Publication
Grijalbo Mondadori, S.A. (1975), Edition: 2nd, 298 pages
Original publication date
1975
Collections
Genres
Awards
PEN Translation Prize (Winner — 1977)
Notable Books List (1976)
Description
One of Gabriel Garcia Marquez's most intricate and ambitious works, The Autumn of the Patriarch is a brilliant tale of a Caribbean tyrant and the corruption of power. Employing an innovative, dreamlike style, the novel is overflowing with symbolic descriptions as it vividly portrays the dying tyrant caught in the prison of his own dictatorship. From charity to deceit, benevolence to violence, fear of God to extreme cruelty, the dictator embodies at once the best and the worst of human nature.
User reviews
LibraryThing member rventura
About 20 years after I purchased this book in used bookstore, i finally read it. The typeface was small, which made it even harder to read with the lack of paragraph breaks and long, long sentence crammed with Marquez's story and visions. My rabbit in college had eaten the binding and the edges of
But I read it. Got through it, although at times, it was a struggle with the intermixing thoughts and change of narrators and clauses and run-on sentences breaking the convention of other books I've read.
There were often times I gave up, honestly, and often times I was not sufficiently alert to grasp, enjoy or even understand what was going on. But the last few pages, I read on a train, going home, and the rhythm, endless and unrelenting, like the rhythym of the train, brought me home. There are few writers I would trust to take me through these rough jungles of sentences to bring me where I want to be, but Marquez is one of them. In the end, despite my doubts and worries, I was completely mesmerized and filled up.
I remember every single thing about this book.
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the pages, so it was even more tattered than one would imagine it ought to be. But I read it. Got through it, although at times, it was a struggle with the intermixing thoughts and change of narrators and clauses and run-on sentences breaking the convention of other books I've read.
There were often times I gave up, honestly, and often times I was not sufficiently alert to grasp, enjoy or even understand what was going on. But the last few pages, I read on a train, going home, and the rhythm, endless and unrelenting, like the rhythym of the train, brought me home. There are few writers I would trust to take me through these rough jungles of sentences to bring me where I want to be, but Marquez is one of them. In the end, despite my doubts and worries, I was completely mesmerized and filled up.
I remember every single thing about this book.
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LibraryThing member richardderus
Rating: 4.75* of five
A Goodreads friend recommended this book to me urgently and earnestly. I realize that, having finished a book a day on average for 50 years I'm never going to be able to write reviews of all of them, but this one needs to be refreshed in the public consciousness.
I can't
And were they ever sorry.
Fascism was fought back into hidey-holes during our lifetimes for a reason, y'all, and it's oozed back into the public discourse on the fears and hates of ignorant people yet again. The Left, bunch of elitist idiots that we are, has yet again failed to educate those most resistant to book-larnin' in basic decency. Once upon a time, that was the stated aim of religion, so aber natürlich the Fascists co-opted the religiosifiers to spread their hateful, vile, cruel propaganda for them. They did that last time, too, only then it was Catholicism (Father Coughlin in the US, Pius XII ignoring the Holocaust, the Cristeros in Mexico whose scorched-earth civil war led directly to the WWII influx of illegal migrants enduring slavery in US farm fields).
So long as the lowest, the least, and the last are allowed to wrest control of the microphone from their betters, this will continue to happen.
Elitism fully intentional.
A Goodreads friend recommended this book to me urgently and earnestly. I realize that, having finished a book a day on average for 50 years I'm never going to be able to write reviews of all of them, but this one needs to be refreshed in the public consciousness.
I can't
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full-five a book I read three decades ago in the midst of my Latin-American-delights phase. I can tell you that the translation is excellent, captures the spirit of the original Spanish if not the literal idioms. It's a brief book but not a light one, in any sense of the word. I suspect lots of readers look at its length and think, "oh goody good good, a shorty and I can say I've read a García Márquez!"And were they ever sorry.
Fascism was fought back into hidey-holes during our lifetimes for a reason, y'all, and it's oozed back into the public discourse on the fears and hates of ignorant people yet again. The Left, bunch of elitist idiots that we are, has yet again failed to educate those most resistant to book-larnin' in basic decency. Once upon a time, that was the stated aim of religion, so aber natürlich the Fascists co-opted the religiosifiers to spread their hateful, vile, cruel propaganda for them. They did that last time, too, only then it was Catholicism (Father Coughlin in the US, Pius XII ignoring the Holocaust, the Cristeros in Mexico whose scorched-earth civil war led directly to the WWII influx of illegal migrants enduring slavery in US farm fields).
So long as the lowest, the least, and the last are allowed to wrest control of the microphone from their betters, this will continue to happen.
Elitism fully intentional.
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LibraryThing member AnesaMiller
Fascinating, yet thoroughly repugnant. This is my reaction to much of Marquez’s work. THE PATRIARCH is especially distasteful due to the title character’s hideous psychology and, even more so, his heinous actions. A question that logically follows is: Do we gain insight on totalitarianism by
Fascinating, but not for everyone.
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paying aesthetic attention to such details as the serial rape of schoolgirls that occupies the Patriarch’s declining years? Is there something meaningful to learn from his extreme abuse of power? Marquez’s fans are legion, so no doubt the consensus reply would be “Yes.” For me, fascination tied with repugnance. I agree with those who find his renditions sexist, although he clearly puts denigration in the service of illuminating the festering sores in human institutions.Fascinating, but not for everyone.
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LibraryThing member aviechu
The most difficult of his books I've read so far, but very rewarding. I agree with another user's review that this has a hypnotic feel to it. A dreamy-like quality. I dozed and fell in and out of consciousness as I read. But it is purely beautiful.
LibraryThing member bodachliath
This is definitely not an easy read - mostly written in chapter length paragraphs and sentences running over several pages, and deliberately rambling, digressive and repetitive. However, after a while it becomes quite hypnotic, full of fascinating detail and reflective of the state of mind of the
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aged and increasingly lonely dictator at its heart, who is portrayed mercilessly and with the surreal exaggeration familiar from Márquez's other works. This is not a book I would recommend to newcomers to his work - 100 Years of Solitude and Love in the Time of Cholera are more accessible. Show Less
LibraryThing member LisaStens
I had a hard time with this book simply because of the format, no paragraphs and sentences that are literally pages long. I also struggled with the constant switch of narrators and perspectives. Even though I found this book to be oppressive and confusing I did find the Patriarch to be a
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fascinating character, fascinating, horrifying and tragic in many ways. Show Less
LibraryThing member cblaker
With little punctutation, few chapters, and no paragraphs and its switching of narrators without warning this book was not an easy read. But it is well worth the effort. I've tried to read Love in the Time of Cholera several times without success, this book I read in a few days and enjoyed
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thoroughly. I haven't read another writer similiar to Marquez. He's beautfilly descriptive, surrealistic language is a pleasure to read. Show Less
LibraryThing member ECBesa
Not my favorite novel but interesting point of view by a dictator of a country.
LibraryThing member dtra
As many have said, this book was hard to read, the last sentence (which I'm pretty sure is the whole last chapter) was long, but on top of that, there was the changing persona of the narrator. The story is really good, but in the end, I rated it down because of the difficulty I had in reading it,
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probably the type of book you need to do in one or two sittings. It goes on like one long rambling anecdote, the language is very good though. Show Less
LibraryThing member something_
This was... a strange book. It was the first book I read by this author, and my enjoyment of the first part suffered while I didn't get used to the style - sentences that extend across several pages, the heavy comma use, and frequent change of the narrating voice midsentence were some of the
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aspects I found most noticeable. This style reminds me much of the one used by Saramago.We start by being presented with the people who found the General's lifeless body, and we are then offered insight about his life. We jump back and forth across time, after his death and during his life, and there isn't a conductive thread or a main story in a way. This book feels to me like a portrait of this main character, the General, the main theme in the foreground. Behind that, the portrait of a dictatorship of the worst kind: its effect on the population, the crushing of rebellion, the scheming of people in power, and the control/subjugation of the masses.
I didn't find this book to be a page turner. In fact, after I put it down I didn't feel that urge to pick it up to carry on with the story. The extremely long sentences propelled me foward for lack of a convenient place to stop to be honest. I had trouble getting through the first part of the book. After the middle though, I started to feel drawn to it, mostly due to this character of the General, so dispicable, so delusional at times, and yet, so human in a strange way. I was both disgusted by him, horrified at his actions, and pittied him at the same time.
While I didn't feel drawn to the story overall, I really liked the portrait of the characters, and the focus given to fears that are very much human.
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LibraryThing member schmicker
Autumn of the Patriarch: Garcia Marquez deep inside the mind of a dying Latin tyrant.
LibraryThing member MaowangVater
The repeated death, decline, and life of an unnamed Caribbean dictator, in that order, performed by a series of narrators speaking directly to the reader or quite often speaking directly to the general himself, apologizing, explaining, and occasionally cursing him just prior to their own decease.
Other themes include his devotion to his mother Bendición Alvarado, a poor bird seller. His outrage when the church refuses to canonize her after her death results in his declaring her a saint, and then expelling the church from his realm. All priests, bishops, and members of religious orders are exiled, except one nun, Leticia Nazareno. He makes her his wife, a replacement for the stunning beauty Manuela Sánchez, who vanished during an eclipse of the sun. Needless to say, neither of them was a willing partner of the obsessive old goat. Periodically he slaughters the other generals and members of his staff, afraid that they may be plotting against him. Thus, he isolates himself from the rest of humanity and reality.
This “poem on the solitude of power,” as the author put it is, a brilliant performance.
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His palace is an unweeded garden gone to seed possessed by roaming cattle, hens, and vultures picking his bones in the opening scene. The surreal narrative cascades along in multiple page spanning sentences that give the impression of a spontaneous jazz improvisation. A composition in which decline and death are not the end of the piece, but only several of its reoccurring themes to be picked up and played with variations throughout the piece. Other themes include his devotion to his mother Bendición Alvarado, a poor bird seller. His outrage when the church refuses to canonize her after her death results in his declaring her a saint, and then expelling the church from his realm. All priests, bishops, and members of religious orders are exiled, except one nun, Leticia Nazareno. He makes her his wife, a replacement for the stunning beauty Manuela Sánchez, who vanished during an eclipse of the sun. Needless to say, neither of them was a willing partner of the obsessive old goat. Periodically he slaughters the other generals and members of his staff, afraid that they may be plotting against him. Thus, he isolates himself from the rest of humanity and reality.
This “poem on the solitude of power,” as the author put it is, a brilliant performance.
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LibraryThing member stillatim
I picked this up thanks to William Gass's otherwise terrible essay on magical realism; the essay reminded me that I'd never read any, unless you count very early Borges, or believe that everything ever written in Spanish is magical realism (a position Gass seems to flirt with). The reasons I
a) I do not care about a book's having a 'sense of place.'
b) I loathe 'lush prose.'
c) It's just so popular.
There are good reasons for me to like stereotypical magical realism, too, i.e., such books are very often concerned with political/social matters rather than domestic or 'moral' ones; thanks to that lushness, they're at least immune to american-style minimasnorringilsm. I heard a rumor somewhere that GGM's sentences occasionally have subclauses!
So A of the P it was, because it's shortish, and has a reputation for difficulty, so I figured there'd be less of that glorious Hispano-hablantes accessibility that I associate with endless exclamation marks and soul-bearing.
The most impressive thing about the book is, quite easily, the technique: the narrative voice is narcissistic*. In some very important sense, the story is narrated by the people who have managed to survive the horrors of the Patriarch whose story is being told. GMM pulls this off remarkably well; it makes the 'we' narrators of, say, Eugenides or Ferris look almost amateur. There's a real relationship between this narrator and the patriarch himself: they rely on each other, they love and hate each other, they suffer together.
On the downside, there's little else to the book. There are some great anecdotes, but that's the sum of the book's arrangement: each chapter has an anecdote or two told, at great length, in unnecessarily long sentences. This adds nothing to the book, and often detracts from it (granted, it might work better in Spanish. In English, it's just like reading high school papers by students who don't have time to punctuate). Finally, I do not care for lists in my fiction, and most of this book is a list.
But, as if I haven't equivocated enough, I'm also fascinated by the number of people giving this book such rave reviews on Goodreads, in languages I, ignorant as I might be, associate with actually existing tyranny. I wonder if this is a text that will continue to speak to men and women living under such conditions more than it can to someone like me? And if the texts that speak to me (to pluck a random example, Gaddis's 'JR') will seem similarly overblown, unnecessarily technical and slightly disappointing to those readers who love this book? I suspect so.
If anyone reading this has magical realism recommendations for me, please, let me know.
***
* in the technical sense of 'doesn't distinguish between objects and subjects in the world and itself.'
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haven't read any are fairly simple:a) I do not care about a book's having a 'sense of place.'
b) I loathe 'lush prose.'
c) It's just so popular.
There are good reasons for me to like stereotypical magical realism, too, i.e., such books are very often concerned with political/social matters rather than domestic or 'moral' ones; thanks to that lushness, they're at least immune to american-style minimasnorringilsm. I heard a rumor somewhere that GGM's sentences occasionally have subclauses!
So A of the P it was, because it's shortish, and has a reputation for difficulty, so I figured there'd be less of that glorious Hispano-hablantes accessibility that I associate with endless exclamation marks and soul-bearing.
The most impressive thing about the book is, quite easily, the technique: the narrative voice is narcissistic*. In some very important sense, the story is narrated by the people who have managed to survive the horrors of the Patriarch whose story is being told. GMM pulls this off remarkably well; it makes the 'we' narrators of, say, Eugenides or Ferris look almost amateur. There's a real relationship between this narrator and the patriarch himself: they rely on each other, they love and hate each other, they suffer together.
On the downside, there's little else to the book. There are some great anecdotes, but that's the sum of the book's arrangement: each chapter has an anecdote or two told, at great length, in unnecessarily long sentences. This adds nothing to the book, and often detracts from it (granted, it might work better in Spanish. In English, it's just like reading high school papers by students who don't have time to punctuate). Finally, I do not care for lists in my fiction, and most of this book is a list.
But, as if I haven't equivocated enough, I'm also fascinated by the number of people giving this book such rave reviews on Goodreads, in languages I, ignorant as I might be, associate with actually existing tyranny. I wonder if this is a text that will continue to speak to men and women living under such conditions more than it can to someone like me? And if the texts that speak to me (to pluck a random example, Gaddis's 'JR') will seem similarly overblown, unnecessarily technical and slightly disappointing to those readers who love this book? I suspect so.
If anyone reading this has magical realism recommendations for me, please, let me know.
***
* in the technical sense of 'doesn't distinguish between objects and subjects in the world and itself.'
Show Less
Language
Original language
Spanish
ISBN
8401814049 / 9788401814044
Physical description
298 p.; 9.06 inches
Pages
298