When you see a book titled Memoirs of My Melancholy Whores, you gravitate toward it and ask yourself, ‘What the fuck could this be about?’ It’s the kind of book you’d discover after clicking ‘I’m feeling lucky’ on Google; a wildcard and frivolous purchase of sorts.
I flicked through it in a few days and – after confusedly putting it down – concluded that Marquez and I are never going to get on. I find his style of writing too fantastic and removed from reality; however, I didn’t have a problem with the story, which is the tale of a ninety-year-old man’s infatuation with a fourteen-year-old first-time, prostitute. As disturbing as it sounds, I’m sure the story could be validated if you ventured toward the copious arse ends of our world.
Marquez’s work is definitely suited to the ardent, literary aesthete and not a kinethestic, people-watching, truth seeker such as myself. Not to imply that his work is indulgent style over substance, you just have to work to extract any meaning and humility is a lacking ingredient.
Not as Tarantino as the title suggests, but definitely a dark, abstract tale about coping with age and solitude.
One Comment
I’ll skip over the fact you described yourself as a kinesthetic truth seeker, though I will not forget it
Anyway, I’m a frothing at the mouth fanboy of Mr Marquez – the man is a genius when it comes to the crafting of a perfect sentence. The rhythm in his writing is so beautiful and the worlds he brings to life so vivid… I get what you’re saying about humility but his ability to capture a world and populate it with people and events and emotons and sounds and smells is just incredible. I’m also a big fan of his “fantasticalism”, I like to be transported to another milieu of thinking and writing. Ben Okri does something similar in pieces like the famished road, reading the thing is almost hard work but ultimately, for me, so rewarding.
I read 100 years of solitude whilst travelling around Central America and, without wanting to sound like a kinesthetic truth seeker, it definitely changed me and the way I think about literature, and for that I will always be grateful to Mr Marquez.