Cayman 2024 - #2 - A Hard slog for me!! Really hard.... A good friend mentioned a few months back that Marquez was one of his all-time favorite authors....so, knowing i had several on my shelf, decided i would give him a whirl! This was the earliest work i have of Marquez...and i was hopeful both due to my friend's recommendation, and that i love short story collections. But it was dark....almost depressing. I was also unsure where these stories were taking place, or exactly when. There was much political content thrown about here & there.....stories of uprisings and deaths...events it was likely i was supposed to know about.......but i did not........none of it had accompanying context for me to help understand. So, i slogged through these stories of very sad souls.....and their sad lives......and aside from a few glimpses of nobility in purpose from a very few characters, I just wanted it to be over......pointless......like the characters.....which was likely the point. ( )

H1.1.1

I have read so many of these short stories by Marquez, I have read 100 Years of Solitude probably a half dozen times, and even wrote my senior paper in University as a literary analysis of the book and its themes. That doesn’t mean I truly understand much of any of the symbolism or the story that runs underneath these tales of Macondo and the lives lived within the town limits.

That fact notwithstanding, I love these stories so much. The characters, the town, the weather, the magical realism, the absurd happenings and crazy family ties; I adore everything that mixed together makes Macondo what it is. Marquez has a way of writing that allows me to picture every scene and feel the stifling heat of the afternoon. I feel like I can understand the characters and their motivations, and can become immersed in the narrative to the point that it’s quite jarring when they end so abruptly.
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Shock horror, I actually read this in Spanish. ( )

El coronel no tiene quien le escriba es una novela corta publicada por el escritor colombiano Gabriel García Márquez en 1961. Es una de las más célebres de las escritas por el autor, y su protagonista, un viejo coronel que espera la pensión que nunca llega, es considerado como uno de los personajes más entrañables de la literatura hispanoamericana del siglo XX.