The Elegant Variation: Another Close Reading

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September 04, 2008

Another Close Reading

Everyone likes lists, not to mention lists of favorites, which is why when you're doing publicity for your book you have to answer questions such as: What's your favorite first sentence in literature? What's your favorite last sentence? It won't come soon enough if I never again have to answer a question with the word "favorite" in it, but since this is unlikely to happen, and since I've been doing a post or two today re close readings (see Tim O'Brien), I thought I would give a close reading of the sentence I picked as my favorite first sentence. It's from Gabriel Garcia Marquez's ONE HUNDRED YEARS OF SOLITUDE: "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."

I could go on for paragraphs about this sentence, but I'll keep it relatively short. First of all, notice the syntax, the way a single sentence captures a lifetime. "Many years later... he was to remember." In the course of one sentence we are at the end of a person's life and at the beginning of it. And the sentence doesn't just call attention to the span of time; it links past and present by having the subject of the sentence recall his childhood as he's about to be killed. The use of a kind of sliding tense ("many years later," "was to remember," "that distant afternoon") allows Marquez to meld time, to do what only a novelist can do (a movie couldn't possibly evoke this kind of simultaneity of time because one can do this only internally, and movies truck in the external, in the surface of things, and only indirectly--though at times very effectively--can they get at the internal.)

I don't know Spanish, but there's something about the sound of that name, Colonel Aureliano Buendia (the actual name itself, as well as the fact that Marquez gives us the full name along with the title), that suggests, perhaps (we will need to read on to see), a certain measure of accomplishment, or at least dignity. The implication is that this person has come a long way from the boy who discovered ice with his father.

But for me, the ending of the sentence is the killer. There's something poignant, even heartbreaking, about it: the man, about to be put to death, remembering a childhood moment with his father. And what a moment! Taken by his father to discover ice. So many questions (and questions are what a writer wants a reader to have at the beginning of a novel. The reader should be intrigued, should want to read on). Where did they go to discover ice? What does it mean to discover ice? Has the child not encountered ice before? What is the significance of this memory? Why is the colonel remembering this now? To my mind, what's heartbreaking, what evokes that earlier innocence in contrast to what the colonel is about to undergo now, is the very word "ice." Both the fact of it and the sound of it. In terms of the sound: how short and abrupt it is, such a final-feeling way to end a sentence, and disarming for its straightforwardness. What's most disarming here is the way Marquez is able to make something old and familiar (ice) look like something new--what a boy discovers for the first time. That's one of the main things fiction does. It defamiliarizes the familiar. And there's almost no one as good at it as Marquez--in this sentence and in general.

Posted at 06:16 PM in Guest Bloggers | Permalink

Comments

FYI: That's the opening line of "One Hundred Years of Solitude", not "Love/Cholera"

Posted by: Reginald Harris | September 04, 2008 at 06:50 PM

Reginald--You're right, of course. Thanks for catching that; my brain is fried at the end of this long day. I've changed it.

Posted by: Joshua Henkin | September 04, 2008 at 07:14 PM

Interesting post, but this sentence has been translated from Spanish, so certain things are not the same in the original (such as the shortness of the word ice).

Posted by: Gwen Dawson | September 05, 2008 at 06:08 AM

I have that tingling sensation (peeved/automatic sympathy for the writer) of having one of my pet topics (The greatness of this first sentence) produced for the world to see by someone else. But then, a few other people have read this book as well, haven't they?
As for the shortness of the word ice, I never saw it as important, more as an helper to the the verb which comes before it, which is much more significant. And that verb (to discover) is also the one word which is translated differently, I always thought. The original verb in Spanish, "conocer" is more akin in my mind in this context to "to know" and I that is the crux for me - "to know ice" is a synonyn for knowing anything which our modern world takes for granted, but on a scale almost absurd.
Sorry if this is a bit long-winded, but again, you just used one of my favorite little rants.

Posted by: Gadi | October 04, 2008 at 06:17 PM

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The Elegant Variation is "Fowler’s (1926, 1965) term for the inept writer’s overstrained efforts at freshness or vividness of expression. Prose guilty of elegant variation calls attention to itself and doesn’t permit its ideas to seem naturally clear. It typically seeks fancy new words for familiar things, and it scrambles for synonyms in order to avoid at all costs repeating a word, even though repetition might be the natural, normal thing to do: The audience had a certain bovine placidity, instead of The audience was as placid as cows. Elegant variation is often the rock, and a stereotype, a cliché, or a tired metaphor the hard place between which inexperienced or foolish writers come to grief. The familiar middle ground in treating these homely topics is almost always the safest. In untrained or unrestrained hands, a thesaurus can be dangerous."

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The Elegant Variation

A Literary Weblog.
A Guardian Top 10 Literary Blog * A Forbes "Best of the Web" Pick * A Los Angeles Magazine Top Los Angeles Blog
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September 04, 2008

Another Close Reading

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MY NOVEL

WORTHY READINGS

TEV DEFINED

RECOMMENDED

THIS GUN FOR HIRE:
Reviews & Criticism

SECOND LOOK

Categories

The Elegant Variation

A Literary Weblog. A Guardian Top 10 Literary Blog * A Forbes "Best of the Web" Pick * A Los Angeles Magazine Top Los Angeles Blog "Really brave ... or really stupid" - NPR

September 04, 2008

Another Close Reading

Comments

MY NOVEL

WORTHY READINGS

TEV DEFINED

RECOMMENDED

THIS GUN FOR HIRE: Reviews & Criticism

SECOND LOOK

Categories

A Literary Weblog.
A Guardian Top 10 Literary Blog * A Forbes "Best of the Web" Pick * A Los Angeles Magazine Top Los Angeles Blog
"Really brave ... or really stupid" - NPR

THIS GUN FOR HIRE:
Reviews & Criticism