Many years later, as he faced the firing squad, Colonel Aureliano Buendia was to remember that distant afternoon when his father took him to discover ice.
This, as many of us know, whether we have read the novel or not, is the famous opening sentence of One Hundred Years of Solitude, by Gabriel Garcia Marquez.
I read that entire novel because I needed to know when and why Colonel Buendia faced a firing squad. I also had a vision of a tropical land, where a journey to see a block of ice would have been a memorable thing.
It was a long time reading, in which I was never clear about when and how Aureliano Buendia became a Colonel and was very uncertain about where and how he discovered ice. I also pronounced Buendia, because I didn't know any better, “Boo-en’-dee-ah.” But thanks to a Netflix production, I now realize that it is “Bwen-dee’ ah,” which if one has studied Spanish seems axiomatic.
And now, because I am watching this series, I am rereading the novel. You have only to read these reviews on Rotten Tomatoes to see that it just might be worth your time. You may have a different take than mine on the sexism and portrayal of child marriage, but I take it as staying true to Marquez’s novel and am happy no one saw fit to revise it to modern standards.
Two other novels have been worth my taking the time, when I could, to revisit. I read War and Peace in high school. The first time through I followed the narrative fairly well, but completely lost track of the characters. That was because I could not pronounce Russian names, so I glossed over them, and lost sight of the diminutives – which one belonged to whom – and I’m not the only one. The internet not being available at the time, I finally went back and sounded out each name whenever I came to it, reminding myself (by rechecking the glossary) of who was who. For instance, "Nikolenka" seems to be yet another diminutive of Nikolai. By the time I was a quarter of the way through the novel, the people were all straight in my mind and acting as full-fledged characters on the page. Worth every single minute of painful pronunciation. Side effect: I can now pronounce the names of Russians in the news fairly fluently. Hint: Pretty much just the way they are spelled.
The other great book, of course, is Ulysses. I read Ulysses once as a young woman, out loud, stoned, walking around the house, while my husband was at work and my child was at school. I remember thinking the words tasted like rubies. But at the end, I had no idea of who was who or what had happened to them. I just remembered that I loved the language that had tried to tell me those things.
And then sometime in 2012 or 2013, I came across a wonderful podcast by Frank Delaney, called Re-Joyce. I listened faithfully to one a day until I caught up and then listened in real time once a week until his sudden death of a heart attack in 2017. By that time, we were more than halfway through the novel – reading just a few paragraphs a week – and I was heartbroken. But having gotten the gist of the thing from Mr. Delaney, I finished the book on my own. This time the rubies told a story I could follow.
Reading novels of any kind is a solitary exercise of discovery. Still, very often if you are reading mysteries or popular science fiction or even something like A Game of Thrones, you can find fellow aficionados that will recognize the genre, oft times the very book. But if you have a penchant for the big ones, all too often you find yourself alone. You can’t go to a party and reference the Battle of Borodino, as told by Tolstoy, or the library scene in Ulysses, or (as I now know to do) the insomnia plague in One Hundred Years of Solitude, and get answering nods of recognition around the table. No. You will find the people who will do that here and there, but it is not to be expected. But if you are lucky, you will find gateways through which to read or reread the books that once seemed to have refused you full admittance. The Netflix production of One Hundred Years of Solitude is one such gateway. I’m now more than a quarter of the way through my reread, and it is amazing to me how easy it is to follow. To enjoy. To love. I wonder how its words would taste if I got high and read it aloud.