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i was a kid watching an episode of thundercats in which a few of the cats were trapped in some kind of superbubble thing and it hit me that, being cartoons, the characters could just be erased and redrawn outside the bubble or could just fly away or tunnel their way out. or teleport. or just do whatever they wanted. i mean, they were line and color in a world of line and color. now this applies to any work of fiction but it just felt different with a lowest-common-denominator cartoon. adherence to reality (reality as defined within the world of the cartoon) wasn’t a top priority. this ended my cartoon watching days. was it a lack of, or too much, imagination? dunno.

i had a similar experience with One Hundred Years of Solitude. gypsies bring items to Macondo, a village hidden away from mass civilization by miles of swamp and mountain. these everyday items (magnets, ice, etc.) are interpreted as ‘magic� by people who have never seen them and it forces the reader to reconfigure her perception of much of what she formerly found ordinary. amazing. and then the gypsies bring a magic carpet. a real one. one that works. and there is no distinction b/t magnets and the magic carpet. this, i guess, is magical realism. and i had a Thundercats moment in that i found the magic carpet to immediately render all that preceded it as irrelevant. are ice and magnets the same as magic carpets? what is the relation between magic and science? how can i trust and believe in a character who takes such pains to understand ice and magnets and who, using the most primitive scientific means, works day and night to discover that the earth is round -- but then blindly accepts that carpets can fly? or that people can instantaneously increase their body weight sevenfold by pure will? or that human blood can twist and turn through streets to find a specific person? fuck the characters, how can i trust the writer if the world is totally undefined? if people can refuse to die (and it’s not explained who or how or why) where are the stakes? how can i care about any situation if I can't trust Garcia Marquez not to simply make the persons involved sprout wings and fly away?

so i’m at page 200. and i’m gonna push on. but it’s tough. do i care when someone dies if death isn’t permanent? how do i give a fuk about characters who have seen death reversed but don’t freak the fuck out (which is inconsistent with what does make them freak the fuck out) and who also continue to cry when someone dies? yeah, there are some gems along the way, but i think had Solitude been structured as a large collection of interconnected short stories (kinda like a magical realism Winesberg, Ohio?) it would've worked much better.

should the book be read as fairy-tale? myth? allegory? no, i’d label anyone a fraud who tried to explain away this 500 page book as mere allegory. i don’t believe Garcia Marquez has as fertile an imagination as Borges or Cervantes or Mutis �- three chaps who could pull something like this off on storytelling power alone; but three chaps who, though they may dabble in this stuff, clearly define the world their characters inhabit.

this is one of the most beloved books of all time and i’m not so arrogant (damn close) to discount the word of all these people (although I do have gothboy, DFJ, and Borges on my side--a strong argument for or against anything), and not so blind to see the joy this brings to so many people. but i don’t get it. and i aggressively recommend The Adventures and Misadventures of Maqroll to any and all who find Solitude to be the end all and be all.