Last Post

Cien Años de Soledad sat on my shelf long before I took this course but I had never read it. I kept telling myself that I didn't have the time, that I'd pick it up when I had enough hours in the day to wander leisurely through it. But instead I read it at top gear, jumping into into it at every spare moment, just to keep up with class and avoid the untimely revelation of secrets in unread chapters. Every time I picked it up 20 years would go by, the cast of characters would be shaken up with a handful of births, deaths, and people loosing their sanity. At least I kept my Josés and Aurelianos straight. In the end I was left with a powerful impression of the book as a whole, undiluted by too much of my own life happening in between. Amongst the most vivid of my vicarious memories are those from Macondo, like time-lapse footage of a plant that sprouts up from a patch of barren earth, sends out a multitude of shoots during the wild rotation of day and night, then rapidly withers, crumbles, and is blown away like dust.

I enjoyed this class for a number of reasons. Firstly, the reading selection was very good, exposing us to writers from across the map who treated the themes of the course in diverse and interesting ways. Secondly, I liked the themes, they structured the course well and provided some illuminating points of inquiry into the texts. Lastly, although it often pained me to sit down and do them, the blogs were good. I liked being able to access this pool of ideas and they made me stop to really think about what I had just read and capture impressions that would otherwise be forgotten. That said, I will definitely enjoy returning to these authours at a later date without having to tax my brain over them every Sunday night.

span365