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OT but tangential any magical realism authors to read? So far, I got Marquez, Jorge Louis Borges and Murakami. And preferably recommendation should be good to provide philosophical consolation to a code monkey worker-bee in the capitalist society.
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Not as good. Merely goes for the surprise element. The other quote also: 1) gives more plot information (the hero is an older man, sentenced to death), 2) beautifully evokes his nostalgia before death (remembering an event from his childhood) 3) AND builds suspense: He is at the moment in front of the firing squad. Will he die? Get a pardon? Somehow be resqued?
I think another opener that's at least as good is "Maman died today. Or yesterday maybe, I don't know" (even though this is misleading w/o the whole context..)
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His best known work is "One Hundred Years of Solitude", which sold 20 million copies. Or, as the OP describes it: > The Chilean poet Pablo Neruda called it “the greatest revelation in the Spanish language since ‘Don Quixote.’ ” The novelist William Kennedy hailed it as “the first piece of literature since the Book of Genesis that should be required reading for the entire human race.” It's an excellent book, and he wo…
"Chronicle of a Death Foretold" also appears in a lot of US advanced (IB/AP) high school English classes, which I suspect many HN users took.
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Go on so. I'll bite. First favourite author? (If we can even rate and rank so crudely.)
I sorta regret writing that in retrospect because its a somewhat reply-bait thing to write. But I was thinking of Bohumil Hrabal as my most dear author. In some respects they are very different, in that Hrabal doesn't quite have the same magical realism bent. But in their writing itself, in their structure, they are often similar: Hrabal also favors extremely long sentences. Hrabal's book Dancing Lessons for the Adva…
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"Muchos años después, frente al pelotón de fusilamiento, el coronel Aureliano Buendía habría de recordar aquella tarde remota en que su padre lo llevó a conocer el hielo." I think rjtavares' quote is more faithful. Except for "conocer", it should be "know ice" or maybe "know about ice", not "see" or "discover". But the thing about translating poetic literature is that the translator also needs to be a poet.
I think "see ice for the first time" might work.
Now I'm wondering if the translators were intentionally trying to avoid multiple words, or if they didn't realize how much meaning they were losing.
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Not as good. Merely goes for the surprise element. The other quote also: 1) gives more plot information (the hero is an older man, sentenced to death), 2) beautifully evokes his nostalgia before death (remembering an event from his childhood) 3) AND builds suspense: He is at the moment in front of the firing squad. Will he die? Get a pardon? Somehow be resqued?
I was being provocative. I agree with you :) I wonder is there an anthology of first-lines?
"The last man on Earth sat alone in a room. There was a knock on the door...".
Can someone provide a quick summary of what was it that made Marquez so prominent? I had not know much about him at all. FYI, if like me, you have trouble accessing the article, and using Chrome, right-click and open in an incognito window.
He's “a man terribly pleased to have hobnobbed with so many Presidents and Archbishops” He opened the flood gates of saccharine magic realism which haunts Latin America literature to this day.
Magical realism in general and Garcia Marquez in particular are more critically problematic than many realize.
I don't think this thread should gloss over that entirely, even if the tone of objection is unlovely.
“Many years later, in front of the firing squad, colonel Aureliano Buendía would remember that distant afternoon his father took him to see ice." Best opening line of a book ever. RIP.
"Muchos años después, frente al pelotón de fusilamiento, el coronel Aureliano Buendía había de recordar aquella tarde remota en que su padre lo llevó a conocer el hielo."
“Many years later, in front of the firing squad, colonel Aureliano Buendía would remember that distant afternoon his father took him to see ice." Best opening line of a book ever. RIP.
He [Aureliano II ] 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.
"She discovered with great delight that one does not love one's children just because they are one's children but because of the friendship formed while raising them."