The Autumn of the Patriarch

This book captures the essence of what life is like in an unnamed Caribbean country living under a dictatorship. In this case it is a dictator that has been in power for over a hundred years and has died twice. It is not a book to read for plot. It is written in the author’s long paragraphs of flowing prose with many commas, few periods, and embedded conversations. It features magical realism, a stylistic choice commonly employed by García Márquez. The timeline switches regularly between the present when the dictator's body is found (which happens at the beginning), and the past when he was in power. He becomes increasingly isolated and detached from reality. It takes time to get used to the style, but after a while it becomes show more almost mesmerizing. It reads like a series of dream sequences where the reader gets to gist of the message through its rhythmic prose. Reading this book is not an easy task, but in the end, I found it worthwhile. There seems to be no end to dictators in our world, and the types of abuses of power, narcissism, and mendacity discussed in this book recur with unfortunate frequency. show less

En este libro García Marquez te toma de rehén. Con oraciones que pueden llegar a durar treinta páginas y son en sí mismas un compendio de anécdotas que podría contar un testigo lengualarga cualquiera consigue meter en cada una varios narradores, varios tiempos históricos, varias impresiones y producir tantas impresiones distintas en el lector con respecto al dictador que protagoniza este libro que su técnica por poco es abusiva.

No cualquiera puede construir un relato así. Y no cualquiera puede abusar de los adjetivos sin caer en la literatosis.

Un genio, y se acabó.

Libro no apto para leer en el colectivo, a menos que estés en un viaje de tres horas.

García Márquez construyó, en El otoño del patriarca, una maquinaria narrativa perfecta que desgrana una historia universal -la agonía y muerte de un dictador- en forma cíclica, experimental y real al mismo tiempo, en seis bloques narrativos sin diálogos, sin puntos y aparte, repitiendo una anécdota siempre igual y siempre distinta, acumulando hechos y descripciones deslumbrantes.

Novela escrita en Barcelona entre 1968 y 1975, El otoño del patriarca deja asomar en su trasfondo el acontecimiento más importante de la historia española de aquellos años, la muerte del general Franco, aunque su contexto y estilo sean, como siempre con García Márquez, el de la asombrosa realidad latinoamericana, que el autor ha elevado una vez show more más a la dignidad del mito. show less

The repeated death, decline, and life of an unnamed Caribbean dictator, in that order, performed by a series of narrators speaking directly to the reader or quite often speaking directly to the general himself, apologizing, explaining, and occasionally cursing him just prior to their own decease. His palace is an unweeded garden gone to seed possessed by roaming cattle, hens, and vultures picking his bones in the opening scene. The surreal narrative cascades along in multiple page spanning sentences that give the impression of a spontaneous jazz improvisation. A composition in which decline and death are not the end of the piece, but only several of its reoccurring themes to be picked up and played with variations throughout the piece. show more

Other themes include his devotion to his mother Bendición Alvarado, a poor bird seller. His outrage when the church refuses to canonize her after her death results in his declaring her a saint, and then expelling the church from his realm. All priests, bishops, and members of religious orders are exiled, except one nun, Leticia Nazareno. He makes her his wife, a replacement for the stunning beauty Manuela Sánchez, who vanished during an eclipse of the sun. Needless to say, neither of them was a willing partner of the obsessive old goat. Periodically he slaughters the other generals and members of his staff, afraid that they may be plotting against him. Thus, he isolates himself from the rest of humanity and reality.

This “poem on the solitude of power,” as the author put it is, a brilliant performance. show less

Ho dato solo 3 stelline a questo libro perché, sinceramente, l’ho trovato pesante e troppo difficile da seguire. E’ scritto quasi come un flusso di coscienza, tutto di seguito, senza respiro, con frasi lunghissime, a volte ci volevano diverse pagine per trovare un punto fermo, e in più frequentissimi cambi di io narrante, che all’inizio mi confondevano.
Eppure, capisco che la forza di questo romanzo sta anche in questo suo stile così asfissiante, infatti nonostante la fatica della lettura, ho potuto comunque vederne la bellezza e verso la fine mi sono anche un po’ lasciata conquistare dalla scrittura di Màrquez.
Il “patriarca” nel suo autunno arriva a fare quasi pena, sembra solo una marionetta sfruttata da invisibili show more burattinai, un povero vecchio malato e logorato, a cui resta solo l’ostinazione di non voler vendere il mare, e quasi si dimenticano tutte le atrocità di cui si è macchiato, forse perché neanche lui le ha mai accettate, come quando impartiva ordini atroci senza batter ciglio, per poi far giustiziare chi li aveva eseguiti, perché ci sono ordini che si possono dare ma non si possono eseguire, cazzo. Com’è scritto in quarta di copertina, Màrquez ci mostra il vero, mostruoso e umanissimo volto del potere.
Nonostante la difficoltà di lettura, questo libro è affascinante come pochi.
http://www.naufragio.it/iltempodileggere/4002 show less

Fascinating, yet thoroughly repugnant. This is my reaction to much of Marquez’s work. THE PATRIARCH is especially distasteful due to the title character’s hideous psychology and, even more so, his heinous actions. A question that logically follows is: Do we gain insight on totalitarianism by paying aesthetic attention to such details as the serial rape of schoolgirls that occupies the Patriarch’s declining years? Is there something meaningful to learn from his extreme abuse of power? Marquez’s fans are legion, so no doubt the consensus reply would be “Yes.” For me, fascination tied with repugnance. I agree with those who find his renditions sexist, although he clearly puts denigration in the service of illuminating the show more festering sores in human institutions.

Fascinating, but not for everyone. show less

I picked this up thanks to William Gass's otherwise terrible essay on magical realism; the essay reminded me that I'd never read any, unless you count very early Borges, or believe that everything ever written in Spanish is magical realism (a position Gass seems to flirt with). The reasons I haven't read any are fairly simple:

a) I do not care about a book's having a 'sense of place.'
b) I loathe 'lush prose.'
c) It's just so popular.

There are good reasons for me to like stereotypical magical realism, too, i.e., such books are very often concerned with political/social matters rather than domestic or 'moral' ones; thanks to that lushness, they're at least immune to american-style minimasnorringilsm. I heard a rumor somewhere that GGM's show more sentences occasionally have subclauses!

So A of the P it was, because it's shortish, and has a reputation for difficulty, so I figured there'd be less of that glorious Hispano-hablantes accessibility that I associate with endless exclamation marks and soul-bearing.

The most impressive thing about the book is, quite easily, the technique: the narrative voice is narcissistic*. In some very important sense, the story is narrated by the people who have managed to survive the horrors of the Patriarch whose story is being told. GMM pulls this off remarkably well; it makes the 'we' narrators of, say, Eugenides or Ferris look almost amateur. There's a real relationship between this narrator and the patriarch himself: they rely on each other, they love and hate each other, they suffer together.

On the downside, there's little else to the book. There are some great anecdotes, but that's the sum of the book's arrangement: each chapter has an anecdote or two told, at great length, in unnecessarily long sentences. This adds nothing to the book, and often detracts from it (granted, it might work better in Spanish. In English, it's just like reading high school papers by students who don't have time to punctuate). Finally, I do not care for lists in my fiction, and most of this book is a list.

But, as if I haven't equivocated enough, I'm also fascinated by the number of people giving this book such rave reviews on Goodreads, in languages I, ignorant as I might be, associate with actually existing tyranny. I wonder if this is a text that will continue to speak to men and women living under such conditions more than it can to someone like me? And if the texts that speak to me (to pluck a random example, Gaddis's 'JR') will seem similarly overblown, unnecessarily technical and slightly disappointing to those readers who love this book? I suspect so.

If anyone reading this has magical realism recommendations for me, please, let me know.

***

* in the technical sense of 'doesn't distinguish between objects and subjects in the world and itself.' show less