Right now, I’m actually inclined to agree. I grab one of his books for a re-read because I’m bored and have nothing else, and I end up not sleeping and just reading the hell out of the thing. Fucking top-tier.

glad someone uses those books. I cant stand them (Dickens and/or Marquez)

right now and forever he’s infinitely better.
reducing the guy to the silly label of “magical realism” is to misapprehend the guy’s linguistic virtuosity and sheer power of invention and tremendous sense of humor. i put him up there with cervantes, who invented the modern novel.

i just found this interview with him, which starts great. check what happens when the interviewer pulls out a tape recorder”

https://www.theparisreview.org/inter...garcia-marquez

off to read the rest!

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fuck. it asks for subscription! dicks.

—

so i went googling “garcia marquez cervantes” and i found this

https://newrepublic.com/article/1174...ish-literature

and i have to agree— cien años is better than don quijote.

jeezus nothing ever blew my mind for such a long time than that book except maybe for borges, but then i figured out borges’s trick, and gabo’s i haven’t yet and i probably never will.

finished The Age of the Earth - G. Brent Dalrymple
http://www.sup.org/books/title/?id=2550

... k.

I question so much about you so often. I think you like it that way.

can't stand them. Dickens was forced down my throat ion AP English classes in 9th grade and senior year. I hated it so much. I found it to be the dullest assignments ever given in these advanced english classes. That is, until I went to University and had to read Marquez and found out what truly insufferable prose is.

qué pena me da tu caso... :D

me da pena que gente tiene que leer esa porqueria

aludía a esta famosa canción, con tan chistoso coro

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zrZB7D0ZgQY

¿qué te pasó en esa universidad? ¿qué carajos te hicieron?

puedo entender diferentes críticas a garcía márquez, que abundan; pero eso de que su prosa es mala me parece cosa sin fundamento. ¿a qué específicamente te refieres, aparte de tus sentimientos? a ver si explicas...

digo, por ejemplo: cita el párrafo que más te moleste y muestra de qué manera es mala prosa. a ver si es cierto. eso de nada más repetir insultos, pues... he's rubber you're glue :D

I used to feel that way about a couple authors in the past, too. We got Nathaniel Hawthorne, Melville and George Eliot taught by poor teachers in High School. I later rediscovered them in as an adult and in a great college class.

it's not necessarily bad teachers but mandatory reading that can ruin the pleasure for a person. often for good.

i haven't ever recovered from 5 years of grad school

if reading is like sex, then mandatory reading is like... i might get ptsd if i start talking

anyway, thanks to your recommendation i've had this kapuczinksi (sp?) book on selassie for a while now. i read a few pages that were good but then i was afraid or something. i'm still looking it at it, uncertain...

I have tried Dickens again and Marquez again for to five years ago, and it was EVEN WORSE.

i found this old review that deals with actual prose. and not the original but the translation. it actually deals with the prose itself:

Huh. Well, I actually think high school and perhaps even college is a bit young to grasp Marquez. With Dickens you have to have an appreciation for craft, regardless of your opinion of his stories. Kind of like Shakespeare. You can hate it, but it’s not bad. Overrated, maybe. But it’s just not bad writing. It’s actually very good writing, even when it’s dull AF.

i first read cien años when i was 12 or 13 but it was in spanish so i did not need the anthropological mediation of an education to get it immediately.

unlike most things i read at that age, i have kept coming back to it over the decades and it's never old.

shakespeare funny enough i like better in translation than in english, because i have difficulty with his brilliant but for me inaccessible turns of expression, so instead of appearing luminous they register in my reduced ability as overwrought and self-conscious, and ultimately alienate me. i don't blame him for it, the problem is my painful lack of intimacy with the language--in other words too much friction and i need vaseline ha ha ha. so yeah, i'd rather read shakespeare in smooth translation where i can better grasp his psychological genius rather than his verbal virtuosity. my loss, i know, but best i can do.

Wait, is English not your first language? Either way, you are better at using it than a vast majority of human beings on the planet. I have trouble believing that’s Shakespeare would vex you at all.

But yeah... reading Shakespeare isn’t the most exciting thing. Experiencing his work, however you do it, is better than just sitting at home reading the compete works or whatever.

i used to go to the shakespeare theater in dc (cheap standing room tix) and not have a fucking clue what went on.

best way for me to get shakespeare in english (no joke) is to watch it as a movie with subtitles. i most remember macbeth as the laurence olivier version from a library vhs tape ha ha ha. and richard III was... the guy who plays loki.hiddles... something. NONONONONO... henry IV, that’s right. and the guy who plays falstaff in it is the greatest.

i do have a ba in english and attended a shakespeare class... for like 2 sessions. it was a bunch of political theory bullshit. i wanted an appreciation not the sociological autopsy of a so-called dead white man.

but yeah, no, reading it in spanish is awesome, h ah ha. othello blew my mind when i was a teenager. i should do it again soon.

Have you ever seen Orson Welles’ “MacBeth?” It’s pretty goddamn great. He did an “Othello” too (and a “Merchant of Venice” but I’ve neber seen those.

What made me interested in Shakespeare was reading “King Lear” in a high school English class. We didn’t have an AP program until my junior year, so I was stuck in regular English with the other kids and the kind-of-dumb teacher who basically used a CliffNotes version of the thing. I read the real play on my own and it blew me the fuck away. Like... OK, every political drama ever can go ahead and call this thing Daddy.”

Orson Welles’ MacBeth is badass though.

I’ve had difficulty with other Shakespeare film adaptations. Very hard to make appealing. Hard to bring the weight of the tragedy or comedy into a modern setting without totally fucking it all to hell.

oh man man man my first king lear was kurosawa’s RAN.

i still watch it every so often. a glorious fucking movie. from the very first shot.

it’s an amazing version.

watch it on a good screen. for tv, plasma works, or one of the new UHDs that don’t wash out the image like a soap opera. the cinematography is out of this world.

haven’t seen the orson welles macbeth but his touch of evil is as disturbing as the scottish play. maybe more as it features charlton heston in brownface. but i’ll keep an eye out for it— i really love welles’s films

anyway the bbc did some of the histories with a series called “the hollow crown” and they were great. i think you can trust the bbc with period pieces— it’s all they do!

For the Marquez-heads http://www.dw.com/en/gabriel-garcia-...xas/a-41751099

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