He had not stopped desiring her for a single instant. He found her in the dark bedrooms of captured towns, especially in the most abject ones, and he would make her materialize in the smell of dry blood on the bandages of the wounded, in the instantaneous terror of the danger of death, at all times and in all places. He had fled from her in an attempt to wipe out her memory, not only through distance but by means of a muddled fury that his companions at arms took to be boldness, but the more her image wallowed in the dunghill of war, the more the war resembled Amaranta. That was how he suffered in exile, looking for a way of killing her with his own death.
-from One Hundred Years of Solitude by Gabriel García Márquez
This discussion currently has 7 responses.
March 1, 2009
I teach this book every year here, and this is usually one of the first books the students (15-17 year olds) really connect with. The kids like the Márquez.
March 1, 2009
You have them reading Márquez at that age? And they enjoy it? Nice! I’m very impressed. I notice that most college-age readers have trouble reading him – not because of his stories themselves, but the way he writes them.
March 3, 2009
For IB English, Marquez’s work is on the recommended reading list. They read it after Murakami’s The Wind-up Bird Chronicle and Kundera’s The Unbearable Lightness of Being. Depending on the class, Marquez is usually rated second to Murakami. Though, I’m a huge fan of Kundera myself.
I wish I had a reading list like that when I was their age.
March 3, 2009
umm, your high schoolers read The Unbearable Lightness of Being? wow. where in the world are you teaching? i want to send my son there. that is insane, but wonderful.
when i was in tenth and eleventh grade, i was reading mindless, juvenile shit like THE OUTSIDERS.
March 3, 2009
Yeah, I was one of those students who had the read The Outsiders too.
I teach at an international high school in Poland. The level of education is a bit more demanding than the one I had.
With the last year students, we just finished McCarthy’s The Road and now we are doing Zafon’s The Shadow of the Wind.
March 3, 2009
I read very good, but not necessarily challenging books in high school. The classic Steinbeck’s (East of Eden, The Grapes of Wrath), the classic everyone hates (The Scarlett Letter), the popular French classics (The Count of Monte Cristo and Les Misérables), and probably my favorite classic American novel and the staple of every high school literary diet, The Great Gatsby.
I’m also a little surprised by that book selection for high schoolers, Christian, but I find that absolutely awesome and, as a future teacher, inspiring.
March 6, 2009
i wished i lived internationally so i could send my son to a school like there. granted, there are private schools around where i live, but they are generally very poorly run and the others are Catholic and the hell if i want my soon to be taught by a nun or a priest. i know, i know. i’m a heathen. i just want my son to be a heathen too, who can blame me?
like jonathan said, that is awesome and cool. i won’t loose complete faith in that generation knowing some are reading at this level and not Dr. Seuss in 12th grade.