Word: magics
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...magnificent 1970 novel that made the reputation of Gabriel Garcia Marquez, famously begins as a flashback. "Many years later, as he faced the firing squad, Colonel Aureliano Buendia was to remember that distant afternoon when his father took him to discover ice." Is it memory that makes possible the magic of Garcia Marquez's magic realism? A world retrieved from the past operates by more flexible guidelines; the laws of gravity are loosened, the rules of cause and effect can be bent...
...maybe Garcia Marquez did not have to bend them much. The Nobel-prizewinning Colombian novelist has always maintained that he was not a magic realist but just a writer making the most of the lavish realities of Latin America. After reading his abundant new memoir, Living to Tell the Tale (Knopf; 484 pages), you'll be inclined to agree. In a warm but largely matter-of-fact style, he recalls the headless man who rode past one day on a donkey, killed by a machete in a settling of accounts on the nearby banana plantation. Then there was the fishing...
...Bogota to pursue studies in law. But it's too late. His passion for words overtakes him. So does the bloody history of his country. By the book's end, he is becoming the man whose gifts will subdue that history and turn its pain into even further magic...
Want to add some pizazz to your aquarium? A Taiwanese scientist has devised a way to make otherwise colorless fish glow neon green in the dark. Professor H.J. Tsai at National Taiwan University works this biological magic by injecting a protein extracted from jellyfish into the fertilized eggs of rice fish. He also uses a protein from coral to make fish glow a vibrant reddish pink. Opponents of genetic engineering fear that these creatures could crossbreed with wild species, creating glowing schools of Frankenfish. To keep them from spreading their shining DNA, the distributor, Taikong International, sterilizes them...
...it’s the magic of the editing room for sure,” she quipped...