Sunday, February 13, 2005
death from above
I recently finished Gabriel Garcia Marquez's new novel, Memorias de mis putas tristes that I bought in a bookshop in Monterrey this past December (and I remember when buying it, I mispronounced his name by emphasizing the latter portion of his last name by accident and the clerk corrected me like I was a schoolboy: Márquez). It's not his best novel, but certainly a tiny masterpiece for different reasons. The fact that he, in my humble opinion, takes a Romantic notion like a 90 year old man whose never made love to a woman without paying her and has him fall in love at the end of his life to a prostitute is not only fascinating but dirty dirty. The first-person narrative and subtle details of his life as a journalist (and music critic, no less) hits home like Barry Bonds hitting a steroid-induced homer in the ninth. The novel also is less of a sweeping story than a swift and lucid conversation: a small open window, cracked yet achingly transparent. The protagonist is a dirty old man but a sweet one who is smart and merely longs for the simplest pleasures in life. And he lets you see what 90-year olds probably think about: sex and death. It sounds somewhat simple-minded, but Márquez has a way with words (you know that, dont you) that feels like you're listening to your grandpa tell you about life over cafe con leche and an Erik Satie record. Gone is the magic (and that's welcomed, personally) but present is the everyday reality of a man nearing his death, but finding the nascent love--both as a concept and an actuality--that he always longed for. What's more magical than that?
Unicorns. Flying Shoes. a Black Senator. anti-gravity. New York City. Peter Pan.
but, seriously. read it in between episodes of Aqua Teen Hunger Force and that downloaded copy of Bad Education.
(You know Gabo represents like the Geto Boys on a hot and hazy Houston winter day.)
