Cien Años - End

So I think I’ll talk about change. We witness Macondo transforming from when the first humble houses were established into the throes of a violent modernization. Initially, the town becomes rooted into the ground with the first births of children and the first burials of the dead, then eventually it becomes drawn into the reach of governmental authority with the arrival of the magistrate, and tainted by political colours which draw the men out into a protracted and pointless war. The foreign influences that flow into Macondo increase in volume and have further points of origin; from the strange and enchanting objects peddled intermittently by gypsies to the permanent market of goods of increasing technological sophistication. These products have profound impacts on daily life; the light bulb lengthens the day and the train enables rapid and far-reaching transportation. The arrival of the gringos – with their cultural impositions and labour exploitation – seem to signal the beginning of the end.

However, how many of these changes are, in a way, superficial? Have they actually altered the character of the people, the way they interact with each other, or the way they perceive everyday life? I’ll give an example; say that a McDonalds is built outside of the US in an otherwise un-corporate town. Though I'd say this is a bad thing for the negative impacts that it would have on local people, I disagree with those who call this total Americanization, a cultural disaster, a signal that the world is becoming homogenous. This underestimates how strong and deep local cultural meanings and values are. Likewise, I was interested to see in class when we made our list of “cambios” and “continuidades” that the latter category was bigger, that more remained the same. That recurring characteristics, enduring practices, persistent obsessions, and eternal circumstances carry on as if written into the landscape upon which all of this flux occurs. Some things may change, but through it all what is essential about Macondo and its characters remains intact.

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Weird

You have to see this for yourself. Painstakingly handcrafted newborn babies called Reborns. Take Beveline for example - wet pouty lips, mottled chubby skin, deep shining eyes - for the price of $5200 on eBay. Here are some features copied straight from the page:

!!An AMAZING Head of ULTRA-REALISTIC Hand Rooted Mohair!!
Doe Suede Jointed Cloth Body Weighted to have a Realistic Baby Feel
**Amazing Factory Made Baby Fat Inserts**
Full Vinyl limbs with soft body, for Optimum Cuddliness & Posablity

This is a serious business. Beveline was "born" not "made" and is "adopted" rather than "bought". The artist calls for "a mature loving parent to adopt and take care of her" - this is not a child's toy or a mere decoration. What's more, only one of each Reborn model is made, making the buyer unique like any biological parent. The only thing missing, which could be solved with, say, some tubes pumping warm water, is human warmth. Las Hortensias anyone?

To take a look enter the item number 270094789246 in the eBay browser.

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Cien Años - Part Two

There are two theories of time that are seen in all novels and films about its disruptions, such as traveling through it or following alternative branches. In one, the future is a nebulous and shifting realm of possibilities, possibilities determined by our actions in the present. In the other, the future is a fixed reality that the present inevitably becomes, there is one future and it depends upon our acting it out.

Cien Años de Soledad adheres to the second theory, but with some interesting quirks and lapses. From early on in the novel we get a strong impression that premonitions and destiny are to be taken very seriously. Each character comes into the world with his or her future already written; this can be read by certain individuals by signs in nature, fortune telling cards, and predictions from family history.

In the second part of the novel, Marquez plays with time in various ways, while still keeping the lives of his characters under the dominion of an inevitable fate. At one point, for example, the renegade present gets the details wrong and a man who is not destined to die that night is killed by one who is. Time corrects itself by sending two bullets to strike down Captain Aquiles Ricardo after his lethal shot at Aureliano Jose, yet nothing can be done for the girl who would have married the latter, the cards showing her future are left blank. With a small margin of error, there is only one future that may occur. Another example is how characters can lapse behind future scenarios that depend upon their actions. This is true in the case of Colonel Aureliano Buendia, who finds that his orders are being carried out before he even gives them.

Even though their destiny/future is fairly rigid, the characters do have ways of tinkering with it. Ursula, for her part, is against naming anyone else Jose Arcadio or Aureliano. When names carry so much importance for character, naming children differently might improve the fate of the family. It would at least make our reading experience a little easier.

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Cien Años – Part One

I loved this novel right away. Having to read a significant portion of it in a short space of time in preparation for class allowed me to get completely involved in the shifting and expanding collection of characters, each one complex and multi-dimensional in their own right, as well as the richly described circumstances of their everyday lives. This is the first time that I have read a book in the genre of magical realism and I love the way that the fantastic is so seamlessly woven into the mundane. Márquez has constructed this world very subtly. The magical elements could easily affront our sense of reality but somehow they don’t – perhaps because we are taking cues from the characters who so casually engage with them. The distortion of time also adds an interesting element to the novel – sometimes I get the sense that it is elongated and other times collapsed – it is cyclical in the way that we re-encounter characters and events repeat themselves, but it is also measured in that we are always a certain distance away from those final moments before the firing squad.

Doubtlessly this work is highly revered and forms an important part of Colombian, and on a larger scale Latin American, cultural heritage. However, I came across the name of a movement not too long ago that, when I researched it further, revealed something problematic about this. McOndo (a wordplay on Macondo and McDonalds) is a recent literary movement in Latin America that seeks to distance itself from the tradition of magical realism. Supporters feel that magical realism has dominated Latin American literature at the expense of new forms of literary expression and contemporary thematic material. I’m sure that Jon would have something to say about this in his class on bad literature. It's not hard to make the connection between the popularization of magical realism on an international scale in the 60s and 70s and the demand for Latin American novels of stereotypically folkloric and exotic content in the market today. Perhaps we’ll discuss this later.

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