list because I like the juxtaposition of the real and the bizarre. Plus you’ve got me intrigued by the surprise ending.
i actually recommend it. I think this book is a lot more enjoyable if you've read the last sentence. At least it was for me. I became a lot more involved in the story once I had.
LET'S TALK SPOILERS!! The punch line of the book is at the ending: "Before reaching the final line, however, he had already understood that he would never leave that room, for it was foreseen that the city of mirrors (or mirages) would be wiped out by the wind and exiled from the memory of men at the precise moment when Aureliano Babilonia would finish deciphering the parchments, and that everything written on them was unrepeatable since time immemorial and forever more, because races condemned to one hundred years of solitude did not have a second opportunity on earth." MY INTERPRETATION: "One hundred years" refers to the lifespan of any human being. It is not just about the characters in the book. Give or take any human being lives for about one hundred years. Some people live longer, most people live less, but the lifespan of any human being is about a hundred years. "races condemned to one hundred years of solitude did not have a second opportunity on earth" WE don't have a second opportunity. We only have one life, one opportunity, one chance. The author is not talking about just the characters in the book, he is talking about all of us, all mankind. Every single human being has only one life, we don't have a second life, we don't have a second chance, if you waste your only chance for happiness, that is it, your life is ruined, there is no second chance. Melquíades's parchments and the book "One Hundred Years of Solitude" are EXACTLY the same book. So we are Aureliano Babilonia and Melquíades is Gabriel García Márquez. The parchments can only be deciphered after one hundred years. The book "One Hundred Years of Solitude" can only be understood at the precise moment we meet DEATH. The precise moment we die is the moment we finally realize the meaning of life. But then it is too late, there is no turning back, there is no second chance. Generation after generation, we keep repeating the same mistakes of our ancestors. That is why so many characters have the same name. The names don't matter. It is as if they were all the same character. Instead of learning from previous generations, the younger generations prefer to ignore, dismiss and forget the older generations, just to repeat exactly the same mistakes and then ruin their lives, ruin their only chance for happiness on Earth.
Holy sh*t bro, u pretty much nailed it, I needed this.... This is the comment that I was searching the whole TH-cam for. This comment should be pinned by the owner and deserves more likes.
I will buy that book I'm intrigued. On another note, if you like family chronicles you might like "The Herries Chronicles" by Hugh Walpole and with your love for language Anything Kate Morton wrote will be balm to you. A Morton quote, "He used to tell stories when we where small, tales about the past. He said that if he didn't go carefully about the castle, sometimes the distant hours forgot to hide..." or, "A horde of lurking thoughts seeped along the wall to brush my shoulders with their tapered fingers"
I’m from El Salvador and I believe this novel speaks not only about Columbian culture but all of Latin America. These characters don’t know their own history nor their families history, so they are bound to rewrite it with their own lives(as you said “talk to grandparents.” Learn from their mistakes and understand that you are here because they set the foundation for you)Another thing that plays a factor is the lack of education. My grandparents, uncle, and mother all lack an education and are unable to change their lives because their level of understanding only gets them so far. It wasn’t until my father placed the merits of an education above everything else that our family started to build something for themselves. Many families don’t have that opportunity because they stop learning and when they stop learning, they stop growing. It’s a common thing in Latino America. The majority of people marry and have kids before the age of 25 because that’s the only thing they have left to live for. Obtaining a higher education isn’t an option because it so expensive that only a tiny few have the opportunities. That’s my take on 100 years of solitude
I feel that the book utilizes Greek tragedy but unlike typical Greek tragedy where one is aware of the flaw of a hero pretty early on and you just see that flaw play out over the course of a narrative, in 100 Years of Solitude all of that happens in the last couple of pages and you realize you have been reading the build up to the delivery. You don't even realize you were reading a tragedy until the last couple of sentences. Doesn't even have a fatal flaw of a character to guide the story's trajectory. The fatal flaw is that the Buendia family existed at all, that Macondo existed at all.
@@SaoirsesShelf well I read East of Eden six years ago in high school ( one of the better books I've read) and I've scene it compared to the highly recommended One Hundred Years of Solitude a few times,which I have not read..
To be fair when I say "one of the better books I've read" I doubt I've read even 1/10 of the number of books you have 😂. Also, just a heads up, if you ever do get to it, be warned that you might think it starts alittle slow.. I have a feeling tho that you are one of those people that almost always finishes a book once you commit to starting one
I'm from Colombia and my reaction to this book has always been the same as yours. When someone writes that "this has to be required reading for the entire human race" you expect something that will blow your mind, and this book, well...doesn't. Not everybody reacts like that. Some do, perhaps many, but not all. Perhaps because I was born in a city (unlike Garcia Marquez), I have always found this book a bit weird, confusing, and at times boring. It's OK to say what you think, with honesty.
at 6:53 you just experienced what magical realism is, someone reversing at 30 mph.
In Latin America, magical realism is something we live daily, Gabriel García Márquez himself explains it. It is the first time that I see someone my age talk about this book from another language and therefore another perspective. It is the great book of everyday mythology that is lived in Latin America, our legends and anecdotes configure a different reality that will always be difficult to understand from other places. Great channel! See you from Chile ✌️
Pablo that’s a really interesting perspective! I appreciate the comment. You don’t know how badly I wished I could have read the book in Spanish and even had a better context for what it meant. But I knew my ignorance for the world that made Márquez would affect my reading. Thanks for sharing your thoughts :)
Your reading is great and that's the interesting thing. Great literature always transcends Languages
5 great Latin American books that I recommend
-Conversation in the cathedral by Vargas Llosa
-Pedro paramo by Juan rulfo
-Bestiary by Cortazar
-The Obscene Byrd of night by Donoso
- Humiliation by Paulina Flores
-None of them is magical realism, maybe Pedro Paramo. However, the first 4 are contemporaries of García Márquez (Latin American boom)
-Paulina Flores is in my opinion one of the best Spanish language writers of the moment.
-Sorry for my English
Pablo thanks so much for the suggestions! I really appreciate it. I agree great literature transcends language, but I do always wish I could read everything in its original language. Each language is so uniquely beautiful and carries with it its own connotations that only native speakers would really feel.
Pablo amazing. Thank you again for taking the time to reply.
Please somebody explain the plot like ...what does buenido family mean like what's the storyline?
Don't feel bad about the fact it's hard to understand. It's hard for everyone really. Some people really like the fact that it's hard and others don't. Either way it's not easy for anyone.
I didn't understand it that well but it is still in my top 5, because it's just the vibe of it. When you finish, it feels as if you are waking from a dream
After 2 chapter i just feel i want to beat the author. Wtf is this garbage
It is even hard for spanish readers.
This is one of my top 10 books of all time. I think everyone should read it once.
What's it about I never got it
@@ilqar887 It's about a lot of things. It's about memories of a people. It's about love, loss, and living. It's about life. And it's about what makes life magical.
@@thenakedsingularity what's the story plot
So what's the rest of those top 10
@@astermos-6616
100 Years of Solitude
Atlas Shrugged
Neuromancer
The Great Gatsby
War and Peace
Farewell to Arms (* I mean anyone of the major works by Hemingway)
Arabian Nights
On the Road
The Catcher in the Rye
The Count of Monte Cristo
To me every one of these books is uniquely interesting and worth reading.
Could you please help me understand this phrase “startlingly regulated cyclonic power lifted her up by the waist and despoiled her of her intimacy with three slashes of its claws and quartered her like a little bird”..!?
I’m reading this book right now!!
I hope you can continue with this vlog, your analysis captures the imagination and my interest was piqued by the way you approach the subject..
I like your take here. The book is not long, but dense with rich characters and history. It is hard to keep up with sometimes. It was interesting your thoughts on the way fantastical events are told so matter of factly. SPOILERS: for example, Rebecca arriving brings the insomnia plague or how it starts raining and doesn’t stop for 4 years. All fantastical but you just get so used to it like yep that’s cool. I loved this book and could not put it down despite its dense nature. The ending is wild.
Hi! You made me feel SO much better. I'm reading this now and while I completely see the genius of this work, I am REALLY struggling with this. I'm about half through after a month and I'm going to start over and read along with SparkleNotes or Cliffsnotes so I can follow better. I'm glad you read some selections because I feel the same way - this book is bursting with absolute brilliant and griping writing that just left me in awe. But I can't follow the plot! I was thinking of baling and trying another of his books (General in his Labyrinth caught my eye) to get my feet wet. I hate giving up on a book so I'm sticking with it. Anybody have thoughts on maybe trying another of his works first? Great channel! Glad I found this!
The other thing I found FASCINATING about this book is the story of how he wrote it. He basically shut down his life, went into seclusion, incurred huge debt, got behind on all his bills and had to live off of gifts from friends. He really sacrificed to write this and risked ALOT on this. Inspirational I thought.
Just finished this book and have to say this video was so relatable. You’re probably over the feeling by now but I’m basically at the stage where I need someone to talk this out to/with, so forgive the rant lol. I was turning back to the family tree often and finished the book in about a month because of the density. I also kinda felt like the stakes were lessened when he would explain what happens to the characters early. BUT I think he was keeping the focus on the whole family by removing the stakes on the individuals.
Sometimes the way he takes this crazy far and alludes to the firing squad, or the train, banana company, hurricane etc. way beforehand contributes to the feeling of inevitably and time as a circle. I remember noticing these as I read but I didn’t understand their significance yet. Because of that I feel like this would be a great reread or maybe even read in a weird order as some sort of project.
I guess the last thing I’ll say is that I’m intrigued by magical realism but it definitely strains my suspension of disbelief as well. I wonder that if this magic exists why nobody has attempted to harness its power and direct it for human endeavors like we see in a normal fantasy setting. Yet, the lack of acknowledgement also lends an ancient allure to the world that really touches me to the core and reminds me of childhood fantasies. I remember certain moments such as Rebeca eating earth, or the OG JAB being tied to a tree and speaking Latin into insanity giving me a reverence for the genre, while at other times it seemed strange. Given that it’s one of the first examples of magical realism I’m sure the genre still has a ways to go and that doesn’t lessen Marquéz’ achievement.
Even if you felt like you didn’t know what to say in this video I kind of feel the same way as you did having just finished it myself. I have a lot to think about but don’t feel moved quite like I thought I might. The detachment makes it more like a marvel than a drama. End rant.
I always thought that the first Jose Arcadio Buendia's pursuit of alchemy was an attempt to harness the power of magic.
Alchemy itself is kind of a marriage between magic and science and I took the madness of Jose Arcadio Buendia as proof that magic could not be calculated scientifically without the alchemist becoming beholden to the greater sense of meaninglessness inherent to the setting, observable in Jose Arcadio Buendia's insistence on Monday repeating itself day after day: as if he had begun to see time as God sees it, without beginning or end, one cyclical series of mystakes after another bound up in concentric cycles of mistakes.
I read this in Spanish and you are not missing much. Some words and phrases are hard to translate but the overall feeling of the book is the same in English. Marquez's prose style lends itself well to translation because it relies more on concrete imagery and ideas
than flares of language.
This book reminded me of Buddenbrooks. Reading the long obvious decline of a family bored me to death. Each new generation was onto the same mistakes until the end.
As a Latino I guarantee that knowing spanish would make absolutely none difference, neither knowing Colombia.
Plus.
My father was called Jose Ramos, his father was called Jose Ramos, and they thought that I was also should be called Jose Ramos.
Thats common in south America.
This is the first I’ve heard of magical realism. Would Welcome to Night Vale qualify as the same genre? It sounds similar. I may have to add this to my future-reading list because I like the juxtaposition of the real and the bizarre. Plus you’ve got me intrigued by the surprise ending.
Randy DePasquale yes I would definitely call Nightvale magical realism. But kind of with a sci fi twist. A very weird genre for sure!
I have a bad habit of reading the last sentence of a book before I start at the beginning. I suppose I should not do that with this book
i actually recommend it. I think this book is a lot more enjoyable if you've read the last sentence. At least it was for me. I became a lot more involved in the story once I had.
I had the same habit when I first read this book at 14. It Made me super engaged with the story
Would love to see a video of your thoughts on The Road by Cormac McCarthy.
LET'S TALK SPOILERS!!
The punch line of the book is at the ending:
"Before reaching the final line, however, he had already understood that he would never leave that room, for it was foreseen that the city of mirrors (or mirages) would be wiped out by the wind and exiled from the memory of men at the precise moment when Aureliano Babilonia would finish deciphering the parchments, and that everything written on them was unrepeatable since time immemorial and forever more, because races condemned to one hundred years of solitude did not have a second opportunity on earth."
MY INTERPRETATION:
"One hundred years" refers to the lifespan of any human being. It is not just about the characters in the book. Give or take any human being lives for about one hundred years. Some people live longer, most people live less, but the lifespan of any human being is about a hundred years.
"races condemned to one hundred years of solitude did not have a second opportunity on earth"
WE don't have a second opportunity. We only have one life, one opportunity, one chance.
The author is not talking about just the characters in the book, he is talking about all of us, all mankind. Every single human being has only one life, we don't have a second life, we don't have a second chance, if you waste your only chance for happiness, that is it, your life is ruined, there is no second chance.
Melquíades's parchments and the book "One Hundred Years of Solitude" are EXACTLY the same book. So we are Aureliano Babilonia and Melquíades is Gabriel García Márquez.
The parchments can only be deciphered after one hundred years.
The book "One Hundred Years of Solitude" can only be understood at the precise moment we meet DEATH.
The precise moment we die is the moment we finally realize the meaning of life.
But then it is too late, there is no turning back, there is no second chance.
Generation after generation, we keep repeating the same mistakes of our ancestors.
That is why so many characters have the same name. The names don't matter. It is as if they were all the same character. Instead of learning from previous generations, the younger generations prefer to ignore, dismiss and forget the older generations, just to repeat exactly the same mistakes and then ruin their lives, ruin their only chance for happiness on Earth.
Holy sh*t bro, u pretty much nailed it, I needed this.... This is the comment that I was searching the whole TH-cam for. This comment should be pinned by the owner and deserves more likes.
I will buy that book I'm intrigued.
On another note, if you like family chronicles you might like "The Herries Chronicles" by Hugh Walpole and with your love for language Anything Kate Morton wrote will be balm to you.
A Morton quote, "He used to tell stories when we where small, tales about the past. He said that if he didn't go carefully about the castle, sometimes the distant hours forgot to hide..." or,
"A horde of lurking thoughts seeped along the wall to brush my shoulders with their tapered fingers"
Mam can you explain magical realism?
¡Viva el partido liberal! ¡Viva el coronel Aureliano Buendía!
I’m from El Salvador and I believe this novel speaks not only about Columbian culture but all of Latin America. These characters don’t know their own history nor their families history, so they are bound to rewrite it with their own lives(as you said “talk to grandparents.” Learn from their mistakes and understand that you are here because they set the foundation for you)Another thing that plays a factor is the lack of education. My grandparents, uncle, and mother all lack an education and are unable to change their lives because their level of understanding only gets them so far. It wasn’t until my father placed the merits of an education above everything else that our family started to build something for themselves. Many families don’t have that opportunity because they stop learning and when they stop learning, they stop growing. It’s a common thing in Latino America. The majority of people marry and have kids before the age of 25 because that’s the only thing they have left to live for. Obtaining a higher education isn’t an option because it so expensive that only a tiny few have the opportunities. That’s my take on 100 years of solitude
Marvin Rivera I really appreciate this input!
@@SaoirsesShelf gabriel garcia marquez is from colombia
Oh nice one
I feel that the book utilizes Greek tragedy but unlike typical Greek tragedy where one is aware of the flaw of a hero pretty early on
and you just see that flaw play out over the course of a narrative, in 100 Years of Solitude all of that happens in the last couple of pages and you realize you have been reading the build up to the delivery. You don't even realize you were reading a tragedy until the last couple of sentences. Doesn't even have a fatal flaw of a character to guide the story's trajectory. The fatal flaw is that the Buendia family existed at all, that Macondo existed at all.
I had a hard time with this one,the names alone....
I am really bad at remembering names
Then a booktuber recommended me this book
Personally prefer Chronicle of a Death Foretold? But I know I'm alone in that judgment... that's okay
Did you like this book better then East of Eden?
I actually haven't read East of Eden! Why do you ask, are they comparable?
@@SaoirsesShelf well I read East of Eden six years ago in high school ( one of the better books I've read) and I've scene it compared to the highly recommended One Hundred Years of Solitude a few times,which I have not read..
Moist Penguin oh interesting! I’ll have to add it to the list
To be fair when I say "one of the better books I've read" I doubt I've read even 1/10 of the number of books you have 😂. Also, just a heads up, if you ever do get to it, be warned that you might think it starts alittle slow.. I have a feeling tho that you are one of those people that almost always finishes a book once you commit to starting one
Moist Penguin I have very very rarely set a book aside. Forced my way through many painfully boring stories 😂
Most beautifully written book I have ever read...
You should try "the Life" by Guy de Maupassant"
Was this book originally published in Spanish
Yes
Hahaha, your cat 😍
I'm from Colombia and my reaction to this book has always been the same as yours. When someone writes that "this has to be required reading for the entire human race" you expect something that will blow your mind, and this book, well...doesn't. Not everybody reacts like that. Some do, perhaps many, but not all. Perhaps because I was born in a city (unlike Garcia Marquez), I have always found this book a bit weird, confusing, and at times boring. It's OK to say what you think, with honesty.