Hacker News Board Hacker News, browsed like a classic message board
Live data from Hacker News

Gabriel García Márquez, Literary Pioneer, Dies at 87

nytimes.com

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

111–120 of 165 posts

Re: Gabriel García Márquez, Literary Pioneer, Dies at 87

#111

Post by mxim »

monjaro wrote: post #97
CamperBob2 wrote: post #95

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Yeah, that must be why entire philosophy courses are based on Borges. Stoner lit.

I was considering phrasing my comment as "conversations between stoned philosophy students", so yes, that sounds about right. Not to mention the fact that a philosophy course about Borges will likely be examining the work of the philosophers Borges was referencing. I've yet to see anyone make the claim that Borges originated any of the important philosophical ideas in his stories. Edit: Just to back this up a little…

Borges was mostly a short story writer, it's just another format, more condensed.

Re: Gabriel García Márquez, Literary Pioneer, Dies at 87

#112

Post by rjtavares »

noname123 wrote: post #20

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.

José Saramago. "Blindness" is his most famous book, and probably the easiest to get into.

Re: Gabriel García Márquez, Literary Pioneer, Dies at 87

#113

Post by Myrmornis »

The spanish department at Princeton was kind enough to let me take a Spanish class while a visiting post-doc. It was great for learning Spanish. But it was so, so painful to see the sorts of pretentious bullshit that the undergraduates were inspired to produce by reading pieces by Marquez, and other South American authors writing in the "magical realist" style. I remember enjoying "Love in the Time of Cholera", and I am sure Marquez himself was great, but in general that sort of crap is exactly what you don't want your children wasting their time studying at university, and potentially misdirecting their professional lives thereafter through an underapprecation of the fact that there is aesthetic beauty in actual real stuff and facts about how the world really works.

Re: Gabriel García Márquez, Literary Pioneer, Dies at 87

#114

Post by __david__ »

dvidsilva wrote: post #60

I'm so 'proud' to see this here, hard to think of something to say so I'll put one of my fav quotes from him: "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."

I've never heard of this man before, nor read any of his books, but that is an excellent quote.

Re: Gabriel García Márquez, Literary Pioneer, Dies at 87

#115

Post by Myrmornis »

slurry wrote: post #57
stplsd wrote: post #13

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

Disagree, but upvoted. 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.

Agree that this thread should not gloss over the gigabytes of rubbish written by undergrads in response to "magical realism", and what's worse, the person-years wasted by a devotion to the arts inspired by a combination of a childish attraction to this sort of stuff and the spurious academic credentials accorded to it.

Re: Gabriel García Márquez, Literary Pioneer, Dies at 87

#116

Post by dasil003 »

brunorsini wrote: post #108
matnewton85 wrote: post #101

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Exactly. The sentence in English is translated perfectly in this instance - the underlying implication of 'to see ice' carries the exact same meaning as the Spanish.

Not really. "to see ice" in English is more dubious than the phrase in Spanish, as you don't really know whether or not the character is doing it for the first time. A translation closer in meaning would be "to get to know ice".

This whole debate is why the translator chose "discover". It's a bit awkward because it can be interpreted two ways, but in one of the ways it carries the connotation of seeing for the first time, without the lengthy phrase "to get to know" or "to see for the first time" disrupting the rhythm of the prose.

The crux of the problem, of course, is that the word "meet" in English only applies to people.

Re: Gabriel García Márquez, Literary Pioneer, Dies at 87

#117

Post by arethuza »

igravious wrote: post #30
rjtavares wrote: post #7

“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.

I see your, “Many years later [...]" and raise you, “It was the day my grandmother exploded." Iain Banks, The Crow Road.

Although that line is memorable I don't think it is beautiful - indeed I rather prefer the opening paragraphs of Espedair Street, which you can read on the wiki page:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Espedair_Street

Edit - having said that, I think the start of The Crow Road is rather good as that immature desire to shock is rather appropriate for Prentice McHoan - but you can't really tell how appropriate that is until you've read more of the book.

Re: Gabriel García Márquez, Literary Pioneer, Dies at 87

#118

Post by Narretz »

Coincidentially, a few weeks ago I put Marquez on my to-read list. Bein a native German, my first choice was naturally the German translation. English wouldn't be a problem though, so I wonder which one I should choose. Granted, in the end the books shouldn't suffer a lot from translating.

Re: Gabriel García Márquez, Literary Pioneer, Dies at 87

#119

Post by frozenport »

stplsd wrote: post #13
paul_f wrote: post #2

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.

He isn't responsible for his imitators!

Re: Gabriel García Márquez, Literary Pioneer, Dies at 87

#120

Post by Trufa »

edanm wrote: post #102
ianstormtaylor wrote: post #75

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Potentially to "experience ice for the first time", but that lacks the romantic-ness of the Spanish original. The problem is that English's "meet" or "know" would cause the reader to double-take, and potentially still not understand the meaning, whereas in Spanish it feels normal.

"Introduced" him to ice, maybe? It's usually translated "to know", as in "took him to know ice", but I think "introduced" works better here.

The thing is "conocer el hielo" gives you this feeling of playing and experimenting a new sensation.

It's more like took him to discover the ice, but I don't think I can translate it accurately, though the differences are subtle, they're there.

Post reply on HN