"Terrible Fools?": Well maybe. . .

Gregory R-K raises interesting issues. Here’s thanking him for having the courage to be the first poster to our hoped for conversation.

Gregory writes: Numbers imply sequence and this novel is not told in sequential order. Therefore, in one sense, there are no chapters.

This is definitely one of the possibilities in the lack of names and numbers for the book’s segments. Anyone else have any ideas? If they aren’t chapters what do we call them, but more importantly, what is their function in the book? “Segments” works for me as far as what to call them. But merely naming them segments doesn’t address the question of their function. What do you other readers think?

He also writes: If we are supposed to "try to mold [ourselves] to [the author's] perspective and ... understand his experience as much as [we] can," what should we make of the comment made by the author: "Most critics don't realize that a novel like One Hundred Years of Solitude is a bit of a joke, full of signals to close friends; and so, with some pre-ordained right to pontificate they take on the responsibility of decoding the book and risk making terrible fools of themselves"?

Several related issues pile up in this paragraph. One of the most significant is the distinction between what Márquez refers to as “decoding” the book and the possibility of reaching an understanding of the author’s perspective and experience. These are very different propositions.

There are also a number of issues which I won’t address in this posting that have to do with what Márquez means when he says the novel “is a bit of a joke, full of signals to close friends.” Lets discuss in subsequent postings what he might mean by those claims which, by the way, I don’t feel make this novel any less important or serious. But, if you haven’t laughed as you have read this book then there is something wrong with your reading. But does that mean you can’t interpret One Hundred Years of Solitude? Not by a long shot. Most of the world’s most profound books are satirical and funny in places, and that’s never been a bar to interpretability.

Márquez had presented us with a book which responds to major currents in Columbia’s history, and the temptation for many (pontificating fools among them) would be to try to map the book’s events literally onto the terrible events of Columbia’s past. Márquez is careful to maintain that distinction between history and art, and we should be too. Art is never a literal and decodable transcript of the past, it is generated out of a different impulse than that which drives the historians, and almost always runs creatively parallel with events; but it can’t converge with events, not if it is good art at any rate. Compare Picasso’s famous painting of the bombing of Guernica to a photographic record, or even a hypothetical documentary film, of that terrible event and you might see what I mean.

Gregory concludes: It seems as though the author is saying that no critic can ever understand the author's perspective, no matter how much he analyzes the book. Are we being "terrible fools?"

In answer to the last question I would say not necessarily, but to accomplish anything like the interpretation of a text, one always must be willing to run the risk of being a “terrible fool,” so embrace the cap and bells and push on. The thing to keep in mind is that Márquez is not being as absolute as your question would imply. The book itself is a projection of the author’s perspective; it is the manifestation of as much as we can say about his intention, which is manifestly to write a book, this particular book. But we should not despair altogether of interpreting the book and even arriving at an understanding of the author’s perspective through the book just because we can’t crack it open like some kind of puzzle-box and pull out an absolutely decoded message (that would make the book a very flimsy and facile piece of work). Coming to an understanding of the author’s perspective is a much more complex operation.

For instance, when you first open this book, you are a complete stranger to it, much as if you had just met a complex and interesting person. Gradually as you engage the stranger in conversation, you notice things about the stranger: ideas you share, points of view that seem to resemble you own or which are at least familiar. But, also as you talk, some things will make you uncomfortable, and you will disagree with others: you will sometimes be surprised at a point of view you had never previously considered. As the conversation continues—with a book or with a stranger—you will start to feel as though it all adds up to something, even if you can’t quite say what, but you will have arrived at a new perspective—your own perspective shaped and altered by the stranger’s whether you disagree or agree with her, like her, dislike her, or even if you will never see her again. Welcome to the world of the humanities: I shape you, you shape me and our existence is a collaboration, books and humans alike.

This is the preliminary stage in your own growth in response to the stranger or the book. Ahh, but now, what do you do with the altered perspective you have just gained? That’s where the analysis comes in. Unlike what is the case with the stranger who just as well may disappear into the night without a trace, in the book you have the transcript of the conversation. The conversation itself is like the first reading. But the mutual shaping continues and broadens as you deepen your grasp of the text, connections between this text and other things you’ve read and seen arise and deepen, further deepening your own self-understanding as well as your grasp of the text and a reciprocal process of understanding accumulates.

But as you read, you begin to notice things, like the lack of consistent chronology, like the lack of chapter numbers and titles, like the repetitions of names and events; and once you finished reading and annotating, then you can go in and start to crack open the structures that Márquez has built up and start to make sense of them, not by “decoding” them: there is no code and no final answer to anything as complex as a stranger or a book no matter how desirable, repellent, compelling, boring, beautiful they might be.

But there are things you can say about what Márquez has done: things you can say about conflict, setting, structure, character, symbols, metaphors, tone, ideas, themes. These things are all open to interpretation by the reader, and yes, true and valid things can be said about them and about the book itself. Saying what you can about these things is by no means “decoding” the book, or getting to the bottom of its meaning, or arriving at the absolute truth about this novel, but it is the business of interpretation.