Death of a Salesman

In the spring of 1948, Arthur Miller disappeared into his log cabin somewhere in Connecticut. He emerged out of it some six weeks later ready with his first draft of his play ‘ Death of a Salesman’. And as they say rest is history. It won the Pulitzer prize for best drama  that year and when it was premiered on Broadway the following year, it created massive waves and huge critical  acclaim for Arthur Miller as a playwright. When I read this play recently, I underwent most of the emotions that our anti hero Willy Loman goes through and that to my mind is the beauty of great work of fiction. It brings you face to face with your innermost core that you knew existed but were hardly aware of and this work of his also tells you what can happen when you lose the grip on the forces of life. The passage of time has not dated the topicality or relevance of this timeless classic.

ONE HUNDRED YEARS OF SOLITUDE

Having finished a densely written 422 pages ONE HUNDRED YEARS OF SOLITUDE, I can say with utmost conviction that Gabriel Garcia Marquez is a master spinner of yarn of the finest quality. The fabric that he creates in the form of this novel has a texture of magic realism and is designed with the uneven patches of Colombian history interspersed with the trials and tribulations of the Buendias family. The fictional village of Macondo could be taken as a microcosm of the Colombian nation. It is a great work of Gabriel Garcia Marquez whose whole career has been defined by this one book although he has written several others and which former president Clinton has been on record saying it as his all time favourite novel. Some people may find it a difficult read because the narrative though linear at one level, also stretches back and forth in time and adopts this tragi-comic tone throughout and where the mundane and extraordinary events take place simultaneously and seamlessly merge into each other to create a world like no other. So if you stay with it, you will get sucked into his web. I have no doubt in my mind that Salman Rushdie has drawn heavily from the style of Mr. Gabriel Garcia Marquez and that MIDNIGHT’S CHILDREN has its template this luminous ONE HUNDRED YEARS OF SOLITUDE.