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You are here: Home / Books / Gabriel Garcia Marquez RIP

Gabriel Garcia Marquez RIP

by DougJ|  April 17, 20144:26 pm| 65 Comments

This post is in: Books

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Dead at 87. I’m ashamed to say I’ve never read any of his books, but a friend used to quote from Love In The Time Of Cholera to me all the time.

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65Comments

  1. 1.

    Higgs Boson's Mate

    April 17, 2014 at 4:31 pm

    RIP. I believe that I’ve read every word of his that made it into English translation. The last line of his short story, “No One Writes to the Colonel” is priceless. That story is available HERE as a .pdf.

  2. 2.

    Archon

    April 17, 2014 at 4:31 pm

    100 years of solitude is probably my favorite book of all time. Chronicle of a death foretold is also a masterpiece.

    RIP

  3. 3.

    Cronin

    April 17, 2014 at 4:31 pm

    Awful, but not surprising, given his age. Always loved his work.

    If you ever have the chance, I’d recommend…everything of his before Love in the Time of Cholera. Not the most popular opinion, but I think that’s actually one of his less-good novels.

  4. 4.

    Archon

    April 17, 2014 at 4:31 pm

    100 years of solitude is probably my favorite book of all time. Chronicle of a death foretold is also a masterpiece.

    RIP

  5. 5.

    Tommy

    April 17, 2014 at 4:32 pm

    OMG> That is a very sad thing. I own all his books. I wish I could pull and post the first page of a Hundred Years of Solitude, cause it is the best first page of any book I’ve read. That is saying a lot. It might get better from there.

  6. 6.

    Elizabelle

    April 17, 2014 at 4:32 pm

    Not surprised. He had dementia, too.

    But what a wonderful writer and journalist. He was writing until fairly recently. RIPeace.

  7. 7.

    Tommy

    April 17, 2014 at 4:35 pm

    @Archon: I recall going on a train ride. 18 hours. Rereading 100 Years. IMHO it is the best thing ever.

  8. 8.

    JPL

    April 17, 2014 at 4:36 pm

    How sad. Love in the time of Cholera was a favorite but right now I feel like I need One Hundred Years of Solitude.

  9. 9.

    Betty Cracker

    April 17, 2014 at 4:37 pm

    Damn. The mister and I first became interested in each other when we struck up a conversation as the only two people in a noisy little neighborhood pub who were reading. He was reading “100 Years of Solitude,” and I was reading “Crime and Punishment.” We agreed to switch books and discuss them at our next meeting, and our romance bloomed under the jaundiced eye of Colonel Aureliano Buendia and the hectic gaze of Rodion Romanovich Raskolnikov. RIP, Gabriel García Márquez.

  10. 10.

    Jennifer

    April 17, 2014 at 4:38 pm

    @Tommy: Wow. I always thought the last page, particularly the last line, was the stunner:

    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 would be wiped out by the wind and exiled from the memory of men at the precise moment when Aureliana 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.

  11. 11.

    Elizabelle

    April 17, 2014 at 4:38 pm

    The LATimes has a nice writeup; more formal obit to come.

    Garcia Marquez’s death represents the passing of one of the world’s greatest living authors, and the loss of a powerful public intellectual whose opinions on Cuba, military dictatorship and Latin American cultural autonomy made front-page news.

    The news was met with an outpouring of grief and reverence for the writer known to his admirers simply as “Gabo,” and who was often compared to Hispanic literature’s other titan, “Don Quixote” author Miguel de Cervantes. More than any other author, Garcia Marquez fueled the post-World War II popularizing of Latin America literature known as the “Boom.”

    “Being a contemporary of Gabo was like living in the time of Homer,” said Colombian writer Hector Abad Faciolince, who described “One Hundred Years” as Latin America’s first and only epic work of literature.”In a mythic and poetic way, he explained our origins. His verbal imagination and creative force were astonishing.”

    …. Success came late to Garcia Marquez, his blockbuster 1967 novel published shortly before he turned 40. Until then he had scraped by as a newspaper reporter, advertising copywriter and screenwriter. He was so poor when he finished his big novel that he had to mail the manuscript to his Argentine publisher in two packages because he couldn’t afford to send it all at once.

    But the subsequent growth of his global fame and influence leading up to and following his winning the 1982 Nobel Prize for literature was a phenomenon unsurpassed over the last century by any writer with the possible exception of Ernest Hemingway.

  12. 12.

    Tommy

    April 17, 2014 at 4:39 pm

    I have some of his short stories in my bathroom. You know when ….

    My favorite author of all-time.

  13. 13.

    the Conster

    April 17, 2014 at 4:40 pm

    Isn’t there a commenter here with the nym Jose Arcadio Buendia? Best.story.ever. There are images from that book that will be with me until I ascend.

  14. 14.

    beltane

    April 17, 2014 at 4:42 pm

    You haven’t read any of his books? This must be remedied at once. Go and read One Hundred Years of Solitude ASAP. One of my top 5 favorite books. Many of Gabriel Garcia Marquez’s short stories are also excellent.

  15. 15.

    Sad_Dem

    April 17, 2014 at 4:45 pm

    One Hundred Years of Solitude is a timeless novel. I heard that when he was a journalist working in Mexico City in 1965, he packed his family in a car to drive to Acapulco for a vacation. On the way, he got the idea for the novel–it would be in the voice of his grandmother, who related the most fantastic and improbably stories as if they were everyday things. He turned the car around and holed up for the next year and half to write the book.

  16. 16.

    Tommy

    April 17, 2014 at 4:45 pm

    @Jennifer: I didn’t have to go far to find the opening line.

    Many years later, as he faced the firing squad, Colonel Aureliano Buendía was to remember that distant afternoon when his father took him to discover ice.

  17. 17.

    beltane

    April 17, 2014 at 4:46 pm

    @the Conster: Yes, there is a commenter with that nym.

  18. 18.

    Betty Cracker

    April 17, 2014 at 4:46 pm

    @Jennifer: As the ants carry the baby off…absolutely haunting and profound. I agree with Tommy about the opening of the novel, though — I don’t have it in front of me, but it started off with something like, “As he faced the firing squad….” I mean, how on earth could you NOT keep reading?

  19. 19.

    gogol's wife

    April 17, 2014 at 4:49 pm

    Very sad. Great writer. Read him ASAP.

  20. 20.

    dollared

    April 17, 2014 at 4:49 pm

    RIP. I have so many more to read, but I finished The General in his Labyrinth about a month ago. Such an amazing, brilliant man, and his public life was something to admire.

  21. 21.

    beltane

    April 17, 2014 at 4:51 pm

    @Betty Cracker: I re-read 100 years this past winter in a marathon reading session. I think my husband was starting to get jealous.

  22. 22.

    BGinCHI

    April 17, 2014 at 4:52 pm

    @Betty Cracker: Great story. 100 Years is so epic.

    Let’s also not forget the great story “A Very Old Man with Enormous Wings.”

    First line:

    On the third day of rain they had killed so many crabs inside the house that Pelayo had to cross his drenched courtyard and throw them into the sea, because the newborn child had a temperature all night and they thought it was due to the stench.

  23. 23.

    JPL

    April 17, 2014 at 4:53 pm

    Since I’m close to medicare age, this quote seems appropriate, The secret of a good old age is simply an honourable pact with solitude

  24. 24.

    Honus

    April 17, 2014 at 4:56 pm

    La Cien Anos de Soledad. I love the passage where the people were fascinated and amazed by ice and ignored the flying carpet because it was old hat.

  25. 25.

    Tommy

    April 17, 2014 at 5:00 pm

    @BGinCHI: I’ve said this once I will say it again.

    I have books of his short stories in my bathroom. He is my favorite author. When my parents went there I asked him to buy his books for me. In a language I can’t read much less speak, just because.

  26. 26.

    aimai

    April 17, 2014 at 5:04 pm

    @Betty Cracker: Thats a beautiful story, Betty. Thanks for sharing it. Mr. Aimai and I share a lot aesthetically, historically, culturally, and emotionally but our background in books is not one of those things. What fun to have that as the tie that binds.

  27. 27.

    Higgs Boson's Mate

    April 17, 2014 at 5:11 pm

    Way back in my college days, one of my Lit. professors had us read a book of short stories by Jorge Luis Borges. He quickly became one of my favorite authors. What a joy it was, years later, to read Marquez and to see how much he had done with the style of which Borges was a predecessor.

  28. 28.

    MattF

    April 17, 2014 at 5:12 pm

    I remember back in grad school I mentioned to a specialist in Latin American literature that I’d read ‘100 Years of Solitude’. She wasn’t impressed. “Well,” she said, “you know, it is the greatest and most famous novel ever written.” And yes, you should read it.

  29. 29.

    Higgs Boson's Mate

    April 17, 2014 at 5:23 pm

    @MattF:

    And yes, you should read it.

    In a long life of reading there have been three books that, when I looked up from them, had caused me to see the world with different eyes. 100 Years of Solitude is one of them.

  30. 30.

    Jennifer

    April 17, 2014 at 5:31 pm

    FWIW, I stumbled across a book years ago and bought it because of Garcia Marquez’ comment about it: “Finally, this is the novel I always wanted to read.” And I agreed – if you’re a fan of Marquez, you’ll love Santa Evita (Tomas Eloy Martinez). It owes a big debt to Marquez.

  31. 31.

    K488

    April 17, 2014 at 5:33 pm

    @Higgs Boson’s Mate: What were the other two? I’d say 100 Years was on my list of such books!

  32. 32.

    Jennifer

    April 17, 2014 at 5:35 pm

    @Betty Cracker: I’m not taking anything away from the opening line, but I still think it’s the last one that was Nobel-worthy. I found the novel a hard slog the first time I read it because of the cycles of repetition and the re-use of names through the generations & etc. Of course I was in my twenties then; back then I didn’t have the patience for Faulkner. But I settle on the last line because it’s the one that gives meaning to everything that has come before it in the novel.

  33. 33.

    Higgs Boson's Mate

    April 17, 2014 at 5:36 pm

    @K488:

    Ulysses,James Joyce
    Gravity’s Rainbow, Thomas Pynchon

  34. 34.

    Elizabelle

    April 17, 2014 at 5:43 pm

    Instead of reading books about aggravating Republicans and the trouble they bring, why don’t we do a GGM tribute book party with 100 Years of Solitude?

    It would be a pleasure to read it (again or for the first time).

    May we?

  35. 35.

    Gordon, the Big Express Engine

    April 17, 2014 at 5:48 pm

    The world is round! Like an orange!

  36. 36.

    Higgs Boson's Mate

    April 17, 2014 at 5:54 pm

    @Elizabelle:
    Sounds like an excellent idea! I’m in.

  37. 37.

    Betty Cracker

    April 17, 2014 at 5:54 pm

    @aimai: We sort of knew each other already because we had mutual friends and lived on the same little island, but the books got us talking.

    It’s a good thing too, because before that, he thought I was gay, LOL! Total misunderstanding — my sister, who IS gay — and I went to a party, and all he heard about us before he met us was that we were sisters and one of us was gay. I’m definitely more of a hippie type, whereas my sister is stylish and put together. So it was an honest mistake. ;-)

    @Jennifer: Added to my list, thanks! And I agree about that last line — I’ll never forget reading it for the first time and being utterly blown away by it.

    @Higgs Boson’s Mate: The thing that gets me about “Gravity’s Rainbow” is how funny it is in some places (the old ladies with their horrible chocolates, for example). I didn’t expect that.

  38. 38.

    MariedeGournay

    April 17, 2014 at 5:55 pm

    Delurking just to say that to this day the ascension into heaven of Remedios the Beauty is my favorite moment in any novel. So simple, funny and brilliant.

  39. 39.

    eemom

    April 17, 2014 at 5:55 pm

    OT: The Clintons are gonna be grandparents.

  40. 40.

    sharl

    April 17, 2014 at 5:57 pm

    The New Yorker has unlocked a couple of the author’s stories for access by non-subscribers.
    The Autumn of the Patriarch (1976)
    The Challenge (2003)

    And here’s an appreciation of the author written by Jon Lee Anderson in 1999.

    I found the presentation format of the last two links a bit unwieldy – though certainly workable – but YMMV.

    (h/t tbogg’s twitter feed)

  41. 41.

    Higgs Boson's Mate

    April 17, 2014 at 6:00 pm

    @Betty Cracker:

    “You’ve taken the last of my Marmalade Surprises!” cries Mrs. Quoad, having now with conjuror’s speed produced an egg-shaped confection of pastel green, studded all over with lavender nonpareils. “Just for that I shan’t let you have any of these marvelous rhubarb creams.” Into her mouth it goes, the whole thing.

  42. 42.

    K488

    April 17, 2014 at 6:08 pm

    @Higgs Boson’s Mate: Moby Dick; LETTERS by John Barth, 100 Years, and then my list continues like yours. Amazing how certain books can shift the ground under your feet.

  43. 43.

    Betty Cracker

    April 17, 2014 at 6:12 pm

    @Higgs Boson’s Mate: LMAO! I need to re-read GR. It’s been too long. :-)

  44. 44.

    gogol's wife

    April 17, 2014 at 6:18 pm

    @K488:

    I love the idea of using Köchel numbers as nyms.

  45. 45.

    ItAintEazy

    April 17, 2014 at 6:35 pm

    I wonder if it says something about me if the only book I read of his was “Memories of My Melancholy Whores.”

  46. 46.

    Origuy

    April 17, 2014 at 6:41 pm

    Unfortunately, it looks like the only Kindle editions of his works are the Spanish editions. No puedo leer lo bastante bien para comprender.

  47. 47.

    Miki

    April 17, 2014 at 6:50 pm

    @Betty Cracker: I’m convinced the 2d-Ex (RIP) stuck around as long as he did in part because he wasn’t comfortable rejecting the WOman who’d turned him on to 100 Years of Solitude, among other great works. That and some other stuff, like a fishing buddy. And sex – the sex was good until it wasn’t.

  48. 48.

    Valdivia

    April 17, 2014 at 7:16 pm

    Love in The Time of the Cholera, A hundred years of Solitude and No one writes to the Colonel just a few of his great writings. A life full great and beautiful words.

  49. 49.

    Gin & Tonic

    April 17, 2014 at 7:18 pm

    Probably outing myself as some sort of Philistine, but twice I’ve started to read 100 Years — because everyone says it’s so great — and I just couldn’t get the momentum going. I’ve read lots of books over the years, and I know I should read this one, but … magical realism just doesn’t work for me.

  50. 50.

    Elizabelle

    April 17, 2014 at 7:25 pm

    @Higgs Boson’s Mate:

    We’ll be a book club of two, but I think we will get more.

  51. 51.

    Betty Cracker

    April 17, 2014 at 7:30 pm

    @Elizabelle: I’m in.

  52. 52.

    Ronnie P

    April 17, 2014 at 7:34 pm

    The man knew how to write first lines.

  53. 53.

    gogol's wife

    April 17, 2014 at 7:36 pm

    @Gin & Tonic:

    It took me three or four tries, but it was worth it. Then I read a bunch more.

  54. 54.

    Gin & Tonic

    April 17, 2014 at 8:05 pm

    @gogol’s wife: OK, thanks.

  55. 55.

    SiubhanDuinne

    April 17, 2014 at 8:10 pm

    @eemom:

    That news makes me very happy. Not quite sure why; I’m usually pretty meh about babies. But somehow, the idea of Bill and Hillary being grandparents just fills me with delight. All good wishes to Chelsea.

    P.S. Edit: I’m still having to enter my nym and email address every time I comment. What a pain in the ass. Is there some way to fix this annoyance?

    #yeahiknowfirstworldproblems #stillagiantpain

  56. 56.

    Comrade Colette Collaboratrice

    April 17, 2014 at 8:12 pm

    @Gin & Tonic: I’m exactly the same way – and can’t tolerate magical realism in general. Nonetheless, I’m sorry to hear of the passing of a writer who brought delight and insight to others, even if not to me.

  57. 57.

    JustRuss

    April 17, 2014 at 8:21 pm

    @Gin & Tonic: I read it in college, which was….quite a long time ago, and found it a hard slog. Might give it another shot. I hated Heart of Darkness in college, loved it on the second read.

  58. 58.

    Ernest Pikeman

    April 17, 2014 at 8:31 pm

    I wish I could read him in Spanish. I’ve read most of his work in two translated languages.

    Other than 100 Years, Rushdie’s Midnight Children really blew the top of my head off when I first read it. Grass’ The Flounder comes close. Still haven’t gotten into Pynchon, maybe it’s time.

  59. 59.

    Gin & Tonic

    April 17, 2014 at 8:35 pm

    @JustRuss: I’m not averse to hard slogs. I’ve read Gaddis and Pynchon. Marquez and Rushdie just didn’t click for me.

  60. 60.

    Gin & Tonic

    April 17, 2014 at 8:37 pm

    @Ernest Pikeman: Still haven’t gotten into Pynchon, maybe it’s time.

    My recommendation is to start with V. If that doesn’t work for you, I don’t think anything else will.

  61. 61.

    Higgs Boson's Mate

    April 17, 2014 at 8:57 pm

    @Gin & Tonic:
    Excellent recommendation. V was my first Pynchon novel..

  62. 62.

    Hawes

    April 17, 2014 at 9:16 pm

    Love in the Time of Cholera is my favorite novel.

    But I don’t find this sad. David Foster Wallace was sad. I imagine Gabo being lifted off to paradise by a flock of yellow butterflies.

  63. 63.

    Biscuits

    April 17, 2014 at 9:28 pm

    @Gin & Tonic:

    Me too! Picked it up because it was recommended to me by someone who’s opinion I respect. I just could not get into it. I found it overbearing and melodramatic. Maybe I should try again.

  64. 64.

    lahke

    April 17, 2014 at 10:46 pm

    I first read 100 Years in Spanish when I was an exchange student in Colombia in 1969, and then had to share it around to all my friends because their parents had banned it (oooh, sex!). Everyone insisted that everything in the book had really happened: the episode of the massacre of the striking workers was based on the Bull Ring Massacre, etc. So the trappings might have been magic, but there was a lot of reality it was based on.

  65. 65.

    Bunji

    April 18, 2014 at 3:16 am

    100 years of solitude has been over and over and over, listed at the top of the best novels by so many serious readers. No excuse, read it. And weep with joy and sadness and every other human emotion.

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