“I had an idea of what I always wanted to do, but there was something missing and I was not sure what it was until one day I discovered the right tone—the tone that I eventually used in One Hundred Years of Solitude. It was based on the way my grandmother used to tell her stories. She told things that sounded supernatural and fantastic, but she told them with complete naturalness. When I finally discovered the tone I had to use, I sat down for eighteen months and worked every day.”
村民究竟是天真地相信了政府,还是迫于强力选择遗忘,不得而知。
导致三千人死亡的大屠杀在居民的记忆中没有留下任何痕迹,这样的事显得荒谬而不真实,但类似的屠杀、类似的消息封锁恐怕在历史上并不罕见。这样的写法正是对类似事件的讽刺与控诉,也是无奈。正如《笑忘录》中所说:
The struggle of man against power is the struggle of memory against forgetting.
如果说《百年孤独》是拉丁美洲的缩影,那么其毁灭式的结局可能会令人感到不祥。但不妨这样理解:飓风所扫掉的“遭受百年孤独的家族”是原先落后而破败的拉丁美洲,现实中的拉丁美洲则将作为不同于马孔多的世界继续走下去。
王尔德说:“Everything in the world is about sex, except sex. Sex is about power.”在马孔多这片土地上似乎并无什么权力可言(最好的论证便那位妄图在此建立军队和树立权威的镇长阿•摩斯科特,最终在马孔多的创建者何塞•阿卡迪奥•布恩迪亚面前碰得一鼻子灰的糗事),于是在这方平和安详的温床上,情欲再怎样毫无羁绊、肆无忌惮的滋生,都显得是那么理所当然和自然而然。