Back to the Classics Challenge: One Hundred Years of Solitude

“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. “ This from One Hundred Years of Solitude is one of the most famous opening lines in literature. I mean, how can you not want to read on?

I opted to read this book for the category “Classic from the Americas or Caribbean” for the Back to the Classics Challenge 2019 hosted by Karen at Books and Chocolate.  As an American, I really felt I needed to NOT read a U.S. author in this case and I had a copy of this one already, so it fit the bill.  Another reason I picked  this classic over any other North American, South American or Caribbean classic is because it is just so damn famous. I do read for pleasure of course. But I also read for enlightenment and out of curiosity which means I sometimes read books that I appreciate more than I adore and this was one of those.  I'm glad to have read it; I feel like the experience makes me a better reader over all, but I can't say I'll be seeking out more from any Garcia Marquez soon. Lo siento Gabriel.

So what is the book about? It is about the Buendia family that establishes the village of Macondo in the jungle of Columbia at some point prior to independence from Spain. The patriarch, José Arcadio Buendia, is looking for a paradise near the ocean but ends up settling near a swamp instead. If I understood the book correctly, José Arcadio is a descendant of the indigenous inhabitants of Columbia whereas his wife, Ursula, descends from Spanish colonialists. Their families have, however, been intermarrying for generations and the two are actually cousins.  Macando remains isolated for many years with little outside contact except from traveling gypsies. José Arcadio and Ursula have two sons: the eldest named for his father and  the younger named Aureliano and a daughter, Amaranta.  

The names Arcadio  and Aureliano will repeat through seven generations of the family as Macando becomes a town and then a city with contact via railway to the rest of the country and eventually the establishment of an American owned and operation banana plantation nearby. Some Buendias do leave Macando for other places, but they almost always come back until the last generation dies out and with it the town. The family is somehow, without realizing it,  trapped in this place where history seems to repeat every generation and the house originally built by José Arcadio Senior is built up and allowed to fall in to ruin over and over again. The theme of incest, starting with the two cousins marrying, also is repeated throughout the book.  And of course, there is the magic realism where people float up to heaven, live for 150 years or are born with pig tails and no character in the book is startled by it. As a reader, one isn't really startled either because the narration has the same tone through out. 

I know I am not doing the book justice here. And frankly there are hundreds of better sources than I to expound upon what the book "really means" and the use of magic realism in the text. I think the more familiar one is with Colombian and Central American history, the more one will get out of the book. I think I got some of it, like the cyclical trajectory of successes and failures of the Buendia family work as an allegory of the imposition of Spanish colonialism and subsequent American imperialism in Central America. However, for me personally, I suspect I need to have a better grasp on the historical background to best appreciate this kind of book and I just don't know enough in this case.