One Hundred Years of Solitude Introduction

One Hundred Years of Solitude Introduction

How's this for an awesome origin myth? In 1966, a moderately successful journalist is driving his family to Acapulco. All his life, he's wanted to write about growing up in his grandparents' house, but he's never really gotten a handle on just how to get across the weird mix of superstition, knowledge, religion, personal stories, and global history that surrounded him. Suddenly, the idea hits him full-on: a dead-end town; an endlessly repeating, cyclical, completely self-involved family; and above all, a narrator who doesn't give any kind of overarching ethical commentary on the insanity of the characters or on the supernatural and fantastical things being described.

The journalist turns the car around, drives home, and sells the car for money. He begs his landlord and local stores for credit to keep him and his family going. Nine months later, out comes One Hundred Years of Solitude – one of the most important books of the century. It wins him the Nobel Prize for literature. It gets translated into a bazillion languages. And just like that, Gabriel García Márquez becomes one of the world's most famous living authors. Pretty cool, right? You try writing a world-renowned masterpiece in nine months and let us know how it goes.

So what exactly makes this book so universally admired? There's probably a long list, what with the beautiful use of language, the amazing imagery, and the peculiar style. But right up there is the incredible way that García Márquez takes the complicated history of Colombia – all the way from just after Bolivar liberated the colony from Spanish rule to the middle of the 20th century – and conveys it to us through the eyes of one crazily outsized, doomed family, and an equally messed up fictional town.

It's not really historical fiction, the genre where made-up characters are plopped into the middle of actual events in the past (think Saving Private Ryan or A Tale of Two Cities). It does have elements of historical fiction (e.g., Colonel Aureliano Buendía's involvement in the Colombian civil wars in the second half of the nineteenth century). But it's much more than just "watch Joe Shmoe interact with George Washington." The history is mixed in (sans commentary) with the very complicated personal lives of various members of the Buendía family and various magical and supernatural phenomena. When the book came out, it was unlike anything anybody had read before.

One last thing: if you don't read Spanish and you're worried that you won't be able to really get a feel for the original, get a load of this. The novel was translated into English in 1970 by Gregory Rabassa, and Gabriel García Márquez has said that he prefers Rabassa's translation of One Hundred Years of Solitude to the Spanish original. Pretty impressive.

What is One Hundred Years of Solitude About and Why Should I Care?

Nobel Prize anyone?

Okay, okay, there's more to it than that. On the surface, this novel is all about family. Not just any family, but a family that puts the fun in dysfunctional and the mental in fundamentally flawed. Mothers, fathers, siblings, aunts, nephews, grandparents – everyone is a special Buendía version of crazy.

Do members of your family make you feel a little bonkers? Gabriel García Marquez will cure that. Sure, Mom and Dad may not approve of your dating life, but have they ever had your significant other shot? And you've probably squabbled a bit with your siblings, but has one of those fights ever morphed into a multi-decade death feud? On that level alone, One Hundred Years of Solitude is great for a dose of it-could-be-worse.

One Hundred Years of Solitude Resources

Websites

A Little History
A list of resources for the novel from the University of Wisconsin's Center for the Humanities, including context for the Banana Massacre and the Thousand Days' War.

All Things Gabo (Garcia's Márquez's Cool Nickname)
A super-impressively comprehensive site with interviews, book reviews, images and music based on his work, and many other ways to look at Macondo and the characters of this novel.

A Doc on Gabo
This documentary tries to create an interview with García Márquez in the style of his own writing. Pretty neat stuff.

Movie or TV Productions

Fat Chance
García Márquez has never sold the film rights for this novel, although he's let people make movies out of other things he's written. We're pretty sure no movie would be able to convey this novel, so it's probably for the best.

Historical Documents

Solid Review
Here's a 1970 New York Times review of One Hundred Years of Solitude. Like everyone else on the planet, they loved it.

Interview with the Man
Read an interview in The Paris Review and get up close and personal with Gabriel García Márquez

Acceptance Speech
Each Nobel Prize winner delivers a set of remarks at the celebration. Here's what Gabriel García had to say.

Video

One Hundred Years of Solitude the Film?
Check out this student project that creates a title sequence for the nonexistent movie.

Audio

Gabriel Garcia Márquez in 90 Minutes
Check out a sample this audiobook about Márquez's life and work.

What It Was Like to Interview Gabo
Listen to NPR's interview with Katie Davis, a commentator who sat down with Gabriel García Márquez almost thirty years ago.

Images

Painting The Town (Red)
Check out one artist's rendition of Macondo. What do you think? It's more colorful than we would have imagined.

The Man Himself
Looks like a pretty nice guy, don't you think?

If Oprah Says So…
Here's one of the many, many, many book covers (with Oprah's stamp of approval!)