Of Love and Other Demons by Gabriel García Márquez

"The girl, daughter of an aristocrat and a commoner, had the childhood of a foundling.  Her mother hated her from the moment she nursed her for the first and only time, and then refused to keep the baby with her for fear she would kill her.  Dominga de Adviento suckled her, baptized her in Christ and consecrated her to Olokun, a Yoruban deity of indeterminate sex… Sierva María learned to dance before she could speak, learned three African languages at he same time… and to glide past Christians unseen and unheard like an incorporeal being… Over time the slave women hung the beads of various gods around her neck, until she was wearing sixteen necklaces." Pg 42-43

A young girl is bitten by a rabid dog and feared to have been infected with the disease.  That is all the plot needed for the author to tell a very dense tale of injustice.  Sierva María is a child of neglect.  Her mother had to force herself on her father merely to conceived a child so adamant was his desire to not be a parent.  While it is Sierva María that takes center stage it is the supporting cast that lends so much power to the story.

The novel's setting is perhaps García Márquez's greatest testament to his writing ability.  He is able to convey so much that will be foreign to many readers in so short a period of time and in so vivid a manner.  There is an immediacy to his setting: things don't develop in your mind as you read rather they are communicated instantaneously.  It's a strong trait for any writer but combined with a semi-exotic locale and a period of time that hasn't been overdone it is very easy to be swept away.  

It's made very clear that neither of Sierva María's parents want anything to do with her and her care is entrusted to the family's slaves.  Twelve years later she is fluent in Yoruban, Congolese, and Mandingo, and sings and dances with the grace and beauty to rival the other African slaves while she struggles with Castilian, literacy and courtly graces expected of her as one of the aristocracy.  "The only thing white about that child was her color."  This would be a reoccurring theme and a trait that would cause her much suffering for the perceived flaw.

"He always believed he loved his daughter, but the fear of rabies obliged the Marquis to admit to himself that this was a lie for the sake of convenience.  Bernarda, on the other hand, did not even ask herself the question, for she knew very well she did not love the girl and the girl did not love her, and both things seemed fitting.  A good part of the hatred each of them felt for Sierva María was caused by the other's qualities in her.  Nevertheless, to preserve her honor, Bernarda was prepared to play out the farce of shedding tears and mourning like a grief-stricken mother, on the condition that the girl's death have a seemly cause.

"It doesn't matter what," she specified, "as long as it's not a dog's disease." Pg 16    

Upon the incident of the dog bite and the possibility of her going mad and dying from rabies, Sierva María's father takes an interest in her and in the course of a few days attempts to make up for a life time of neglect.  This change of mind greatly helps alter his own life in a positive way, yet even after being convinced by the best doctor in town that Sierva María is fine and rabies has passed her by her father, the Marquis, comes to find that he doesn't know his daughter at all.  He finds her odd and many of her actions fey.  He convinces himself that something has to be wrong, that she is mad and needs to be institutionalized in a convent to await exorcism.  Though it is initially his love and concern that harbingers the demise of his daughter his, and the love of others ultimately interfere with Sierva Maria's happiness and condemn her.

The intervention of the church complicates matters immensely.  The Bishop and Abbess see all Sierva María's superstitions and inexplicable occurrences as African magic and works of the devil.  While Cayetano Delaura, the priest charged with performing the exorcism who has a peculiar past with the Inquisition and his sights set on a position in Rome, can't find one rational argument to justify her being possessed, rather many to suggest she be canonized as a saint.  

The novels strongest interactions involve Delaura.  His unlikely and short friendship with Abrenuncio, the doctor who first vouched that Sierva Maria was free of rabies, shows Delaura to be too smart a man to believe in possession or risk an exorcism that could mean death.  And yet he can't surrender to the logic his mind has told him to be true or the comfort of an atheist like Abrenuncio who, without the restraints of faith, has proven himself even smarter than Delaura.  As the two spend more time together, Delaura sees himself as much a heretic as Abrenuncio who is outside of faith and in possession of every book forbidden by the church.  Theirs is a relationship of shared intelligence when those around them seek the scapegoats of demons when their reason fails them.  Abrenuncio sums up their friendship bluntly in a conclusion that undercuts all of the sentimentality and respect the two share: "I leave you with this enigma," Abrenuncio concluded as he spurred his horse.  "No god could have created a talent like yours to waste it scrubbing lepers."  Both a powerful literal statement of Delaura's life and a euphemism for what he could be.         

I think García Márquez's best feat is writing a historical novel without the standard narration that is so common today: "In the year X, in the country of Y, there was a small town of Z in which..."  He writes the book as if it were being read by someone of the time and from that area.  The presentation demands a little bit more from the reader but it is in no way demanding.  Taking into account the simplicity of this kind of narration it's odd to think that I or anyone else would champion the style as it is nothing more than exactly how contemporary fiction of today is written.  The story is as much about Sierva María's parents and her doomed relationship with Delaura as much as it is about herself.  (There is an absolutely gorgeous paragraph at the end that encapsulates the beginning, middle and end of Sierva María and Delaura's relationship.)  With characters this strong and material this powerful I remain in awe of how García Márquez worked it all in a mere one hundred and fourty-seven pages.  

Memories of my Melancholy Whores by Gabriel Garia Marquez

"I could not bear it any more.  She sensed it, saw my eyes wet with tears, and only then must have discovered I was no longer the man I had been, and I endured her glance with a courage I never thought I had.  The truth is I'm getting old, I said.  We already are old, she said with a sigh.  What happens is that you don't feel it on the inside, but from the outside everybody can see it."  Page 98

A cursory glance at this short novel could be very dangerous and highly misleading.  The title and the first few pages would indicate an immature recollection of an old man's colossal sexual exploits.  For a ninety year old man who was twice awarded 'client of the year' in the red light district and kept a log of all the women he had sex with up until he was fifty--and recorded an epochal five-hundred fourteen--you'd think, 'Well hey, this will be interesting if not absurd…'  I was blown away by this novel for reasons you wouldn't believe from what I've said thus far.

At the heart of this book are two themes the author has dealt with in many of his other works: getting older, and what it means to be in love.  The narrator is ninety, hideously ugly, has never once allowed himself to be in love, and has paid--monetarily paid--for everyone of his sexual encounters.  He is terrified of commitment (and arguably a spineless sap in general) and seeks fleeting relationships that are finite and business like in nature.  

We see his age through his interaction with other people: an editor at the newspaper where he works that is young in good health and in possession of good looks; how people treat him as an old man after making a prominent mistake in public; how 'Delgadina' sees him (rather how he envisions her seeing him) as time goes on and he falls in love with her, a fragile fourteen year old girl.  Readers and the narrator learn the most about him as he falls in love for the first time at ninety and behaves with the angsty eye-rolling behavior of an adolescent.  Being in love has taught him more about himself than ninety years of life experience.  

"When the storm had passed I still had the feeling I was not alone in the house.  My only explanation is that just as a real events are forgotten, some that never were can be in our memories as if they had happened.  For if I evoked the emergency of the rainstorm, I did not see myself alone in the house but always accompanied by Delgadina."  Page 59

The most unexpected pleasure in this novel was the title and how it factored into the narrative's presentation.  A 'horse-faced' man of ninety years old with a jaw-dropping laundry list of sexual exploits is absurd in itself, but that we only learn of him from the women--some of whom our narrator is out of line to call a whore--that he had relationships with, not merely sexual encounters but relationships, is amazing.  The three perfect women that he was presented a chance of marrying but didn't and the one who procures Delgadina, who he may yet chain himself to, present the narrator in the best of light: ugly, flawed, and as far from a hero as possible yet virtuous (in his own corrupt way) to a fault that he has lived, or perhaps suffered, for ninety years.  

One could argue it lacks the objectivity that third person narration could offer, and I'd be the first to agree.  I'd love nothing more than to get inside Delgadina's head, but the intimacy and awareness that we gain with the narrator isn't worth giving up and to paraphrase the narrator, it was better when Delgadina was asleep and didn't talk…  There is a very coarse sentimentality here, tempered by the narrator's age and experience and the fact that readers have a difficult time being moved to sympathy of feeling on his behalf.  It's a fully realized telling of a story the author hinted at in Strange Pilgrims 'Sleeping Beauty and the Airplane.'  I challenge you to find a better book at one-hundred and fifteen pages, or perhaps if you're feeling adventurous, even more pages than one-hundred fifteen.  

An injustice.

I really haven't done this book justice. Over the course of a week I read The General in his Labyrinth by Gabriel Garcia Marquez. A lot of it I read at work. I also read a good bit on the train. I never really dedicated the time to the book it deserved. With the subtleties of the texts and the longer sections to read before page breaks I'm sure I didn't appreciate it as much as I would have if I had more time to read in a relaxed state of mind. I read when time and energy allow, and unfortunately the wrong book came up this week.

I did like the book, but I don't think any circumstance would have made me like it as much as Strange Pilgrims; the only other work by Garcia Marquez I've read.

Strange Pilgrims by Gabriel Garcia Marquez

In this fine collection we are given twelve short stories with a central central theme of foreigners abroad, living in an exile of their own volition or imposed on them by external forces. Although the stories are not inter-connected, many elements beyond exile are universal throughout the collection; the setting being one of them.

All the stories take place in Europe, however it is a slightly more rustic Europe than what some would imagine. The author doesn't write the affected settings that some American readers love as they remind them of past vacations or honeymoons. Rather he speaks plainly of where events take place and through no real effort makes grand destinations seem normal as only one who has lived in such places can.

My favorite story in the collection, Bon Voyage Mr President, is of an exiled politician living out his remaining days abroad only to find that there is much to life ahead of him than he expected to find. Upon rescinding his ban on vice: drinking, eating red meat, smoking, eating shellfish and others, he finds friendship and the joy of being alive; despite old age and being forced out of his country when he expected to not have much time before him.

Maria dos Prazeres is a similar tale of a retired whore in her seventies who finds that old age isn't what she thought it would be and the only limitations on the pleasure she can derive from life are self imposed. Both of these stories have a similar feel, likable characters who are far from role-models, dealing with advanced age and impending death, but due to the astonishing ability to impart so much detail with so few sentences it is near impossible to get them mixed up.

I don't know that I've come across a writer who communicated more sentiment or imparted more understating of all things happening in so few words. Garcia Marquez at his best makes me want to swear off fiction longer than thirty pages. Even if the stories he writes were all kinds of boring, the words on the page would be nothing short of beautiful.

Most of the stories deal with death and in a rather abrupt and stark fashion. Tramontana, Light is like Water, and Mrs Forbe's Summer of Happiness all take a morbid turn while maintaining the writers light hearted voice through out until the end.

I only Came to Use the Phone, is terrifying and probably the all around best in the collection; a story of a woman whose car breaks down and seeks to make a phone call to her husband at a mental institution and ends up being taken as a patient. This story--while absolutely fabulous--also brought up my only real point of contention with Garcia Marquez's writing: the women of stories speak like men. Should you read Garcia Marquez and be bothered by the same issues, do as I did: Get over it and keep reading.

The Saint and Sleeping Beauty and the Airplane are proof of the writer's ability; they should be flawed as they are repetitive in the extreme; the former about a father's eternal application for his daughter's Sainthood and the latter about a man on an airplane doing nothing but reflecting on the beautiful woman next to him. Instead of simple material that doesn't have enough substance to expand upon, Garcia Marquez's strings together long, breathless sentences that ironically read at an unhurried pace and make you forget that there is little next to nothing happening in the story itself by way of plot progression.

The term 'magical realism' that is near impossible to separate from the author's name surfaces many times in this collection. He plays with the word 'magic' often, and even calls some people wizards and sorcerers. There is a dog that is trained to cry and sheds tears; a couple that falls asleep in one bed and wakes up in another; light bulbs that spew water enough to sail in; a dead girl whose body is both weightless and refuses to decay among other odd things, yet he never quiet crosses the line of 'fantastic' by genre fantasy standards.

He can make you smile with the jest of children functioning in an adult word and shake your soul a page later as they lose the innocents of childhood. There are a few stories that won't strike you as stunning as others, for me The Trail of your Blood in the Snow proved nothing more than a phenomenal title, but after reading this collection I certainly believe in the power of his novels and plan to seek them out. However, for the moment, I'm more than content to read more of his short fiction.