Lately, I’ve been on a quest to upgrade the quality of my reading material. Sure, I still consume at least three pop fiction novels per week (I buy them by the lot to save money). But at some point last year I began to suspect that, despite my immense enjoyment, a regular literary diet of suspense/thrillers was probably rotting my brain.
After reading somewhere that author William Kennedy praised One Hundred Years of Solitude by Gabriel Garcia Marquez as “the first piece of literature since the Book of Genesis that should be required reading for the entire human race”, I decided that I shouldn’t miss out.
I could not possibly agree less with Kennedy. It’s not the author’s sense of the absurd which bothered me; I’m actually a fan of “magical realism” in literature. It appeals to my existentialist side.
I even appreciated, to some extent, the circularity within the novel’s structure, the most obvious of which was the getting and begetting of so many characters named Arcadio or Aureliano that I could no longer keep them straight. After all, the author emphasizes this theme through the women in the book who repeatedly observe that time wasn’t really passing, nor were lives really changing: they were merely repeating the same thing, day after day, wearing themselves out.
But, frankly, I found nothing in the book with which to connect. Sentences rambled so tangentially they often never conveyed anything at all. Paragraphs became pages. Words, at times, seemed randomly strung together. And throughout all of it I found all of the characters so dry and inconceivable (in the sense that, due to the naming confusion, I couldn’t picture a single damn one of them) that their births, deaths and tragi-comedies left me completely and utterly unmoved.
When I’d first mentioned that I was reading this book, Craig commented that “the last paragraph… is one of the best in literature”. I agree, but probably not for the same reason.
After having spent 21 nights of misery reading this book (because I’m too stubborn to quit reading any book, no matter how much I despise it), I loved that last paragraph, too… if only because it meant I was finally done with the damned thing.
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Monday, February 2nd, 2009, 1:27 pm | 
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February 2, 2009 at 3:23 pm
The only book I actually enjoyed and finished by Marquez was ‘Chronicle of a Death Foretold’, because it was about a 100 pages long and I HAD to read it because it was for High School. I tried to read ‘Love in the Time of Cholera’ and gave up 50 pages into it.
February 2, 2009 at 4:42 pm
I think I will go to the library and read the last paragraph.
February 2, 2009 at 5:45 pm
I don’t think I would have wasted 21 days reading something I wasn’t too happy with; I have been known to read a book in bits and pieces, alternating between a good read and a boring book. Like you, I hate to not finish any book!
February 2, 2009 at 6:21 pm
Sounds like you might be working your way up to Ulysses.
February 2, 2009 at 7:13 pm
Been there. Read that. Used it to heat my apartment shortly thereafter.
February 2, 2009 at 11:46 pm
You should read Dracula. I am not yet finished with it, but it is really good so far. I mean really.
February 3, 2009 at 12:08 am
There’s no way to say it without sounding snobbish, but it really is better in the original Spanish.
(Spanish minor in college.)
February 3, 2009 at 8:41 am
That doesn’t sound snobbish. It’s a wonderful thing to know a second language!
February 3, 2009 at 5:18 pm
i, too, alternate between brain-candy by the shelf and books that offer a scholarly insight into various things or people.
one of the best i’ve read is “The Jesuits” by Malachi Martin.
fascinating.
February 3, 2009 at 10:22 pm
I used to read everything I started, but at some point I realized something, er, that I was lazy, maybe? And struggling to read something I am not enjoying, bah, I have better things to do. There are plenty of really good books out there that you will enjoy reading. Don’t waste anymore time on crap just because some nitwit says it’s great.
‘Course, you can’t tell what’s good or bad until you start it. And if you are like me, you won’t like everyone elses recommendations.
February 4, 2009 at 9:09 am
I’ll look into that one. Right now, I have a new lot of 40+ books calling me. Oh, for a day when I have nothing more urgent than reading to do!
February 4, 2009 at 9:11 am
My determination to read books, even when I don’t like them, is somewhat perverse. Yes, it chews up time I could be spending on something more pleasurable. On the other hand, since I’ve set aside so few books as “unreadable” at this point, to do so now kind of seems an accolade of sorts. I refuse to give crappy books that mark of distinction.
Much easier to read them then bitch.
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February 3, 2009 at 4:24 pm