Gabriel García Márquez's One Hundred Years of Solitude: A Casebook

by Gene H. Bell-Villada (editor)

Casebooks in Criticism offer analytical and interpretive frameworks for understanding key texts in world literature and film. Each casebook reprints documents relating to a work's historical context and reception, presents the best critical studies, and, when possible, features an interview with the author. Accessible and informative to scholars, students, and nonspecialist readers alike, the books in this series provide a wide range of critical and informative commentaries on major texts.

Gabriel García Márquez's One Hundred Years of Solitude is arguably the most important novel in twentieth-century Latin American literature. This Casebook features ten critical articles on García Márquez's great work. Carefully selected from the most important work on the novel over the past three decades, they include pieces by Carlos Fuentes, Iris Zavala, James Higgins, Jean Franco, Michael Wood, and Gene H. Bell-Villada. Among the intriguing aspects of the work discussed are its mythic dimension, its "magical" side, its representations of women, its relationship with past chronicles of exploration and discovery, its portrayals of Western power and imperialism, its astounding diffusion throughout the globe and the media, and its simple truth-telling, its fidelity to the tangled history of Latin America. The book incorporates several theoretical approaches--historical, feminist, postcolonial; the first English translation of Fuentes's renowned, oft-cited, eight page meditation on the
work; a general introduction; and a 1982 interview with García Márquez.

Genres: Nonfiction, Classics

192 pages, Paperback

First published January 10, 2002

Reviews

[Leah · Rating 5 out of 5]

I loved the book. Fred Mora assigned it in my Images of Man class in High School. The imagery was amazing. This is a wonderful book to show the type of people who were exploiting Latin America. If you read the book, you will notice that time speeds up...much like it does in life. Think about it, when you are a kid a year is forever. And, doesn't it seem like things are going faster and faster and that Christmas is just around the corner once again? Also, don't you feel that civilization as a whole is speeding up? Instead of writing letters, now, we send instant messages!

I think you will find that this is the best book you have ever read!

[Darryl Knudsen · Rating 3 out of 5]

This collection of essays was delightful and enhanced my understanding and enjoyment of the novel.

For the most part, the essays were engaging and easy to follow for me with the exception of the final essay which had some interesting ideas but was impenetrable to a degree that was comical.

Overall, this collection helps the reader understand key themes and their implications, and for me doing so enhanced my enjoyment and appreciation of the novel. While the timeless tale of Macondo is enjoyable enough on its surface, it’s even more enriching when one realizes that José Arcadio Beundia’s obsession with Melquiades’s technological marvels (magnets, magnifying glass, sextant, etc.) are emblematic of Latin America’s fascination with importing technology from abroad, even when it’s unnecessary and ultimately unuseful in their context; when one realizes that Macondo is a mythic town that is intended to be an utopic Eden that is gradually corrupted and diminished by its obsession with what it can bring in from the outside, leading to political and economic violent oppression and a corruption of the social ideal Macondo originally was; when one understands that the tale is “writing back to empire” by centering the marginalized, rural inhabitants of Macondo in a reversal of perspective of the usual gaze of most novels depicting Latin Americ, which usually center a colonialist observing the natives, who are an “other” e.g., as in Conrad’s Heart of Darkness.

[Mnrahman_058 · Rating 2 out of 5]

I couldn’t finish reading it after the pedophilic marriage thing appeared. I was going fine before that.

[Harrison Martinez · Rating 5 out of 5]

After a year hiatus from reading fiction on my own time, picked this bad boy up and it sucked me dry. Read it in five or so days. One of the most important works of fiction I think I have ever read.

[Cynthia Everett]

I will have to read it again. I referred, frequently, to the diagram of names, as I would get lost keeping up with whom he was referring to. Still, the language and images are so very thick and compelling!

[Sabrina · Rating 1 out of 5]

I struggled. I am so glad it is over. The book is about a family and their stupid habit of naming everyone the same and incestuous issues. Also, about how they die.

Did not like it even a little.

[Ryan O'Malley · Rating 4 out of 5]

Good essays can get repetitive however since they're from multiple authors

[Nia · Rating 3 out of 5]

reading this book was very different for me. i read this back in high school for an english course i was taking and have recently decided to give this book another chance as i did not like the reading back in the 11th grade. magical realism is truly a different style of literary fiction that i have not had the pleasure of reading throughout this journey. i tried my very best to be open-minded to the story, the characters, the conflicts, and the literary and writing style. but, i found it to be quite challenging.

there are countless pages where there are run-on sentences, the paragraphs are unnecessarily long. the amount of characters gets lost along the way. with seven generations of one family and over a dozen family members and enemies to remember i found myself getting lost in the reading, even with the family tree in the beginning of the book. the incest is still something that i find difficult to work through to this day, not my kind of book. i gave this three stars because i can't deny the fact that this book and the author are legendary and near the end, i did find myself liking and understanding a little bit more.

if you enjoy magical realism, conflict, family, and patriarchy then i would recommend this book. but if you are someone who enjoys adventuring in other literary styles i would not recommend starting with this one.

[Trisha · Rating 3 out of 5]

I’ve read 100 Years of Solitude twice now and both times it’s been a challenge trying to keep up with the convoluted plot that moved back and forth over 100 years in the lives of several generations of men and women from a South American family most of whom had variations on the same name as well similar personality traits. But there was more to the novel than the story line and the fascinating characters because of everything else Garcia Marquez was doing with this phenomenal novel. I just needed to find some help in order to understand it properly.

This volume of essays by various authors was especially helpful. In addition to an interview with Gabriel Garcia Marquez and an interesting essay about magical realism, the essays explored many different aspects of the book, including a discussion of major themes, as well as the way the novel reflected the history, politics and culture of South America.

Even though I assume this book was written primarily for scholars and students, most of the essays are accessible enough to be easily understood by those of us who simply want to gain a little more background and understanding in order to fully appreciate Gabriel Garcia Marquez’ amazing novel.

[Jim · Rating 3 out of 5]

This is, indeed, a slow read. I have finally completed the Kindle edition. The names of the characters are all Spanish, and not really familiar to me. It's an "interwoven" family together in a strange part of the world that seemed to me to be some made up part of Central America.

[Patti Wolf · Rating 5 out of 5]

One of my favorite books. I like to pick this one up every 10 or 15 years and re-read. It's like a whole new book from a different perspective because of where I am in my life at that time.
I think this is they type of book one would call magic surrealism.

[Lorenzo A. Fernandez Jr. · Rating 5 out of 5]

What a work of imagination! But I'm a bit confused and bored by insistent repetition of names in the history of Buendia family. I had to consult the family tree from time to time when reading it. It is the Spanish thing, I guess.

[William Vourlas · Rating 4 out of 5]

Magic Realism at its best. I was forced to read the Spanish edition while simultaneously cribbing an English translation. Doubly so when I read Autumn of the Patriarch for an undergrad Spanish class (my major at UCLA). That book was one continuous paragraph. Nasty that!

[Sandy · Rating 4 out of 5]

Great writing - was a little disappointed by the ending as I had heard so many great things about this book and expected to be more 'blown away' by it.

Still a fantastic piece of literature.

[Diann]

Great story and a good read

[Rea]

One word: Incredible.

[Minorwhite · Rating 5 out of 5]

Incredible book, incredible writer. Marquez is astounding, his story-telling unmatched, and in the genre of magical realism, in any genre really, it doesn't get any better than this.

[Lisa]

Best book I've ever read.

[Stuart Ross · Rating 5 out of 5]

It is a very emotionally deep novel with elements of human nature and afterlife.

[Patricia Ervilha]

Probably on my Top Ten.

[Amanda Bowersox · Rating 5 out of 5]

Even more amazing every time I read it! One of my all time favorites.

[Suzanne]

Ummm - that's hard to sum up. I would not read it again, though - not to my liking

[Leezah Pratt · Rating 1 out of 5]

It would take me a 100 days to want to read this. Almost painful.

[Diana · Rating 5 out of 5]

The best Novel of Garcia Marquez!!!!

[Mills College Library]

863.64 G2164Xo 2002