Many years later, as he faced the firing squad, Colonel Aureliano Buendía was to remember that distant afternoon when his father took him to discover ice.
This is vintage Marquez. He launches us immediately into a world of arresting juxtaposition, where the linearity of time is usurped by the sensory immediacy of the past. We are always remembering ourselves. Indeed to talk of ‘being ourselves’ is to acknowledge the our coincidence (literally ) with remembrance. Anecdotes make us who we are, they feed our identity, and that is why story telling is so primary to the experience of living.
Thus, to talk of self-presence is to talk of the past: Death and ice; the value of the well placed comma; firing squads and a paternal relationship; life’s afternoons!
Who could resist such writing?
Makes me smile and toes curl every time!