everybody loves to love g. g. marquez. i mean, what right minded gringo wouldn’t, he’s freakin’ faulkner through the exotic looking-glass. with all those strange latinos who, bless their little catholic hearts, believe in all sorts of crazy things…and whose men have the stamina of horses only when it comes to drinking, carousing, and fighting meaningless civil wars, but never when it comes to work ethic…

but, i’m not gonna say another word about the doyen of “latin american literature” and his sad whores (to roughly translate the title of his memoir, which i haven’t read). instead, today, in my grad class (well, this was written two weeks ago) we will discuss one of the greatest american (notice the absence of latin, spanish or any other south-regional localizer) ^{i should add, and i add this now, tonight, two and half weeks after the first writing and 4 days, or so after the titillating post, maybe i was being a little overly lauditory in calling it the greatest american novel.}

without this novel g. g. marquez couldn’t’ve written his classic, if somewhat tired by fame, 100 years of solitude. (if one could apply tennessee william’s evocative phrase g. g. marquez’s novel has been passed around the world like a dirty postcard.) ^{it seems unfair and cruel to say its tired, it is a really well-told tale…but, g. g. marquez is like the hemingway of latin america, everybody tried to exagerate like him} but the novel i want to write about is not great because it is a precursor to the most read latin american novel of the century, it’s great because it’s great, even if somewhat heady.

but i still haven’t sent that article out…so this is all you get…just a tease…and though g. g. marquez has a lot to do with faulkner, this novel has very little.

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