Like everyone else I read One Hundred Years of Solitude in college. The magical realism — the sister, was it? with the tail, the other one who ascended into Heaven — seemed like cheating. Another way to put it is that Garcia Marquez was like Faulkner only worse. Yet some expressions and insights have stayed with me.

I understand The Autumn of the Patriarch contains veiled, perhaps unconscious, criticisms of Castro. I hope that is the case, because Garcia Marquez’ explicit politics were dreadful. He was a despot’s fanboy, like Gorky, Neruda, Pound, and Celine in the last century; or, to go back a bit, like Seneca (who at least killed himself). The paradox of the disciple of beauty who is also the disciple of crime is an old one.