Books of the 20th Century -- Writers, Ideas, and Literature of a Hundred Years. An Anthology from The New York Times Book Review

Author: Anonymous
Translator: Zhu Mengxun et al.
Publisher:
Publish Date: 2005-08-01
Features: Critics and authors are equally renowned: Ursula K. Le Guin discusses White's Charlotte's Web, John Updike reviews Salinger's Franny and Zooey, and Auden admires Tolkien's The Fellowship of the Ring, and so on, just to name a few. In addition to the heavyweight reviews of forward-looking books, this book also contains several features that will delight all readers:
· Essays – including Alice Toklas recalling jazz-age Paris, and Dr. Seuss discussing children's humor.
· First Impressions – featuring initial reviews of renowned authors such as Virginia Woolf, George Orwell, Dashiell Hammett, Saul Bellow, Flannery O'Connor, and Derek Walcott.
· Interviews – where the voices of Willa Cather, Vladimir Nabokov, Milan Kundera, and Norman Mailer are heard, clear and powerful.
· Letters – offering sharp and unexpected insights, such as Alan Greenspan passionately defending Ayn Rand, and William Manchester recalling Mencken's contributions to the American language.
· Editor's Picks – from 1972 to 1997, reflecting the evolution of our literary tastes.
One Hundred Years of Solitude by Gabriel García Márquez
Robert Kiely
When the word "magic" is mentioned, even when referring to a contemporary novel, it inevitably brings to mind images of fairies, moonlight, and slippery mountains. Besides dwarfs and elves, we might also see magical spells and moral miracles, but humor is absent, and eroticism is unthinkable. It seems we must adopt a forgetful attitude toward the world, at least that is one concept of magic. But this is clearly not the understanding of Gabriel García Márquez, the Colombian novelist, who created a magical realm in One Hundred Years of Solitude, where everything is done and done to exhaustion. Even when Macondo is tempting and interesting, it is already leaking, stinking, and burning. It is a place filled with lies and frauds, yet it is incredibly realistic. The lovers in this novel can idealize each other, turning them into disembodied spirits, who emit joyful cries on their hammocks or roll naked in the front yard, smearing themselves with peach jam. The protagonist leads a band of gallant adventurers through the jungle, but despite his unachieved goal, the language used to describe the pursuit is sharp and full of life: the adventurers' boots sink into scalding oil pits, their long knives shred blood-red lilies and golden salamanders, and in that damp and silent paradise, reminiscent of the ancient memories before the Fall, like a tide, sweep over them. For almost a week, they have spoken little, wandering through the universe as if in a dream, their only illumination coming from the faint glow of insects, while their lungs are filled with suffocating blood. This is the language of a poet who understands the world and is not afraid of the world becoming an enemy of dreamers.
Near the end of One Hundred Years of Solitude, a character discovers a parchment manuscript in which a Gypsy old man had recorded his family history "a hundred years ago." The chronicler "did not arrange the events in the order of human time but condensed the daily events of a hundred years into a moment, so that all events coexist." The narrative style is like a magician's trick, where memory and prophecy, illusion and reality intertwine and often appear as one. In short, it is very much like Gabriel García Márquez's magical realism.
It is not easy to describe the technique and themes of this book; analyzing it would likely seem complex and stiff, almost unreadable. But in fact, it is not. Although the intricate plot, ancient mysteries, family secrets, and peculiar contradictions are all fictional, in many ways, they seem plausible and full of interest. García Márquez has created a web of dual relationships. No matter how bizarre the novel may be, its greater effect is that it is full of fun, humor, and even reveals reason and compassion.
Published on March 8, 1970.