At Joanna's August 2015

One Hundred Years of Solitude - discussion questions

1. What kinds of solitude occur in the novel (for example, solitude of pride, grief, power, love, or death), and with whom are they associated? What circumstances produce them? What similarities and differences are there among the various kinds of solitude?

2. What are the purposes and effects of the story's fantastic and magical elements? How does the fantastic operate in the characters' everyday lives and personalities? How is the magical interwoven with elements drawn from history, myth, and politics?

3. Why does Garcia Marquez make repeated use of the "Many years later" formula? In what ways does this establish a continuity among past, present, and future? What expectations does it provoke? How do linear time and cyclical time function in the novel?

4. To what extent is Macondo's founding, long isolation, and increasing links with the outside world an exodus from guilt and corruption to new life and innocence and, then, a reverse journey from innocence to decadence?

5. What varieties of love occur in the novel? Does any kind of love transcend or transform the ravages of everyday life, politics and warfare, history, and time itself?

5. What is the progression of visitors and newcomers to Macondo, beginning with the gypsies? How does each new individual and group affect the Buendias, the town, and the story?

6. What is the importance of the various inventions, gadgets, and technological wonders introduced into Macondo over the years? Is the sequence in which they are introduced significant?

7. What is Melquiades's role and that of his innovations, explorations, and parchments? What is the significance of the "fact" that Melquiades "really had been through death, but he had returned because he could not bear the solitude"? Who else returns, and why?

8. When and how do politics enter the life of Macondo? With what short-term and long-term consequences? Do the social-political aspects of life in Macondo over the years parallel actual events and trends?

9. What types of women (from Ursula and Pilar to Meme and Amaranta Ursula) and what types of men (from Jose Arcadio to Aureliano Babilonia) are distinguishable? What characteristics do the men share? What characteristics do the women share?

10. What dreams, prophecies, and premonitions occur in the novel? With which specific characters and events are they associated, and what is their purpose?

11. When, how, and in what guises does death enter Macondo? With what consequences?

12. On the first page we are told that "The world was so recent that many things lacked names." What is the importance of names and of naming (of people, things, and events) in the novel?

12. How do geography and topography — mountains, swamps, river, sea, etc. — affect Macondo's history, its citizens' lives, and the novel's progression?

14. What aspects of the Buendia family dynamics are specific to Macondo? Which are reflective of family life everywhere and at any time? How do they relate to your experience and understanding of family life?

15. How does Garcia Marquez handle the issue and incidence of incest and its association with violence beginning with Jose Arcadio and Ursula's marriage and the shooting of Prudencio Aguilar? Is the sixth-generation incest of Aureliano Babilonia and Amaranta Ursula inevitable?
(Questions issued by publishers.)

At Jackie's May 2015

At Doreen's in April 2015

"Journey by Moonlight”- introduction and discussion questions

Antal Szerb (1901-1945) was a writer, scholar, critic and translator born to Jewish parents but baptized Catholic. Multilingual, he lived in Hungary, France, Italy and England, and after graduating in German and English he rapidly established himself as a prolific scholar, publishing books on drama and poetry, studies of Ibsen and Blake, and histories of English and Hungarian literature.

At the age of 39, Szerb wrote an authoritative History of World Literature. He wrote his first novel, The Pendragon Legend, in 1934, followed by Journey by Moonlight in 1937 and The Queen's Necklace in 1943. These, and a collection of his short stories, Love in a Bottle, are also published in English by Pushkin Press. Szerb was killed in a concentration camp in January 1945.

“Journey by Moonlight”

1.      Did you like this book? 

2.      What do you think about  Mihaily and Erzsi as a  newly-weds and their honeymoon in Venice?

3.      Did it surprise you when Mihaily suddenly left his new wife in the hotel room and was wandering the back streets until dawn?

4.      Why Erzsi’s ex-husband Zoltan, writes to Mihaily, giving him instructions on how to care for Erzsi?

5.      How important for Mihaily is his past circle of friends he was part of? (Tamas and his sister Eva, Ervin, and Janos)

6.      Why all of them were obsessed with drama and death?

7.      Hwo would you describe Mihaly’s relationship with Tamas and Eva?  Was this a true friendship?

8.      Did it surprise you when Mihaily  left his wife at a railway station (although we all know the possibilities for getting on the wrong train at a busy station) and  when he realizes that  he has done the wrong thing  he run  away?

9.      When Erzsi realizes that her marriage is based on fiction?

10.  How would you describe Mihaly’s relationship with Tamas?  Was this a true friendship?

11.  While wondering  through Italy, Mihaily meets with two people from the past, János Szepetneki, an arch-manipulator and now a motorcycle-riding criminal, and the Catholic convert Ervin, who appears as Father Severinus.  What do we learn from these meetings?

12.  After the “incidental” separation with Mihaily, Erszi goes to Paris and lives with her girlfriend.  How do you describe her life in Paris?

113.  Is nostalgia what eats at Mihály? Mihály told his doctor “I know what’s wrong with me… Acute nostalgia. I want to be young again. Is there a cure for that?” 

14.  Why Mihaily is obsessed with Eva?  What happen after they finally meets? 

15.  Do you agree with this opinion that “Szerb’s narrative is a remarkable, painstaking study of a man’s fascination with his own mortality.”?

116.  Later we learn that Mihaily is Journeying from Venice to Ravenna, Florence and Rome, loses himself in in the Tuscan and Umbrian countryside.  What is he searching for? Is he trying to resurrect his lost youth?  Is this the last change to have scandalous adventures before  he returns to the dull adult life?

17.  Do you agree with this opinion that “Szerb’s narrative is a remarkable, painstaking study of a man’s fascination with his own mortality”?

18.  Did the ending of this book surprise you?  Why?

On Books...

“Books are the quietest and most constant of friends; they are the most accessible and wisest of counselors, and the most patient of teachers.” 
― Charles William Eliot

At Kathy's March 2015