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venkyloquist's review against another edition
4.0
There could not have been a better celebratory ring to mark the occasion. While statistics might mean everything and nothing at the same time, on more occasions than not, they cease to be mere numbers. Hence, when I felt a surge of contentment and a sense of fulfillment overwhelm me as the covers gently came down upon the book that I had just finished, there was a seemingly just reason for such a euphoria and the attendant statistic attached to it. I had just completed reading book No.1000. The book in question was “Collected Stories” and the author, Gabriel Garcia Marquez.
Residing in inspired solitude in Mexico City, and chimney smoking 60 cigarettes a day, Gabriel Garcia Marquez ripped the veil off fictional realism. A man who counted amongst others Debussy and Bartók as worthy LPs for his Record Player not only knew class, but oozed it himself. His conventional typewriter cranked out a domain of literary landscape the likes of which were neither seem before nor have been glimpsed since.
An extraordinary exercise in fictional realism, “Collected Stories”, contain twenty-six of Gabriel Garcia Marquez's original, ingenious and mesmerizing short stories, set out 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. The leitmotif in this collection is the author himself. His recurring originality pulsates and courses through the stories in unrelenting spasms. “In my dreams, I was inventing literature,” recalled Marquez in an interview. Yesterday’s dreams are today’s reality.
Laying out a diaphanous combination of mystery, mystique and magic, one of the greatest story tellers of his generation demonstrates with an incandescent brilliance the fact that he is blessed with the depths of perception, bestowed with the breadth of imagination and brimming with an originality that is putting it mildly – extraordinarily uncommon amongst most writers.
For themes, there is the miasma of poverty, the economy of happiness and a perennial tryst with mortality that jumps at the reader out of every page. Curlews that peck out the eyes of three men, a vanishing ghost ship, an old man with enormous wings and a woman who has been transformed into a talking spider complement and compete with one another to make the book a genuine marvel of modern literature.
Death occupies the initial portion of the book and is the ‘protagonist’ of the first eleven stories. Revolving around either persons who are dead or are in the transitory phase of making an exit from the tangible world before becoming part of the intangible plane, these stories have a grotesque and morbid (no pun intended) sense of humour. Employing a no-frills dead pan fashion, Marquez highlights the impermanent nature of life and the permanent feature of death. The ravages of death leave none in doubt about the ephemeral and often unacknowledged and unrecognized temporary world which merely flatters to deceive.
Garcia’s world is characterized by tumult and turbulence. Mirth and merriment on one side, massacres and mayhem on the other. Garcia’s world is also an oeuvre that has inspired not just imitation but also spawned a new realm of imagination. Folklore, verbal storytelling, stirrings from Spanish baroque overlapping various epochs form a continuous thread connecting the stories in this collection. Shades of Borges and other Spanish fictional realism writers is clearly discernible in the writings of Garcia Marquez. But the most telling aspect of this riveting mish-mash of stories is an inherent contradiction that begs reconciling. A reconciliation, even attempting which would lead a courageous man into territories uncharted and terrains unexplored. A contradiction between the arcane and the basic, the mundane and the metaphysical and the inevitable and ingenuity.
Reviewing Garcia Marquez and his now eponymous dream theatre of Macondo, John Leonard in the Times discarded economy with a vengeance as he gushed a stream of praise reserved for the highest echelons of writing. “With a single bound, Gabriel García Márquez leaps onto the stage with Günter Grass and Vladimir Nabokov, his appetite as enormous as his imagination, his fatalism greater than either. Dazzling.”
‘Gabo’ as Marquez was popularly known amongst his friends and admirers, didn’t just contend himself writing stories. He breathed life into objects whose very existence couldn’t be envisaged and bestowed a pair of soaring wings to imagination. Wings that took the art of imagining things to a height never scaled before. He also gave me the incontestable privilege and pleasure of penning the 1000th book that I devoured!
Residing in inspired solitude in Mexico City, and chimney smoking 60 cigarettes a day, Gabriel Garcia Marquez ripped the veil off fictional realism. A man who counted amongst others Debussy and Bartók as worthy LPs for his Record Player not only knew class, but oozed it himself. His conventional typewriter cranked out a domain of literary landscape the likes of which were neither seem before nor have been glimpsed since.
An extraordinary exercise in fictional realism, “Collected Stories”, contain twenty-six of Gabriel Garcia Marquez's original, ingenious and mesmerizing short stories, set out 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. The leitmotif in this collection is the author himself. His recurring originality pulsates and courses through the stories in unrelenting spasms. “In my dreams, I was inventing literature,” recalled Marquez in an interview. Yesterday’s dreams are today’s reality.
Laying out a diaphanous combination of mystery, mystique and magic, one of the greatest story tellers of his generation demonstrates with an incandescent brilliance the fact that he is blessed with the depths of perception, bestowed with the breadth of imagination and brimming with an originality that is putting it mildly – extraordinarily uncommon amongst most writers.
For themes, there is the miasma of poverty, the economy of happiness and a perennial tryst with mortality that jumps at the reader out of every page. Curlews that peck out the eyes of three men, a vanishing ghost ship, an old man with enormous wings and a woman who has been transformed into a talking spider complement and compete with one another to make the book a genuine marvel of modern literature.
Death occupies the initial portion of the book and is the ‘protagonist’ of the first eleven stories. Revolving around either persons who are dead or are in the transitory phase of making an exit from the tangible world before becoming part of the intangible plane, these stories have a grotesque and morbid (no pun intended) sense of humour. Employing a no-frills dead pan fashion, Marquez highlights the impermanent nature of life and the permanent feature of death. The ravages of death leave none in doubt about the ephemeral and often unacknowledged and unrecognized temporary world which merely flatters to deceive.
Garcia’s world is characterized by tumult and turbulence. Mirth and merriment on one side, massacres and mayhem on the other. Garcia’s world is also an oeuvre that has inspired not just imitation but also spawned a new realm of imagination. Folklore, verbal storytelling, stirrings from Spanish baroque overlapping various epochs form a continuous thread connecting the stories in this collection. Shades of Borges and other Spanish fictional realism writers is clearly discernible in the writings of Garcia Marquez. But the most telling aspect of this riveting mish-mash of stories is an inherent contradiction that begs reconciling. A reconciliation, even attempting which would lead a courageous man into territories uncharted and terrains unexplored. A contradiction between the arcane and the basic, the mundane and the metaphysical and the inevitable and ingenuity.
Reviewing Garcia Marquez and his now eponymous dream theatre of Macondo, John Leonard in the Times discarded economy with a vengeance as he gushed a stream of praise reserved for the highest echelons of writing. “With a single bound, Gabriel García Márquez leaps onto the stage with Günter Grass and Vladimir Nabokov, his appetite as enormous as his imagination, his fatalism greater than either. Dazzling.”
‘Gabo’ as Marquez was popularly known amongst his friends and admirers, didn’t just contend himself writing stories. He breathed life into objects whose very existence couldn’t be envisaged and bestowed a pair of soaring wings to imagination. Wings that took the art of imagining things to a height never scaled before. He also gave me the incontestable privilege and pleasure of penning the 1000th book that I devoured!
ramram's review against another edition
5.0
"The Incredible and Sad Tale of Innocent Erendira and Her Heartless Grandmother." is one of my favorite stories. I read it at least once a year since I discovered it when I was 19.
blanip's review against another edition
4.0
There were moments when I wondered what Marquez was about. Was he wacked out? Did he think that talking in circles would make him famous? Did he have bad translators in this edition? None of the above. While I may not always understand what he intended or what he hoped to teach himself while he wrote, Gabriel Garcia Marquez was a genius in his field and inspires me to think broadly about what it means to be both a writer and as one who engages with the fantastic.
gitli57's review against another edition
adventurous
challenging
funny
reflective
3.0
If the title is accurate, I have now read all of GGM's published short stories. While some of them were enjoyable and some were even laugh out loud funny, in all honesty, it is unlikely I will reread many of them.
After decades of periodically returning to his work, less and less Marquez feels really necessary to me, with the exception of One Hundred Years of Solitude. I would be happy to be convinced I am mistaken about that, so please feel free - be nice and don't rely on the importance of "magical realism", which I think is a misnomer. Some of us just experience the world that way and it's not magic just because western science can't figure out how to measure it.
After decades of periodically returning to his work, less and less Marquez feels really necessary to me, with the exception of One Hundred Years of Solitude. I would be happy to be convinced I am mistaken about that, so please feel free - be nice and don't rely on the importance of "magical realism", which I think is a misnomer. Some of us just experience the world that way and it's not magic just because western science can't figure out how to measure it.
roochel's review against another edition
4.0
i initially read (a portion of) this in college, but this was my first time reading this collection as a whole. there is a very clear reason that gabriel garcia marquez is one of the greats.
trevdawg's review
4.0
I love Gabriel Garcia Marquez. All my mock lesson plans teaching to write detail employ his work. This book has three different short story collections in one edition. I enjoyed the final third (the book is chronological so they are also the most recent, 60-70's) the most.
Though I love his novels more, the way he creates a world and his style of writing just begs for a continuation of his work, he's also one of my favorite authors of short stories. Highly recommended, though definitely check out "One Hundred Years of Solitude" first if you're new to Garcia Marquez.
Though I love his novels more, the way he creates a world and his style of writing just begs for a continuation of his work, he's also one of my favorite authors of short stories. Highly recommended, though definitely check out "One Hundred Years of Solitude" first if you're new to Garcia Marquez.
nikikalyvides's review against another edition
emotional
mysterious
sad
medium-paced
- Plot- or character-driven? A mix
- Strong character development? No
- Loveable characters? No
- Diverse cast of characters? Yes
- Flaws of characters a main focus? Yes
3.0
amalia1985's review
5.0
“Only his own death came between him and his grave. Resigned, he listened to the drop, thick, heavy, exact, as it dripped in the other world, in the mistaken and absurd world of rational creatures.’’
In twenty-six stories from Eyes of a Blue Dog, Big Mama's Funeral, and The Incredible and Sad Tale of lnnocent Eréndira and Her Heartless Grandmother, the greatness of Gabriel García Márquez is confirmed once again. Stories of communities torn apart by dispute, poverty and superstition. Stories of communities brought together by hope and love and the daily struggle to survive. Towns where angels with gigantic wings roam free, demons spread their stink which the perfume of roses cannot disguise, women are either revered figures or seductresses that search for an escape from a bleak reality. Either way, it is women that hold the strings to the puppet show of a paranoid world.
‘’Every day I try to remember the phrase with which I am to find you,’’ I said. ‘’Now I don’t think I’ll forget it tomorrow. Still, I’ve always said the same thing and when I wake up I’ve always forgotten what the words I can find you with are.’’
Eyes of A Blue Dog
It would be impossible to choose my favourite stories in the array of crumbling towns, and dirty harbours. In the company of fairs, civil servants and officials, shady encounters and enterprises and otherworldly women. In the nights of August, with its melancholy and strange magnetism, all things are possible. ‘’I remembered the August nights in whose wondrous silence nothing could be heard except the millenary sound that the earth makes as it spins on its rusty, unoiled axis. Suddenly I felt overcome by an overwhelming sadness.’’
‘’Since it’s Sunday and it’s stopped raining, I think I’ll take a bouquet of roses to my grave.’’
Birds are breaking windows, invading houses only to die inside. In the August heat, the deserted streets, unwashed because of the droughts, are suffocating the pedestrians with the stench of death. What does the troubled priest actually see around him? The Wandering Jew or the Devil himself? Blind women try to warn others with their vision but who believes them? Wives ask to be buried alive, and a town is visited by the travelling show of the woman who was turned into a spider for having disobeyed her parents. The isolated, ruined towns have lost their multicoloured glory, eaten away by the vicious sun and the cruel sea. And there is no mercy in store for the residents.
''If we find each other sometimes, put your ear to my ribs when I sleep on the left side and you’ll hear me echoing.’’
Eyes of a Blue Dog: A sensual, haunting, mesmerizing elegy of a relationship in a dream.
Someone Has Been Disarranging These Roses: Who is the ghost? Who is dead? Who is alive? A tale of loneliness, isolation, sanctity and sacred roses.
Monologue of Isabel Watching It Rain in Macondo: The desire for rain becomes an unimaginable terror for the community of Macondo. A story that represents the unique, lyrical voice of Márquez.
The Incredible and Sad Tale of Innocent Erendira and Her heartless Grandmother: One of the most powerful, cruel, raw stories by Márquez. How much does innocence cost in a community that cannot find its way through the darkness?
Every passage written by Márquez is a revelation of the power of Literature. Its magic, its lyrical voice, its mesmerizing quality to carry you in dark worlds into your soul. In a site that supposedly promotes reading, it is astonishing to see many ‘’readers’’ dismissing Márquez on the grounds of ‘’magical realism’’ and being ‘’incomprehensible’’. How about you try a little more?
‘’The angel was the only one who took no part in his own act. He spent his time trying to get comfortable in his borrowed nest, befuddled by the hellish heat of the oil lamps and sacramental candles that had been placed along the wire.’’
‘’She’s done a lot of travelling’’, Mr Herbert said. ‘’She’s carrying behind the flowers from all the seas of the world.’’
My reviews can also be found on https://theopinionatedreaderblog.wordpress.com/
In twenty-six stories from Eyes of a Blue Dog, Big Mama's Funeral, and The Incredible and Sad Tale of lnnocent Eréndira and Her Heartless Grandmother, the greatness of Gabriel García Márquez is confirmed once again. Stories of communities torn apart by dispute, poverty and superstition. Stories of communities brought together by hope and love and the daily struggle to survive. Towns where angels with gigantic wings roam free, demons spread their stink which the perfume of roses cannot disguise, women are either revered figures or seductresses that search for an escape from a bleak reality. Either way, it is women that hold the strings to the puppet show of a paranoid world.
‘’Every day I try to remember the phrase with which I am to find you,’’ I said. ‘’Now I don’t think I’ll forget it tomorrow. Still, I’ve always said the same thing and when I wake up I’ve always forgotten what the words I can find you with are.’’
Eyes of A Blue Dog
It would be impossible to choose my favourite stories in the array of crumbling towns, and dirty harbours. In the company of fairs, civil servants and officials, shady encounters and enterprises and otherworldly women. In the nights of August, with its melancholy and strange magnetism, all things are possible. ‘’I remembered the August nights in whose wondrous silence nothing could be heard except the millenary sound that the earth makes as it spins on its rusty, unoiled axis. Suddenly I felt overcome by an overwhelming sadness.’’
‘’Since it’s Sunday and it’s stopped raining, I think I’ll take a bouquet of roses to my grave.’’
Birds are breaking windows, invading houses only to die inside. In the August heat, the deserted streets, unwashed because of the droughts, are suffocating the pedestrians with the stench of death. What does the troubled priest actually see around him? The Wandering Jew or the Devil himself? Blind women try to warn others with their vision but who believes them? Wives ask to be buried alive, and a town is visited by the travelling show of the woman who was turned into a spider for having disobeyed her parents. The isolated, ruined towns have lost their multicoloured glory, eaten away by the vicious sun and the cruel sea. And there is no mercy in store for the residents.
''If we find each other sometimes, put your ear to my ribs when I sleep on the left side and you’ll hear me echoing.’’
Eyes of a Blue Dog: A sensual, haunting, mesmerizing elegy of a relationship in a dream.
Someone Has Been Disarranging These Roses: Who is the ghost? Who is dead? Who is alive? A tale of loneliness, isolation, sanctity and sacred roses.
Monologue of Isabel Watching It Rain in Macondo: The desire for rain becomes an unimaginable terror for the community of Macondo. A story that represents the unique, lyrical voice of Márquez.
The Incredible and Sad Tale of Innocent Erendira and Her heartless Grandmother: One of the most powerful, cruel, raw stories by Márquez. How much does innocence cost in a community that cannot find its way through the darkness?
Every passage written by Márquez is a revelation of the power of Literature. Its magic, its lyrical voice, its mesmerizing quality to carry you in dark worlds into your soul. In a site that supposedly promotes reading, it is astonishing to see many ‘’readers’’ dismissing Márquez on the grounds of ‘’magical realism’’ and being ‘’incomprehensible’’. How about you try a little more?
‘’The angel was the only one who took no part in his own act. He spent his time trying to get comfortable in his borrowed nest, befuddled by the hellish heat of the oil lamps and sacramental candles that had been placed along the wire.’’
‘’She’s done a lot of travelling’’, Mr Herbert said. ‘’She’s carrying behind the flowers from all the seas of the world.’’
My reviews can also be found on https://theopinionatedreaderblog.wordpress.com/
sofialister's review
3.0
— 2.5 stars
a strange collection of stories. maybe it's because when it comes to GGM's storytelling, my memory is like that of a sieve, but some stories were just too wacky to really leave an impression other than 'huh'. regardless, the writing is gorgeous and really sucks you in. the last story 'erendira and her heartless grandmother' was far and away my favourite, but i also very much enjoyed 'tuesday siesta' and 'dialogue with the mirror'
a strange collection of stories. maybe it's because when it comes to GGM's storytelling, my memory is like that of a sieve, but some stories were just too wacky to really leave an impression other than 'huh'. regardless, the writing is gorgeous and really sucks you in. the last story 'erendira and her heartless grandmother' was far and away my favourite, but i also very much enjoyed 'tuesday siesta' and 'dialogue with the mirror'
marthaheidi's review against another edition
adventurous
dark
mysterious
medium-paced