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Robbie's Reviews > The Autumn of the Patriarch
The Autumn of the Patriarch
by
by
NOT poor guy.
This marks my 5th Gabo, and is by far the most ridiculous and grotesque of the lot, and perhaps the most open to interpretation. I thought of all his books that I could read next that Autumn of the Patriarch would be the most topical now that we have various dictators or wannabe dictators on the world stage, and at times I did get flashes of Trump and his keepers from the benevolent General. Fun!
The writing style is the most standout element of the book, yes it was 6 continuous blocks of text from different perspectives and time periods all jumbled together to be as narratively confusing and anachronistic as possible. I was extremely overwhelmed by the wall of text at first but I think after a while you start to feel the abrasive tone shifts as breathers, and the symbolism doesn’t muddle things much more e.g. the lepers.
I took this book, and it’s pacing, to be a last ditch effort to canonise the General, who “survives� life for over a century and only when he is completely dejected and finally dead can sense be made of the last century. What’s left after an illiterate, insecure and brutal tyrant who depends on violence and lies to hold onto power is a smattering of events that appear non-linearly, parsed from bathroom graffiti, prostitutes and the General’s enemies.
The only lynchpin in all the madness is the repeated mention of his death, giving a sort of “hang in there, he will die� to the citizens of his imaginary country. The scandals are revealed in brutal, ridiculous imaginary (the children on the raft, the mules falling off the cliff with the pianos), and characters as impactful but not-very-compelling footnotes in the General’s story e.g. his mother, who he fails to canonise in his lifetime, his wife who is used as collateral.
There were a few times when reading this I thought it was a bit stereotypical of a GGM book, some of the magic realism and symbolism reminded me of A Hundred Years of Solitude but less endearing, and the lyrical style and character development was something he perfected later with Love In The Time of Cholera. However, these are just observations and doesn’t take away from the book itself.
This marks my 5th Gabo, and is by far the most ridiculous and grotesque of the lot, and perhaps the most open to interpretation. I thought of all his books that I could read next that Autumn of the Patriarch would be the most topical now that we have various dictators or wannabe dictators on the world stage, and at times I did get flashes of Trump and his keepers from the benevolent General. Fun!
The writing style is the most standout element of the book, yes it was 6 continuous blocks of text from different perspectives and time periods all jumbled together to be as narratively confusing and anachronistic as possible. I was extremely overwhelmed by the wall of text at first but I think after a while you start to feel the abrasive tone shifts as breathers, and the symbolism doesn’t muddle things much more e.g. the lepers.
I took this book, and it’s pacing, to be a last ditch effort to canonise the General, who “survives� life for over a century and only when he is completely dejected and finally dead can sense be made of the last century. What’s left after an illiterate, insecure and brutal tyrant who depends on violence and lies to hold onto power is a smattering of events that appear non-linearly, parsed from bathroom graffiti, prostitutes and the General’s enemies.
The only lynchpin in all the madness is the repeated mention of his death, giving a sort of “hang in there, he will die� to the citizens of his imaginary country. The scandals are revealed in brutal, ridiculous imaginary (the children on the raft, the mules falling off the cliff with the pianos), and characters as impactful but not-very-compelling footnotes in the General’s story e.g. his mother, who he fails to canonise in his lifetime, his wife who is used as collateral.
There were a few times when reading this I thought it was a bit stereotypical of a GGM book, some of the magic realism and symbolism reminded me of A Hundred Years of Solitude but less endearing, and the lyrical style and character development was something he perfected later with Love In The Time of Cholera. However, these are just observations and doesn’t take away from the book itself.
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