The general in his labyrinth

I recently read the author’s acclaimed work “Love in the Time of Cholera” and enjoyed it very much. It spurred me to seek out more work by Marquez, hence this and several others that I recently purchased. My second foray into Marquez was “One Hundred Years of Solitude”. I was very

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disappointed in that novel and concerned that I’d perhaps already seen the best he had to offer. Luckily, I followed up with “Love and Other Demons”, finding it to be well worthwhile the effort. While not up to the standards of that novel, I nevertheless enjoyed this work.

Marquez’s writing is certainly unique in its earthiness. He deals with such subjects as sex, bodily functions and graphic illness as if they are parts of everyday life … because they are. It is refreshing.

Marquez is also known as one of the leading practitioners of the literary device of “magical realism” in which events are introduced into the story which are quite fantastic (for example, a character being swept away into the sky as though taken to heaven, a rain event that lasts over four years followed by an absolute drought of ten years). This was a major device used in One Hundred Years of Solitude and perhaps contributed to my dissatisfaction with that work.

This work, on the other hand, is virtually a non-fiction work, having as its subject the final days of Simon Bolivar, the Liberator of the Americas. The General, at a very unhealthy 46 years of age has withdrawn from political life and announced his pending exile to Europe as he begins his journey in Bogota, floats down the Magdalena River, spends some time in Cartagena fomenting intrigue before his journey (and life) ends in Soledad.

Throughout the odyssey, we witness the deteriorating physical condition (apparently tuberculosis) of the General as we are treated to numerous flashbacks of his fascinating life and adventures. The General is depressed and emotionally volatile as he witnesses the collapse of his lifetime dream and goal, the independence and unification of northern South America into a global super power. Even as the General wastes away, he observes the almost pre-ordained collapse of the fragile union of states and the pending insurrections and civil wars breaking out within them. It is a mess and he is powerless to prevent the carnage, though his very nature leads him to make the attempt.

The author’s writing is indisputably beautiful and at times mesmerizing. Much like LitToC, this is a haunting and compelling story, filled with sadness and regret. It is an intriguing look into the mind of one of the most compelling and important figures in world history.

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The book centres on the final seven months of the life of Simon Bolivar who, having been forced from power, travelled from Bogota to the sea where he will, supposedly, depart for Europe to spend his final days. The voyage is a painful one, full of extended stays, malignant climates, and a

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population divided between those who pay honour to what Bolivar was and what he has achieved, and those for whom he is a fallen idol, responsible for current woes. The great Liberator is ill, and increasingly so, and greatly disillusioned to see the failure of his great dream of a united Americas. That drive for unity was a powerful force in face of the challenge of ridding themselves of the Spanish, but once the initial goal was obtained, the old rivalries and the power of the landed and wealthy classes came forward to play upon the instinctive nationalisms of the various countries.

Marquez weaves a tapestry of Bolivar's life as he struggles against his increasing incapacity and weaknesses, showing him in his prime as political and military master, as a lover and a libertine, as a fighter of outstanding courage, mercy and ruthlessness, and as a man who enjoyed all the material advantages one could imagine, but who was already ready to leave them behind or to give them to friends. The journey of increasing loss and disillusionment becomes a parody of greater and glorious times as Bolivar recalls visiting the same places triumphant and welcomed by all as the great Liberator. At the same time the story illustrates the great human cost of warfare and civil war, not only in the loss of life, but in the destruction of ways of life and whole communities.
(Dec/99)

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Picking up this book I expected two things: #1 - to enjoy Marquez' lovely, lyrical writing and, #2 - to learn something about Simón Bolívar.
Marquez is undeniably a master of language, unfortunately, the story here, such as it is, did not hold my attention or interest.
We meet Bolívar at the end

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of his life. Having finally abdicated power, he plans a trip to the coast. Ill and dying, even when he travels, he is caught in a kind of stasis. He reminisces, hazily, but not about the significant events of his life - more about his womanizing.
As I see it, the book is intended as a complex, ambiguous portrait of a broken man, who was both admirable and reprehensible in his prime. It intends both a commentary on the human condition, the fickle nature of adulation, and the corruption and troubles of South American politics.
There are moments of brilliance here, but overall I did not feel that the work succeeded. At too many points in the book I wanted more - a depth that I wasn't seeing, more details, less haziness. I didn't feel how or why the character portrayed by Marquez could had ever had the qualities of a leader or an idol. Since the reader doesn't see him at his height; I feel that we cannot appreciate his fall.

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This was one of those difficult books that was objectively good, and I know it was objectively good, and yet I didn’t like it.

Marquez is Latin America’s most famous writer, and in The General In His Labyrinth he chronicles the last days of Latin America’s most famous hero, Simon Bolivar.

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Breaking with tradition, in which Bolivar is portrayed as a saint-like hero, Marquez depicts him as a sick, tired, weary and bitter old man. He has been turned out of government by his countrymen, and is travelling down a river to the Caribbean coastline with a few loyal aides-de-camp, heading for a European exile.

Bolivar was apparently the George Washington of South America, a military leader, statesman and visionary, but whom I’d never heard of before reading the book. That’s the “problem” with reading it as a Westerner; it’s so peppered with South American history that a foreigner has difficulty understanding what’s going on. It almost felt like a fantasy novel, taking place in a distant and unfamiliar landscape, through countries which may as well be fictional because they don’t exist anymore.

This isn’t an inherently bad thing, of course, but it’s not exactly an accessible book, and I’d be lying if I said I enjoyed it.

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The Pulitzer Prize winner Marquez gives us the last days of Simon Bolivar as his health deteriorates and his legendary liberation of South America from Spanish rule is left trampled and his dream of a unified country turns to ash. Yes, there is history here, but what is striking is the sculpture of

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a dying man putting the layers of his life into place as he tolerates a journey to exile amidst derision and humiliation, yet with a faithful entourage. We travel with Bolivar on a trip down the Magdalena River as life slips slowly through his hands yet continues rushing around him. He always participates! Even as his body is ravaged, fevers and hallucinations deny him sleep, and food is odious, he still schemes and plans for a unified country despite all the obstacles. Emaciated and weak he still carries on with the voyage of life, not always with grace, often with temper but always with passion. No, I can't really call this a historical novel, not a novel in the typical sense either, what comes to mind more than anything is that this is a portrait. It is a picture of a prematurely old man in all of his magnificence and humanity as he slides away from us. It is not often pretty, bodies in decline seldom are, but it is life and this story is told with a beauty of which Marquez' is master. A worthwhile read!

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The subject of this novel is the final journey of General Simón Bolívar, the great revolutionist known throughout South America as The Liberator, one of the most intriguing and influential persons of the modern era. The novel opens in 1830 Santa Fe de Bogotá, after Bolívar had refused calls to

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declare himself monarch and had renounced the presidency of the Republic of Colombia, and as he prepared for the Magdalena River voyage that was to be his last. With clarity and lucidity, an image of General Bolívar—man of extraordinary ideals and actions—emerges, ever intertwined with an image of a man—an everyman—plagued and forever defeated by his own mortality. The fullness of García Márquez’s Bolívar is evident throughout the novel as the tragic and the comic, the vulgar and the tender, pleasures and despairs, loyalties and betrayals, and the rational and irrational appear side-by-side, page-after-page. In other words, the novel and its main character are fully embodied with the exuberance and the grief of the human condition.

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The fictional reconstruction of the last voyage of Simon Bolívar, at the end of 1830, from Bogotá to the caribean coast of Colombia. The journey on the Magdalena river and the stay on the coast is described with the customary mastery of Marquéz, and the book, with its flash-backs into the

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general's life, gives a panoramic view of Bolívar's wars of liberation against Spain's colonial rule and his ultimately doomed attempts to hold together the former colonies into a sigle and huge latin american nation. An interesting book from this point of view, but certainly not one of Marquéz's best works.

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At times this Marquez novel is a bit slow, but in general it simply is a very good book. We follow the general on his journey, and see how he has to cope with diseases and his personal struggles. Don't expect too much excitement, but if you like good story-telling, Marquez' books are perfect.

Marquez had a long standing ambition to write a historical novel about Simon Bolivar´s last days. But when he came to it, and when he was done with it, he talked about the ´horror of this book´. Why did he choose to write the story of a man´s life at that time when his political legacy is

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rotting just as fast as his body? And write about that rot with the same lyricism that he brings to his descriptions of the surrounding poverty and pestilential heat? Perhaps the subject was so irresistible to Marquez because it sometimes seems it is the perpetual story of Latin America. And so depressing - indeed horrible as Marquez describes it - because the reader already knows how the story ends.

But for all of that, I enjoyed the novelty of this history (coming at it with no real knowledge of Latin American history), and the lively description of characters and events. Up to a point, that is when the narrative brings Bolivar to the sea. I had a sense then that Marquez had grown tired of his subject. He starts to anticipate - in textual references - the timing of Bolivar´s death. One wonders whether he is telling the reader, and himself, ´look, not much longer to go now´. But the description of Bolivar´s death itself was worth the effort to plough through the last sixty pages or so which are otherwise devoted to a commentary on political manoeuvring set against a backdrop of, well..., political manoeuvring. Even Marquez can´t do much with this material, except get the reader through it at a breathless pace which sits oddly against the languid, ambivilent journeying that preceeds it.

It´s hard to know whether this book will please people who know Marquez already as a story-teller (I didn´t). But I enjoyed it as an introduction to both Marquez and Latin American history and will go on to read more of both, knowing that this work is perhaps not the best of either, but a pointer to richer things.

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The General in His Labyrinth is a different offering than what I expect from Marquez, one of my favorite writers. Not so much in style as in content; whereas he generally pens straight fiction, this is a fictionalized account of Simon Bolivar's final days, and reads more like a biography with

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(great) liberties than a novel. Bolivar, the Liberator, is fleeing Santa Fe de Bogota, where the people revile him in the streets, burning effigies, scrawling obscene insults on walls, and papering the streets with inciting pamphlets. The General was the hero of the continent during the war for liberation, but now that Spanish rule has been thrown off, his dream of seeing one completely united country is crumbling, and his glory has been sucked away through the efforts and schemes of politics. Bolivar sails up the Magdalena River, intending to leave South America entirely, thoroughly disillusioned and disgusted. The book starts with the complicated task of his departure from Santa Fe de Bogota, follows his journey along the Magdalena, and doubles back with him as he decides to make one more attempt to unite the country, starting fresh, only to be stopped by death.

When I say that Marquez writes straight fiction, I might be misleading. He is a master of the magical realism style, where the supernatural and fantastic is mingled with the natural in such a fashion as to be accepted as a commonplace. This novel tones down that quality quite a bit, because Marquez is true to the factual information on which his story is based. Still, where he is able, small flourishes of that style emerge, such as his description of Manuela Saenz's entourage, or the rumors of men who walk on birds legs in a remote section along the Magdalena. In all other aspects, his charming writing style remains unchanged. He juxtaposes poignant with vulgar, a wondrous love story can enclose atrocities, and the sentences flow with a rhythm perfect for oral reading. As in other stories, Marquez plays with the flow of time. In this book, he has a convenient justification for the nonlinear chronology: the main part of the book occurs in Bolivar's mind as he reflects on his life, and our minds are notorious for skipping about from one thread of thought to another, irrespective of the time when something occurred. The story cuts about in Bolivar's history at will, spanning entirely different periods of time in a few pages, triggered by the memories passing through Bolivar's mind.

Clearly, much of this interior monologue is fictional, but Marquez took effort to present as realistic a fiction as possible. He used letters and journals, research articles and novels, to compile accurate information about the man Bolivar, a hero in South America. Not only did his background reading contribute to the details such as where he traveled and when, and what he did, but he also used it to guide the conversations and mental reflections in the book. He tried to make his characters speak the way the historical figures did in their own letters. Having read the note at the end of the book and the timeline, I feel that Marquez lived in the man's skin as much as he possibly could, to produce a highly personal story that, while fiction, represents a very real possibility of what might have been.

Like much of his work, this was a fast read for me. The dialogue is believable, and his descriptive passages are always so enjoyable. I do prefer when he writes his fiction rather than fictionalized history, because I love the magical realism touches, and this book was very understated in that department. Nevertheless, it was a good book, interesting and well written, and it taught me about a subject in which I have very little knowledge. I feel that I should do more research on Bolivar and the history of South America, because the topic seems fascinating from the taste this novel provides. I don't know how much is Marquez's characterization, and how much is historical fact, but Bolivar is a compelling person, full of contradictions - eloquent and crude, romantic and reserved, triumphant and despondent. Whether you are a fan of Marquez's skills, or are interested in this time period, consider this book as a good addition to your reading list.

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The novel is about two journeys made by the Liberator Simón Bolívar. The first is the physical journey of Bolívar on the Magdalena River to Cartagena de Indias and the second is the way to his death.

Hmmm. I did find this a bit ponderous, and must confess that I didn't finish it (got about half way through). However, I thought the portrait of the general and his mental and physical deterioration was excellent (although weird at times).

This books is about Simon Bolivar in the last period of his life when he attempts to leave South America and sails down the Rio de Magdelena. Gabriel Garcia Marquez wrote this because much had already been written about Bolivar and his accomplishments, but not so much about this time. It left him

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room to make an historical fiction.

I quit reading about half way through. I found the tone and rhythm to be monotonous and dull. This may be due to the translation, or perhaps it was the author reaching for the despair of the great man. I'm not sure, but it wasn't something I desired to continue to read. There are interesting bits about the people and the places and even the man, that's why I continued reading to the half-way mark. Others may find a great deal of enjoyment in this.

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I still quote this one, having no other authority on Bolivar.

I loved 'One Hundred Years of Solitude.' I loved 'Love in the Time of Cholera.' And then I read 'The General in His Labyrinth,' about the final days in the South American revolutionary Simon Bolivar's life. It was all right. But nothing special.