Howard McEwen

In high school I carried around a copy of One Hundred Years of Solitude but I wasn’t able to read it until much later. 

Magical realism wasn’t something a suburban Indiana teenager could handle. Later I read it and it changed the way I knew I could right – not that I did anything about it. I was still under the spell of Hemingway and the like. But I was slowly growing and I think now I’ve fully loosened Papa’s grasp.

So now my second Marquez novel. And there is almost no dialogue. He’s taken the “Show, don’t tell” dictum and thrown it out the window. 

And I’m loving it so far. Marquez is teaching me again.

“Excuse me…Desmond.”

Desmond? Desmond hated this first name shit from students. He couldn’t imagine approaching one of his old professors like that.

“It’s Dr. DeFoss,” he said.

“Sorry. Dr. DeFoss.”

“Yes, what can I do for you?”

Desmond DeFoss noticed that the other students had already filed out of the classroom. It was just him and the redhead from the third row alone in the classroom now. He didn’t like that. He eyed the door. He put the class text book in his bag. The author’s name glared at him – James Clark. How did Jim Clark write a book? How did he get a publisher? When they were at Harvard together Jim could barely keep up with the rest of us. Des wondered much was he making off this text, which, to be honest, wasn’t that good?

He looked up to met the redhead’s eyes briefly. She smiled at him. It was a broad and brilliant smile. Her daddy had spent a fortune to straighten those teeth but nature had put the pout in those lips. What was she? A freshman? A sophomore at most since this was Religious Studies 195. She held her arms at her side, letting him see her body. She knew she had a good one.

“I’m not sure why God cursed Ishmael? What exactly did he do?”