What do You think about Memories Of My Melancholy Whores (2006)?
Life is so complicated to understand at the same time the working mind of every people, how they think, they act or develop in their entire life. When I was walking nearby a bar, I saw an old man wearing his new clothes bought from the department store while guided by his nurse and stick, and entered a bar. I cannot imagine such scene in my mind esepcially the sexual interaction between an old man and a very young lady.In this novella, Gabriel García Márquez, put you into deepest imagination while reading a very interesting and lonely letter of a 90-year-old man searching for a girl. An old bachelor man is searching for a young virgin on his 90th birthday to enjoy his old body mind. Until he met a 14-year-old girl, searching for money to help her family, through Rosa Cabarcas, the owner of the illicit house. Poor cat trying to read the book but he end up beaten in the middle of the second chapter as he saw the virgin maiden lying naked and arms in cross. Meow.It was well-written and in a way reader will not bore to death reading a very short narrative of a very old man searching for love in his death bed. This story is quite common but cannot be shared as part of the societies acceptance. Although, it was banned in Iran after a group of conservatives said it was implementing prostitution. I think Gabriel García Márquez, only showed that love cannot be determine by age, love is ageless because age doesn't mean you are old or how old you feel. Recommended to those people who likes to read romance written by male authors.The book was also written in poetic prose, the sentences are clearly beautiful. But the idea of an old man with a body that aches and wrinkly skin is having an intercourse with a young girl is unacceptable in my mind, even though I liked this book. I just can't stop my vivid imagination of the scene to stop. Maybe if I'm older and still a bachelor, it is up to me to decide whether the man really done the right thing or not. I'm sure I won't forget this book forever.P.S. I don't like to be an old bachelor. Picture tell lies, so beware and be careful of what you see and it may depicts your true intention. This picture is quite amazing, such a masterpiece for an old man. I think I need a spectacle this time. OhSaraOhOh!Review posted on Old-Fashioned Reader.Rating: Memories of My Melancholy Whores by Gabriel García Márquez, 4 SweetsChallenges:Book #193 for 2011Book #110 for Off the Shelf!
—Kwesi 章英狮
ImmortifiedI’ve wondered for a long time how to talk to you about this. How to explain myself, if such a thing is necessary or possible. Should I even bother? Would you understand? Will you be able to see things from my point of view? Could you find it in your heart to forgive me?Ironically, perhaps, if you believe in God, the Holy Spirit, then you might be more likely to understand me and therefore to forgive.My desire is not so much that you understand what I have done. It’s more important that you understand who or what I am. Therein lies the path to forgiveness. It depends on understanding me, my nature, not what I do.Perhaps, you have already reached the point where you don’t want to understand or listen to me? Anyway, I will begin my explanation now.I have had to live with myself for 91 years. During almost every day that I can remember, I have asked myself the same questions: who am I? What am I? Perhaps you have asked yourself the same things?Every day, I have looked at my body, I have scrutinized my mind, and I have thought that this is not the real me. I am something different.The best way to explain this is to say, in the simplest way possible, that I am my soul. I am not my body, I am not my mind, I am my soul. I am separate from them.Before this body and this mind, I resided in other bodies and minds. I have no way of telling how many or for how long. These things are not revealed to our souls. However, I feel confident that there have been many. Speaking to my friends and comparing pasts, I have resolved that I, my soul, am at least 5,394 years old. Sometimes I wonder why I am not older.I’ve transitioned 15 times that I know of. It fascinates me whether the body or the mind will succumb first, but usually the time between deaths is not long. It doesn't really matter. The important thing is to be close to another carrier, so that I can embark on the next stage of my journey.With all due modesty, I’ve inhabited some pretty special humans, some merely from the point of view of their minds, some from the point of view of their bodies.Still, it’s difficult for a soul to relate to a mind or a body.Bodies, in particular, seem to be driven by DNA. They want to fuck all the time. When they’re not fucking, they’re thinking about fucking. Well, in that case, their minds are thinking about fucking. At least, that’s a pretty fair description of the males I’ve inhabited. The females aren’t as bad, but, to be honest, they’re not that much better. Certainly they’re not as virtuous as they would have you believe.I’m 90, almost 91 now, in body years. Ironically, Delgadina is only fourteen. I say ironically, because in soul years, she is older than me, not by much, she’s 5,678 years old. She’s had almost four extra earth experiences than I have. Nineteen versus fifteen mightn’t sound like much, but you’d be surprised.The strange thing is that our soul age counts for nothing on earth. No matter how religious somebody might be, they still judge us by our body age, not the age of our mind or our soul.Even though Delgadina is technically an adult at age fourteen, people still think of her as a child. Little do they know, her mind is superior to mine. Just because she speaks less than I do, doesn’t mean that she is dumber. In our most recent life before this one, she topped our college in her last year. Sometimes, for her own benefit, I wish she would speak out more in this life, so people appreciated her mind, not just her body. Perhaps, that will come with time. I'm already teaching her to read, write and paint.We almost didn’t meet in this life. In the last, we had actually been married, but only in our seventies. She had enjoyed a long marriage. I had remained faithful, well, as best I could after 622 lovers. So many of them had been whores, but they were still women, all of them. Delgadina was determined to find out what it had been like to be one of my whores. She knew me well enough, after four earth relationships, to know that the best way to get my undivided attention was to manifest herself as a fourteen year old girl.I didn’t recognise her at first. She was promised to me. Well, her virginity was. Several times, we went through a ritual whereby I was supposed to deflower her. Each time, I slept next to her, and did nothing but caress her or kiss each centimeter of her body. It was as if my 90 year old body wasn’t up to the task, whatever the capacity of my mind, let alone my soul. I even began to question myself, which was a first for me.People judge me as if I have done something wrong. Sometimes I wonder if they imagine that I have done only what they would like to have done, or in Delgadina’s position, might have wanted me to do to them.I wonder whether these people know what it means to be a soul. To be condemned to live forever (although is it really such a condemnation?). To wander from body to body in search of another soul. To, at last, find a soul to whom you can relate, let alone, in my case, one who coincidentally I have loved before.These are things that mean something to you in eternity. True love. Not whether one of you is 90 or 14. These are just numbers. Notches. Hands that move in a circular fashion around the watch face of time. They mean nothing to someone, to two lovers, like us, whose soul lives have already lasted almost six millennia and show no signs of giving up.When I think of Delgadina, I don’t think of her legs, her breasts, her lips, even her mind, these things that somehow I have touched or kissed. Instead, I think of her soul. Meanwhile, she smiles when she thinks of how much more experience of life she has had than me. If only I could die now and start another life ahead of her. But, vain man that I am, I have resolved that, in this life at least, I want to see out a century. It comforts me that, when I lie awake in bed, sometimes I can derive some pleasure from observing her naked, legs apart, breasts spread across her chest, dreaming of me, her 90 year old stallion.Playboy Seeks Sex ToyThe more I read Marquez' post-Nobel Prize works, the more I'm convinced that his modus operandi is to invent characters and situations that will outrage many, if not most, readers.Here, a sexually-active nonagenarian is offered a fledgling 14 year old virgin whore to celebrate his birthday.Whether or not he deflowers the girl, whether or not he might only have watched the girl sleeping, he would be condemned by the reader. Society objects not just to the act, but to both the desire and the intention.The problem is that Marquez employs beautiful language in his enterprise.In fact, I've always suspected that, as I suspect of Nabokov, he writes a straightforward tale of love and sex, then, only then, twists or perverts it, by adding an element of the forbidden, the taboo, the immoral, the illegal.Without the perversion, it would be a work of beauty. What happens when he tweaks the ages of the participants? Would a story of love and sex involving a 40 year old male and a 30 year old female be acceptable? Well, what happens when the age of the male is dialled up to 90 and the girl down to 14?Something in our minds registers, this should not be happening, something is wrong.Marquez might not explicitly ask, why is it wrong. He might not be expressly challenging morality. It exists, whether we like it or not.However, I think he is asking us whether, as a work of art, it is any less beautiful because it is transgressive.Part of what he is doing is questioning the aesthetic nature of transgression.The novel is inspired by Kawabata's "House of the Sleeping Beauties", which I haven't read yet.In the epigraph from that book, old Eguchi is warned by the madam not to do anything in bad taste. The specific caveat is not to "put his finger into the mouth of the sleeping girl".Different things are forbidden at different times and in different cultures.The act of writing the novel doesn't mean that Marquez advocates child abuse in real life. He just wants to ask these questions and explore these issues within the realm of art. Again, like Nabokov, he wants to treat art and literature as a playground. He wants to explore not just desire and intention, but the imagination as well.By doing so, he asks of the reader that we suspend moral judgment and engage pure aesthetic judgment. Not all of us will want to, not all of us will be able to.In this way, he doesn't just confront us with his subject matter, he confronts us with our own temperaments. He utilises the response of the reader as part of his creative enterprise. His works are all the greater, because they involve and implicate us.VERSE:Angels Surround the Bed of DelgadinaLet us share a bed.You can sleep if you need to.I'm content to watch.BreathlessI kissed your body.I inhaled your wild fragrance.It made me breathless.Dear GirlI'll write words for you."We are alone in the world."I'll teach you to read.The Abominable No-ManIt does more damageFor authors to write in chainsThan to write freely.SOUNDTRACK:Memories of My Melancholy Whores (Title Sequence)http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=TMh3mT...Nick Cave & The Bad Seeds - "Breathless"http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1TI8xP...
—Ian Agadada-Davida
Como todos sabem, assim começa o livro: No ano que completei noventa anos, quis presentear-me com uma noite de amor louco com uma adolescente virgem.Seria de esperar que García Márquez se tivesse virado mais para a sexualidade do que para o romantismo nesta obra.A história aborda a vida longa e solitária de um cronista do Diario de la Paz. Cronista dominical, o homem passa os seus dias relendo e ouvindo clássicos mundiais. Segue esse ritual desde tenra idade.Tendo partilhado a cama com mais de 500 mulheres, sem nunca realmente se apaixonar por nenhuma, e, julgando que o fim estava próximo na transição para os seus 90 anos, decide dormir com uma rapariga com idade suficiente para ser a sua bisneta.No entanto, esta relação que começa com um simples desejo sexual não concretizado, torna-se numa linda relação platónica entre duas pessoas separadas por duas gerações.O que normalmente seria visto como chocante - ou até considerado pedofilia por muitos - é tornado romântico, platónico e terno nas mãos de García Márquez. Ele tem o dom nato de apelar os leitores a todas as coisas incomuns de uma maneira que mais nenhum escritor consegue executar.Neste livro não existe realidade mágica, como em Cem Anos de Solidão, mas é um livro tão harmonioso, de carácter tão tépido e enternecedor que nos dá uma percepção daquilo que nos espera numa fase da vida em que a sombra da morte parece ocupar-nos a mente a todos os segundos. Márquez elucida-nos sobre a importância do amor desinteressado e incondicional em todas as fases da vida. Principalmente quando é mais necessário: na velhice.
—Íris Santos
