With equal parts clarity and gilded nostalgia, I recall the first time I read the opening line of Gabriel García Márquez’s One Hundred Years of Solitude. “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.” Often cited on lists of literature’s great first lines, the unusual configuration of words came tearing off the page. Who begins a story with, “Many years later”? [Read more…] about Many Years Later: Three Readings of One Hundred Years of Solitude
Featured1
The most meaningful statements are actions
The Harry Ransom Center community mourns the deaths of George Floyd, Ahmaud Arbery, Breonna Taylor, Tony McDade, Michael Ramos, and the countless other victims of police violence and institutional racism. We condemn in the strongest terms the police brutality and racial injustice directed toward people of color, and affirm that Black Lives Matter. [Read more…] about The most meaningful statements are actions
How Gabriel García Márquez’s ‘One Hundred Years of Solitude’ became a classic
Nobel Prize-winning author Gabriel García Márquez’s masterpiece, One Hundred Years of Solitude, was published on May 30, 1967. A new book by Ransom Center guest curator and Whitman College assistant professor Álvaro Santana-Acuña–Ascent to Glory: How One Hundred Years of Solitude Was Written and Became a Global Classic (Columbia University Press, August 2020), explores how the novel achieved success and what it reveals about how a work of literature becomes a classic.
[Read more…] about How Gabriel García Márquez’s ‘One Hundred Years of Solitude’ became a classic
Fellowships awarded to 56 scholars
The Ransom Center has awarded 56 fellowships for the upcoming year to postdoctoral, dissertation and independent researchers from around the world. The 2020-2021 fellows reflect the global stature of the Center’s collections, representing 15 U.S. states and eight countries, with more than half traveling from abroad. [Read more…] about Fellowships awarded to 56 scholars
Ransom Center closed temporarily
The University of Texas at Austin and the Harry Ransom Center continue to prioritize the health and safety of our community, and we remain temporarily closed to the public at this time. Re-opening will be announced in accordance with the university and with proper safety measures in place to protect our valued community. [Read more…] about Ransom Center closed temporarily
Gutenberg’s Blanks
Even with a print run of fewer than 200 copies, the Gutenberg Bible was a major undertaking. A complete copy, like the Ransom Center’s, includes 1,277 large pages that have text printed on them. Each full page required that approximately 2,500 individual pieces of metal type be set by hand, one at a time. And some pages had to be set twice, because Gutenberg decided to increase the Bible’s print run. With some rough multiplication, we end up with well over 3,000,000 times that someone had to pick up a piece of type and put it into a page forme and, then, after all copies of that page had been printed, take that piece of type out of the page forme and put it back so it could be used again. I think we’d all agree that that’s a lot of work.