"One Hundred Years of Solitude" Post 7b

This book is very odd, but beautiful to read. It's tone is so even, calm, and matter of fact; after Anna Karenina it's quite a nice change. No one is sentimentalized and everyone has faults or makes mistakes: José Arcadio Buendía wastes his time on silly alchemical experiments, Úrsula is domineering and pushes Arcadio to his doom, Amaranta pushes Pietro to commit suicide, Rebeca spurns her lover, and many others. This very up front, clear tone contrasts with the almost dream-like confusing nature of the plot. The relentless sound of the bones of Rebeca's parents, the founding of the town itself, José Buendía's slip into madness, Arcadio's take over of the town, the flying carpet, the power of alchemy, the return of Melquíades from death: all of these events have a mystical aspect to them. Pilar Tenera embodies this idea: not only does she bring out the passion in almost every man, including her own son, but she has the power to read the future in cards. This contrast of real and mythical is the foundation for the novel. One Hundred Years of Solitude also plays an interesting role in literature. For me, it seems much like Absalom, Absalom! by William Faulkner. In Faulkner's novel of a Southern family's twisted history, Thomas Sutpen and his Hundred slaves like devils seem just as mystical, and his family's legacy becomes just as confusing with different relations between members. It also focuses on a patriarch's ensuing clan. However, in perhaps a Southern way it makes things extremely complex and connected, each part of a sentence bringing the reader to the next thought, and then the next, and then back to the beginning, weaving the story in circles. Márquez's novel's writing is much more straightforward, it is the relations between people that become confusing. Perhaps this novel represents Latin American thinking much as Faulkner's novel does.