Product Description
Collected here are twenty-six of Gabriel Garcia Marquez's most brilliant and enchanting short stories, presented in the chronological order of their publication in Spanish from three volumes: Eyes of a Blue Dog,Big Mama's Funeral, and The Incredible and Sad Tale of lnnocent Eréndira and Her Heartless Grandmother. Combining mysticism, history, and humor, the stories in this collection span more than two decades, illuminating the development of Marquez's prose and exhibiting the themes of family, poverty, and death that resound throughout his fiction.
|
|
 Overrated
I have never thought that Gabriel Garcia Marquez deserved his 1982 Nobel Prize for literature. I think that it was manifestly an award given because of the politicized nature of the author's work. The three novels of his that I've read- Love In A Time Of Cholera, The General In His Labyrinth, and One Hundred Years Of Solitude- are examples of occasionally poetic phrases and images trying to tidy up nonexistent narratives, cardboard caricatures, and a puerile imagination and understanding of the world. In short, they are vapid interminable wordstreams with little deeper meaning. While no great fan of the also overrated Jorge Luis Borges there is little doubt that Borges was the more original and creative of the two writers. In short, without Borges there would have been no Marquez, and like all copies of things, the copies are always less clear and crisp than the originals. I say this merely to admit that I had a bias going into the reading of Marquez's Collected Stories, translated by Gregory Rabassa and J. S. Bernstein, and I'm afraid that my bias was accurate, and eerily prescient.
This is not to say that Marquez is a bad writer, merely that he is vastly overrated, and nowhere near a great writer. There are fleet moments of wonderful description and poetic phrasing, but these are the exceptions. Marquez tends to gizz at the mouth, and his descriptions become curlicues of superfluity. His politics tend to override his narrative and character development, he used heavy-handed and very obvious symbolism, and despite the cliché that anything with a good start and end cannot not be good, Marquez disproves that canard over and again, as many of his tales start and end well, but they have no core, no substantive middle. This book consists of twenty-six stories, culled from his three prior collections: Eyes of a Blue Dog, Big Mama's Funeral, and The Incredible And Sad Tale Of Innocent Eréndira And Her Heartless Grandmother....Marquez never quite gets his fiction into focus- there is something that remains forever blurry in the frame, and that is usually a deeper engagement with his readership. Even in the last story in the book, The Incredible And Sad Tale Of Innocent Eréndira, there is no real attempt to put up a tale of substance, and like most Latin American writers, concision and pointedness are not seen as virtues, as that tale rambles on for forty-nine pages. The story dream-like follows fourteen year old Eréndira, who is haunted by winds of misfortune. Oh, did I mention Marquez and his ilk tend to be a tad melodramatic, too? In response to this breeze she torches her grandmother's posh villa. Instead of bitterness, her grandmother tells Eréndira it would take a lifetime to back the debt you owe me. Thus, Eréndira turns to prostitution, with her grandmother as her madam. Why? To propel the story. This is a classic sign that the tale is not doing well; when the only way to move the plot forward is by its characters doing the dumbest things possible. Then, she meets Ulises, and hope dawns. Really, this is how the tale goes. I won't spoil the rest. Needless to say, the relationship between Eréndira and her grandmother is obviously an allegory for the corrupt and manipulative systems that dominate Latin American politics.
For all of the praise that has been tossed Marquez's way I don't think anyone has ever commented on these two most important facts: a) he is a boring and repetitive writer with very little range, and b) the Magical Realism that has been said to have blossomed with him is nothing new. Similar claims have been made about Postmodern techniques, yet just as PoMo had antecedents going back to Laurence Sterne's Tristram Shandy, and arguably to Miguel de Cervantes' Don Quixote, likewise Magical Realism is nothing new- only the term is. The entrance of the magical into the real has been done for centuries, and much better and more subtly than Marquez does it. Think of Nikolai Gogol's satires, Isaac Bashevis Singer's fables, or even Jonathan Swift's Gulliver's Travels. Even the best of science fiction and fantasy qualifies as Magical Realism- what else is Flowers For Algernon, or Dracula?
I think that Gabriel Garcia Marquez could have become a good, possibly great writer, and one whose fantastical writers challenged readers, but he, as so many of the other Latin American writes, got too swept up in the delusion that their writings could change the world by political means. This is often the folly of many artists, not content to merely influence individuals. It is sad, but perhaps the greatest fantasy he wove, and that he never grew out of it, was that one; from his really horrid early tales through his later merely repetitive and mediocre ones. Only the easily gulled will rhapsodize over this dull and predictable writing. But, just watch the glazed eyes shine.
|
 Incredible, as always!
Gabo is something else. He is, to put it simply, an astounding writer, with a verve of language and a capacity for fleshing out great characters and fantastic stories unparalleled by any living writer. I daresay he is the best living writer, at least of those who are famous, and I doubt many who read him would disagree that he is at least among the best.
This collection of stories draws upon several other volumes, and spans a fair portion of his very long career (may he live a thousand more years!). If you have read any Garcia Marquez, you will love these little gems as much as you loved his novels-- I enjoyed "Innocent Erendira", "The Very Old Man" and "The Handsomest Drowned Sailor" best of those I recall; sadly, my copy was lost so I don't have a reference at hand.
If you have not read any Garcia Marquez: first, I recommend you do so IMMEDIATELY... there is a reason he is quite famous and a reason he is so renowned; both are very just. This volume is a nice starting point, a gateway drug into the wonderful world of Gabo. Work backwards: the early tales are good, but do not exemplify Garcia Marquez at his fullest strength, and to really appreciate him in the beginning you should really read him at his fullest capacity.
You will almost assuredly devour this little volume and end up begging for more. I recommend, of course, ONE HUNDRED YEARS OF SOLITUDE (his masterpiece, and worth reading no matter what you think of his other works!!!), LOVE IN THE TIME OF CHOLERA, his COLLECTED NOVELLAS, and his more recent STRANGE PILGRIMS, which is another excellent collection of short stories.
But what are you doing reading my review? Get this book and any other Garcia Marquez you can get your hands on, and read, read, read!
|
Highly Recommend This Short Story Collection: Good Reading. ( northerneagle )
You might not like or understand every story, but this is a good read.
Gabriel José de la Concordia García Márquez(1927 - ), or simply Gabo as he was known, was born in Columbia. He started as a journalist, then he became an editor, and a publisher. He won the 1982 Nobel Prize in Literature. García Márquez has lived mostly in Mexico and Europe and currently lives in Mexico City. The 80 years old author is credited with introducing or popularizing magical realism in modern literary fiction.
Some of his works have been classified as both fiction and non-fiction: Chronicle of a Death Foretold (Crónica de una muerte anunciada) (1981), tells the tale of a revenge killing, and Love in the Time of Cholera (El amor en los tiempos del cólera) (1985), is loosely based on the story of his parents' courtship. Many of his works, including those two, take place in the "García Márquez universe." The settings and characters are continued from one book to the next. The stories and novels cross genres and include magical realism: flying people, flying objects, the dead who can still think, etc. He has eight novels and numerous shorter works.
His novel One Hundred Years of Solitude (Cien años de soledad) (1967), has sold more than 36 million copies worldwide.
Based on his writings, it strikes the general that since he has written many short stories and only 8 novels, then it would be interesting to read some of his short stories. At the present time there are three books on the English market, although more have been printed. Five have been printed in the last 30 years, and three are still popular: the present book, The Collected Novellas, and Leaf Storm: and other Stories. Leaf storm has seven stories. The Collected Novellas has Leaf Storm plus two others: No One Writes to the Colonel and Chronicle of a Death Foretold.
The present book has the widest selection since it has 26 stories, long and short, that cover both realism and magical realism. Also, some are aimed at children. I enjoyed the collection and put it in the same class as Joyce's Dubliners, or similar in terms of enjoyment.
My only slight criticism is that his children's stories seem very adult. Some will be surprised with the realism and the lack of magic in many stories.
|
Enchantingly Surreal ( macbethl )
Marquez takes you into a magical tour throughout this wonderful short story book that you can read repeatedly and never tire from it. He is a master at his art and always engulfs you with a subject simply by using his unique surreal style of putting things together in writing.
I have read this book several times in both languages Spanish and English, and grasped more of his "magical realism" in Spanish, simply because it was originally written in that language and there is always something lost during translation, although the English version was pretty decent. Marquez's words are vivid and visual, as you read the stories you imagine them on a movie screen.
The Man With Enormous Wings is a great one, a shabby old man with wings falls from the sky during a heavy rainfall in some tiny South American village, and since the people that live there are superstitious they assume he's an angel from the far away heavens. So they decide to put him in a chicken coop and spread the word that there is an angel in town so people from all over the place come around with bizarre ailments such as a man that could not sleep because the noise from the stars kept him awake at night. Another woman could not stop counting and she had run out of numbers to count. Well, it goes on and on and nothing happens. The freak with wings becomes sick and somehow manages to fly away flapping it's wings like a vulture while Elisenda is cutting onions.
Then there is The Handsomest Drowned Man in the World, about some children, playing by the sea and seeing some bulky mass approaching them. At first, they think it is an enemy ship, but discover it is a dead body. The kids drag him into the town and all the women in the village start fussing all over him, especially because he was a big man. They clean him up but couldn't find clothes big enough for him to wear since he was a large man, and they decide to name him Esteban which means Stephen in English, I guess because he looked like a gringo. The men in the village start to get a little jealous about the women fuss too much over this dead Esteban. The women make up stories about what his life would have been like, what he might have done for a living, and felt sorrow over this orphan corpse. Eventually after the women grieve tremendously for Esteban, they gather flowers, hold a funeral, and he's thrown back into the sea (this was supposed to be a children's story).
Well, there are twenty four more wonderful stories in this book that you must read including Erendira and her Heartless Grandmother, and Death Constant Beyond Love.
|
Stories by a Master ( strandline )
This collection of twenty six stories by Nobel Laureate Garcia Marquez was first published as a whole in 1984, although the stories were previously published in three separate volumes. As a consequence, two translators are credited here: Gregory Rabassa for the stories from EYES OF A BLUE DOG and THE INCREDIBLE AND SAD TALE OF INNOCENT ERENDIRA AND HER HEARTLESS GRANDMOTHER, and J. S. Bernstein for the stories from BIG MAMA'S FUNERAL. Both scholars and avid followers will appreciate the chronological ordering of these tales as well as the dating of first publication from 1947 to 1972 to see the progression of a much heralded talent.As befitting the work of a master, every story is wonderfully told, with deft touches that make each memorable. Many, particularly the early stories, deal with death, particularly the separation of consciousness from the physical body, and many explore the messiness of love. Several combine the two. In "Death Constant Before Love," a politician suffering from a terminal disease falls in love with a girl given to him as a political favor. "The Third Resignation" tells the tale of a seven year old boy who falls into a coma and then grows up in a coffin in his mother's house. Three times, he resigns himself to death. "There Are No Thieves In This Town" chronicles the foolishness of a man who steals three billiard balls from a local pool hall and who loses his wife and unborn child for it. Always, Garcia Marquez's exception talent for storytelling carries these tales alone with a romantic and mystical eye for human vulnerability. His style is never rushed, always lingering over the moment, which gives even the shortest stories the feel of a novella. Not all these stories embrace the magic realism for which the author is famous, although the reader will emerge bewitched all the same.
|
|
View Larger
Add to Cart 
