"Life is Like Water" by Gabriel Garcia Marquez-Project 196-Columbia

"Life is Like Water" by Gabriel Garcia Marquez (1993, 4 pages)

Project 196

Columbia

Gabriel Garcia Marquez

22 of 196 Countries

1. Georgia 
2. Canada
3. U. S. A.
4. The Republic of Korea
5. Antigua and Barbuda 
6. Haiti
7. Trinidad and Tobago 
8. Ukraine
9. Cameroon
10. Botswana
11. Sudan
12. Dominica 
13. Israel
14. Syria
15. Ethiopia
16. Zimbabwe
17. Peru
18. Chile
19. South Africa
20. Turkey
21. Argentina
22. Columbia

As we stop over in Columbia for Project 196 we are happy to find a really interesting, very strange story by one of the great masters of world literature, Gabriel Garcia Marquez.

Marquez won the Nobel Prize in 1982.  Among his most famous works are One Hundred Years of Solitude and Love in the Time of Cholera.   Thankfully for my project, he has also written a lot of great short stories, a few of which can be found online.   (I have previously posted on four of his short stories and there is some additional background information on Marquez in these posts.)

"Life is Like Water" is totally a work of magical realism, something Marquez is heavily identified with.  I am partially posting on this wonderful very strange story (I will provide a link where you can read it at the end of the post) in the hope some will read it and explain it to me.   My first reaction to the story was, "wow that was a tremendous lot of fun to read" and my second reaction was "Huh?".  

The people in the story are two school boys and their parents.  They are from Cartagena, Columbia but are at their apartment in Madrid for the school term.  They are obviously very wealthy.  As the story opens the two boys are asking their parents for a boat.  The parents tell them, we will get you one when we get back to our waterfront villa in Cartagena.  The boys won't accept that it makes no sense to get a boat when you live in an apartment but they win out in the end and their parents buy them one.  Now things turn really wonderful strange and to use a Colombian literary cliche, we venture straight into the heart of magic realism.  The father says the boat will have to stay in the garage but somehow when the parents are out they get it as far as the maid's room.   When the parents go to the movies Wednesday the boys bring the boat into the main room of the place, they break a light bulb by accident 

On Wednesday night, as they did every Wednesday, the parents went to the movies. The boys, lords and masters of the house, closed the doors and windows and broke the glowing bulb in one of the living room lamps. A jet of golden light as cool as water began to pour out of the broken bulb, and they let it run to a depth of almost three feet. Then they turned off the electricity, took out the rowboat, and navigated at will among the islands in the house. 

Things get stranger as we go on.

As I read this story, I wondered if the idea should be to grasp a deep symbolic meaning in the events that take us into the realm of magic realism or should we just revel in the sheer strangeness and beautiful creations of Marquez.

You can read this story here.

One Hundred Years of Solitude by Gabriel Garcia Marquez

One Hundred Years of Solitude by Gabriel Marquez (1970-in translation by Gregory Rabassa, 458 pages)


A few years ago I read most of the translated novels of Gabriel Marquez, stopping before I read his most famous work, One Hundred Years of Solitude.  I recently read and posted on three of his short stories, all of which I really liked.  


  Gabriel Garcia Marquez (1928, Columbia) is a very important 20th century author.    He won the Nobel Prize in 1982.     Nearly all of Latin American literature stands in his shadow, including Roberto Bolano.   Much of the literature of what some call "The Third World" is very derivative  from the work of Marquez.    For sure this is true of the writers of the Philippines.     He  brought into currency "Magical Realism" as a literary category.   Some see "Magical Realism" as also an anti-colonial literary device and I kind of see this also.      Here is how Wikipedia defines "Magic Realism":

 magical realism is an aesthetic style or genre of fiction  in which magical elements are blended into a realistic atmosphere in order to access a deeper understanding of reality. These magical elements are explained like normal occurrences that are presented in a straightforward manner which allows the "real" and the "fantastic" to be accepted in the same stream of thought.

Have you ever hesitated or just not read a book that logically you should based on your reading history and interests just because you were somehow put off by the tremendous hype on the book?      I think that is the reason I did not years ago read One Hundred Years of Solitude.    On the back cover of the edition I have there is a quote from William Kennedy's New York Times Book Review article in which he says that One Hundred Years of Solitude is "the first piece of literature since the book of Genesis that should be required reading for the entire human race".     


I really do not feel a need to say a lot about this book as all sorts of posts can be found on it.  My entry will be just a short reading note.   I think this book should be read because of  its huge influence.   It also sort of gives us a feel for the crazy history of Latin America (or really any country run by capricious leaders) and Columbia in particular.   There are lots of very imaginative characters and events in the book.    I would say the book is fun as long as one is OK with Magic Realism which I am.    Once you catch on that Marquez  is kind of recreating the history of the human race it is fun to see the work develop.    Marquez is a  very good writer.   Some of the stories and set pieces in One Hundred Years of Solitude are brilliant.     There is real wisdom in this book.     Should it be required reading for the whole human race?    No, I am sorry I do not see this in the book.


Harold Bloom has it on his list of canon  status works.     I am glad I have now read this book, partially so I can see what the hype was all about and partially for its huge cultural influence.  I can for sure see a major influence on Roberto Bolano.    It is included in the 1997 edition of Clifton Fadiman's Life Time Reading Plan and was not even yet published when the first edition came out in 1960.     

Mel u

Two Short Stories by Gabriel Garcia Marquez

"One of These Days" (1984, 4 pages) and "Eyes of a Blue Dog" (6 pages, 1986) both by Gabriel Garcia Marquez

I recently read and posted on two short stories by Gabriel Garcia Marquez (author of One Hundred Years of Solitude, Love in the Time of Cholera and numerous other novels).   As I mentioned in my prior posts, I have read most of the translated novels of Marquez but I still have not yet read his most famous work, One Hundred Years of Solitude.  His collection of short stories has about 40 works.    "Eyes of a Blue Dog" was first published in English in The New Yorker magazine in 1984.    "One of These Days" was first published in English in 1972.    They were translated by Gregory Rabbassa.    I have done longish posts on  two prior stories by Marquez  so these posts will just be brief notes on the stories.

"One of These Days" is set in a nameless and timeless little town somewhere in a place where everyone is corrupt.   It seems a an ugly place.    There are two characters in the story, the town mayor and the town dentist.     This is a purely realistic story.    Some of it is almost painful.

"One of These Days" can be read online 

"The Eyes of the Blue Dog" is a strange story with a haunting quality.   It is about dreams.    It seems to be about a man dreaming of a woman he sleeps with all the time.    His relationship in dreams is very different from his one in real life.     The woman has a strange obsession with a blue dog and his eyes.   There is more to the story than this but I am keeping these posts short.

"Eyes of a Blue Dog" can be read online

I will start Hundred Years of Solitude in a few days.    

Mel u

"A Very Old Man With Enormous Wings: A Tale for Children" by Gabriel Garcia Marquez

"A Very Old Man With Enormous Wings:    A Tale For Children" by Gabriel Garcia Marquez (1968, 7 pages)


A few years ago I read most of the translated novels of the Gabriel Garcia Marquez (1927, Columbia).   I was just about ready to read his most famous work, One Hundred Years of Solitude and some how I got side tracked and never got around to reading it.        ( In my post on his great short story "Eva is Inside Her Cat" I posted a bit about the immense important and influence of Marquez.)    It was translated by Gregory Rabassa.


I am planning to read and post on four of Marquez's short story as a kind of getting ready for One Hundred Years of Solitude exercise.    Recently on one of  the blogs I follow Your Move Dickens by Darlyn I read a very interesting post on a short story by Marquez, "A Very Old Man With Enormous Wings: A Tale for Children".     Darlyn said the story was a great introduction to Marquez's use of "magic realism" so I decided to read it.  (There is no translation credit given)


The story is set among simple people on a seacoast some where in Latin America.   The opening paragraph does a very good job of getting me interested in the story and also shows us how Marquez makes use of magic realism:

 The light was so weak at noon that when Pelayo was coming back to the house after throwing away the crabs, it was hard for him to see what it was that was moving and groaning in the rear of the courtyard. He had to go very close to see that it was an old man, a very old man, lying face down in the mud, who, in spite of his tremendous efforts, couldn't get up, impeded by his enormous wings.

The villagers put the man, who they think must be a very old angel, in a cage made of chicken wire.    They are at first nervous around him and even a bit afraid of him.     Soon the couple who found and imprisoned him begin to notice lots of people were coming by to see their captive.   They began to charge people to see him and made enough to build a two story house.   The local priest comes stops in to inspect the possible angel and ends up sending a letter to advise Rome of his findings and to ask for counsel in understanding what the being in fact was.    All of this is relayed in a completely straightforward way.    I was very much reminded of the great influence of  "The Metamorphosis" by Franz Kafka over post colonial South American literature  as I read this story.    As I was reading Marquez's story I was also reminded of "Prize Stock"  by Kenzaburo Oe, another story about a mysterious man who fell from the sky.     


I do not wish to tell anymore of the plot of this story as it is really well done and a lot of fun to discover on your own.    


"A Very Old Man With Enormous Wings:  A Tale for Children" can be read online .   I did not personally post this story online.     I plan to post on two more stories by Gabriel Garcia Marquez soon and then I will begin One Hundred Years of Solitude.     


Mel u

"Eva is Inside Her Cat" by Gabriel Garcia Marquez-Magical Realism in a Post Colonial Short Story

"Eva is Inside Her Cat"  by Gabriel Garcia Marquez (8 pages, 1970)

A few years ago I read nearly all the novels of Gabriel Garcia Marquez (1927, Columbia), stopping with   his most famous work, One Hundred Years of Solitude still unread.     I was looking this morning at the list of short story writers on Amlit.com  and I was happy to see three stories by Gabriel Garcia Marquez listed.   (Sometimes stories that should be protected by copy right laws get on free public web pages through the generosity of the author, sometimes it just happens.)

Gabriel Garcia Marquez is a very important 20th century author.    He won the Nobel Prize in 1982.     Nearly all of Latin American literature stands in his shadow, including Roberto Bolano.   Much of the literature of what some call "The Third World" is very derivative  from the work of Marquez.    For sure this is true of the writers of the Philippines.     He  brought into currency "Magical Realism" as a literary category.   Some see "Magical Realism" as also an anti-colonial literary device and I kind of see this also.      Here is how Wikipedia defines "Magic Realism":

 magical realism is an aesthetic style or genre of fiction  in which magical elements are blended into a realistic atmosphere in order to access a deeper understanding of reality. These magical elements are explained like normal occurrences that are presented in a straightforward manner which allows the "real" and the "fantastic" to be accepted in the same stream of thought.

As "Eva is Inside Her Cat"  (no translation credit is given for this story and the date I attribute to it is also a guess) is told in the first person by a woman  of an old aristocratic family cursed (in her mind at least) with incredible beauty.    ( I know at first this seems like a curse most of us could live with and  I do wonder now if there are any works by women in which a woman sincerely laments her great beauty.   From Homer to Yeats there are male works with such a theme but is there one anywhere by a woman?)   Here is how the feelings of the woman regarding her looks are conveyed:

All of a sudden she noticed  that her beauty had fallen all apart on her, that it had begun to pain her physically like a tumor or a cancer. She still remembered the weight of the privilege she had borne over her body during adolescence, which she had dropped now--who knows where?--with the weariness of resignation, with the final gesture of a declining creature. It was impossible to bear that burden any longer. She had to drop that useless attribute of her personality somewhere; as she turned a corner, somewhere in the outskirts. Or leave it behind on the coat rack of a second-rate restaurant like some old useless coat. She was tired of being the center of attention, of being under siege from men's long looks.

As the story begins the woman feels she is dying.    The sensations in her body tell her that death is coming for her soon.    She begins to look for something in which she can place her spirit so she can live on.   She also begins to think of a young man with whom she had a seemingly forbidden love affair due to class conflicts.  

I do not wish to give a way more of the plot of this delightful very though provoking story.   It is in the tradition of the twist ending but that is not a bad thing unless it is the only point of a story.  

"Eva is Inside Her Cat" can be seen as magic realism in its plot lines or it can see seen as the hallucinations of a person in the last stages of a terminal disease.   The ending makes us rethink our seeming understanding of the work as a whole.

I enjoyed this story a lot.   There are two more stories by Gabriel Marquez online and I will probably read them soon.    I do intend to read his masterpiece, One Hundred Years of Solitude very soon and am looking forward to it a lot.

"Eva is Inside Her Cat" can be read online.