I'm somewhere in the mid 100's so far, but I probably won't get much chance for reading this weekend as I'll be out of town <>. It seems to be taking me forever to read this, even though I am really enjoying it. Several laugh out loud moments, and also several bits I have read to Harold and Kaylene.
There was passing reference to the Roman Empress Messalina that prompted me to further research. Messalina was the 3rd wife of Claudius, who was emperor between Caligula and Nero. Apparently she was a real... character. Here is how she was described by Juvenal in his Satire VI: Then look at those who rival the Gods, and hear what Claudius endured. As soon as his wife perceived that her husband was asleep, this august harlot was shameless enough to prefer a common mat to the imperial couch. Assuming night-cowl, and attended by a single maid, she issued forth; then, having concealed her raven locks under a light-coloured peruque, she took her place in a brothel reeking with long-used coverlets. Entering an empty cell reserved for herself, she there took her stand, under the feigned name of Lycisca, her nipples bare and gilded, and exposed to view the womb that bore thee, O nobly-born Britannicus! Here she graciously received all comers, asking from each his fee; and when at length the keeper dismissed his girls, she remained to the very last before closing her cell, and with passion still raging hot within her went sorrowfully away. Then exhausted by men but unsatisfied, with soiled cheeks, and begrimed with the smoke of lamps, she took back to the imperial pillow all the odours of the stews.
I'm somewhere in the mid-30s, but have found lots of things to comment on! :-)
p 8 "He took something every hour, always in secret, because in his long life as a doctor and teacher he had always opposed prescribing palliatives for old age; it was easier for him to bear other people's pains than his own." Oh, how many of us do things in secret that we tell others not to do? For me, reading a novel when I should be doing school work. :-)
p 16- Tying the dog to the bed too! Evil man. Let the poor dog live; it still enjoys life.
p 21 "... for two desperate hours the parrot refused to sa a single syllable, ignoring th epleas and threats and public humiliation of Dr. Urbino, who had insisted on that foolhardy invitation despire the sage warning of his wife." He he he.
p. 23 "The only animal to escape, because nobody remembered him, was the giant lucky charm tortoise." How do you miss a giant tortoise?
p 27- I loved the part about the fight over the soap in the bathroom and the fact that his wife insisted there was soap when she knew there wasn't.
I'm winding down now, into the last 100 pages. I have to say, my dislike of Florentino Ariza has been growing steadily since the first third of the book, and there was a point around page 272 that I lost all good feelings toward him. You’ll know it when you get there. I really hope that Fermina Daza scorns him again, permanently.
Overall the book has not been what I expected. Although it does fall nicely into my category of depressing international/softcore porn. I do wish that he would not use the character's full names every time he refers to them.
Hopefully at some point we come back to Jeremiah de Saint-Amour's big-super-mega-huge secret, but I don't have high hopes for that mystery being resolved.
Here are my passages of note: Pg 8 the bit about Dr. Urbino taking all the medicine in secret that M already mentioned.
Pg 17: "At nightfall, at the oppressive moment of transition, a storm of carnivorous mosquitoes rose out of the swamps, and a tender breath of human shit, warm and sad, stirred the certainty of death in the depths of one's soul." Cheery.
Pg 19: "Throughout the house one could detect the good sense and care of a woman whose feet were planted firmly on the ground." This seems to contrast with Florentino's view of Fermina Daza – haughty, doe like, other wordly.
Pg 21: "The first three were Dalmatians named after Roman emperors, who fought for the favors of a female who did honor to her name of Messalina, for it took her longer to give birth to nine pups than to conceive another ten." I just love this sentence.
Pg 136: "At one point Hildebranda confessed that when Dr. Juvenal Urbino covered his eyes and she saw the splendor of his perfect teeth between his rosy lips, she had felt an irresistible desire to devour him with kisses. Fermina Daza turned to the wall and with no wish to offend, but smiling with all her heart, put an end to the conversation: 'What a whore you are!' she said." hahaha Reminds me of me and Joy.
Pg 140: "Then his journey seemed yet another proof of his mother's wisdom, and he felt that he had the fortitude to endure forgetting." I liked this idea. What is strength but surviving the forgetting?
Pg 142, Florentino Ariza looses his virginity via rape by an unknown woman. Srsly?
Pg 151: "He had taught her that nothing one does in bed is immoral if it helps to perpetuate love. And something else that from that time on would be her reason for living: he convinced her that one comes into the world with a predetermined allotment of lays, and whoever does not use them for whatever reason, one's own or someone else's, willingly or unwillingly, loses them forever." This is the point where I started to dislike Florentino, and his character begins to be unbelievable. So many widows-turned-prostitutes, not because of economy, but because of lust. So many prostitutes willing to sleep with him at no charge. You can tell the author is male.
Pg 152: "..he recorded with the rigor of a notary in a coded book.. His first notation was the Widow Nazaret. Fifty years later, when Fermina Daza was freed from her sacramental sentence, he had some twenty-five notebooks, with six hundred twenty two entries..." See, he's just SKANKY!
Pg 177: "..she thought it was bad luck to have a clothed man in the house. This was the cause of constant discord with Captain Rosendo de la Rosa, because he had the superstitious belief that smoking naked brought bad luck, and at times he preferred to put off love rather than put out his inevitable Cuban cigar." hahaha! Decisions, decisions!
Pg 222: "He was a perfect husband: he never picked up anything from the floor, or turned out a light, or closed a door. ... He would say that they never prepared lunches as appetizing and unusual as on the days when he could not eat because he had taken a laxative, and he was so convinced that this was treachery on the part of his wife that in the end he refused to take a purgative unless she took one with him." I once had a professor who pointed out to us that what the author says about a character, and what the character's actions say about the character, can be vastly different. Here, Dr. Urbino's laxative story tells me that he is an asshole.
Pg 224: "..he suffered the disadvantage of being ten years ahead of her as he stumbled alone through the mists of old age, with the even greater disadvantage of being a man and weaker than she was." Finally, some woman power!
Pg 258, Leona Cassiani pines for the man who raped her. Seriously?! "she had wanted that man to stay forever so that she could die of love in his arms." SERIOUSLY?
I'm getting on toward the end myself after devoting myself almost entirely to reading this book over all others. Honestly, I just haven't found it that engrossing. It seems rather dense and seems to wander around the main plot with various offshoots with questionable relevance.
I also found Florentino Ariza to be obnoxious. My feelings against him began with the way he overreacted to his supposed love for Fermina, and then his sickness while waiting for her answer, then his overreaction to her leaving and finally rejection. I kept wanting to tell him to get a life outside of his morbid obsession with Fermina. Later passages of his (many) sexual liaisons just strengthened my opinion.
I enjoyed Euclides' character immensely (the 12 year old diver), even the fact that he took advantage of Florentino. That's what you get when you're a gullible idiot who thinks of nothing but love and buried treasure. :-)
I have a few other passages to mention, though A covered a lot of them in her posts. I had also noted the rape of Florentino and subsequent sexual descriptions and agree that it seems pretty apparent that a man is writing this.
P. 41: "'You scoundrel!' he shouted. The parrot answered in an identical voice: 'You're even more of a scoundrel, Doctor.'" You have to love this parrot.
P. 98: 'She felt the heavy weight of the time they had lost while she was away, she felt how hard it was to be alive and how much love she was going to need to love her man as God demanded." This sentence made me laugh a lot. Oh, to be a teenager.
P. 110: "...he could not avoid a spasm of horror at the sight of men with ruptures sitting in their doorways on hot afternoons, fanning their enormous testicle as if it were a child sleeping between their legs." I can't believe you didn't mention this one, A. I don't know what I find more disturbing, the image this brings to mind or the fact that the men were proud of these hernias.
This post does include some spoilers so read at your own risk.
I'm putting this book into the "I didn't really enjoy it but I'm glad I can cross it off my list" column.
I thought the ending was a little lack-luster and I was very disturbed by the lack of concern Florentino showed for his (niece?) America after he dumped her, her grades failed and she killed herself. The entire relationship with her was disturbing, incestuous and statutory. What a sick, sick little man. All I could think at the end was "what about all the staff on the boat with them? Do they have to wander up and down the river now too? Surely they have families they need to go home to?
When I was reading about Dr Urbino's affair, I recalled a line right after the no soap in the bathroom argument. On page 29, re soap, it says: "..now that they had rounded the corner of old age, neither could believe the astonishing truth that this had been the most serious argument in the fifty years of living together, and the only one that had made them both want to abandon their responsibilities and begin a new life." Uhm, really? Because his screwing around with Miss Lynch made her leave him (and the kids) for 2 years, and seems a little more substantial than his sleeping on the couch for a couple of months.
The other issue I have with the book is pretty much the main plot line. I just can't accept that a man would pine away emotionally for 50 years for his first puppy love. I certainly wouldn't. Maybe a couple of months, but once it was clear her life as taking another path and she wasn't pining, it would be time for me to move on. My feeling has always been that if you don't want me, then you're not worth me wanting you. All the driving by her house? And buying the mirror from the restaurant? Stalker!
It's also a little hard for me to swallow that in the end he finally won Fermina over with his intuitive commentary on male/female relationships when it's painfully obvious that they only healthy one he really had his entire life was with his mother.
M, I too loved the parrot, and I did take note of the hernia description, it just got dwarfed by everything else.
This is going to be VERY similar to A's last comment, but I had already written it when her comment showed up and I hate to delete what I've already written.
I just finished this morning and have to say that I didn't really care for this book (sorry, A). It seemed to meander through the plot, and I disliked how Marquez would return to earlier events and tell them in a different light and in ways that sometimes seemed contradictory (for example, as A pointed out, the whole soap in the shower issue being their biggest marital fight, supposedly, and then we find out about their separation over Urbino's affair).
Like A, I really grew to dislike Florentino and for most of the last half of the book was actively hoping he would die. I kept waiting for it. Boy, was I ever disappointed. I don't like the ending because I didn't want them to end up together, especially after he told Fermina that he waited as a virgin for her (granted, she didn't believe him, but it was still a bold-faced lie.) I especially disliked and was disgusted by the whole story line between him and America Vicuna. EWW. How could he not feel guilty over corrupting her and ultimately bringing her to her death? AND the whole murder of Olimpia Zuleta because he had to write "This pussy is mine" on her (p 217). He didn't seem very upset about that either. Selfish, selfish.
But then, I didn't really care for Dr. Urbino either. He seemed like a selfish man who only loved Fermina for being his wife. I agree with A that he did not seem like an ideal husband at all.
The only characters I really liked were Uncle Leo, Euclides, Fermina's daughter-in-law, and Leona Cassiani, with the exception of her pining for her rapist.
It did have many sections that I did like, though:
P 166: Uncle Leo's singing and his later comment that his only regret was that he couldn't sing at his own funeral.
P 194-195: The discussion of the poor Chinese poet who won the Golden Orchid and how no-one ever believed he wrote the poem until it had become outdated.
P 201: Sara Noriega's rejection of Florentino. So there.
P 209-210: The whole eggplant subplot and the discussion of married sex, especially Urbino's comment that "after ten years of marriage women had their periods as often as three times a week."
P 271: "It was she who attributed a distinctive sensuality to the enemas he used for his crises of constipation, who convinced him to share them with her, and they took them together in the course of their mad afternoons..." There is NOTHING sexy about enemas. No.
OMG I just remembered a scene we forgot to mention - When Floretino goes to Fermina's house and gets the runs - then craps himself in the car. The chauffeur doesn't even take a second look! How freaky do you have to be for your driver to be used to something like that happening?!
You know, I reread that scene twice because I wasn't sure if he had pooped in his pants or simply let out a massive fart. I just can't see him soiling himself and the driver NOT acknowledge it in any way, no matter how discrete the driver was. I'm so glad you brought that up! :-)
I hope that Joy and Tracy realize that we will contiune to discuss bodily functions (quite literally ad nauseum) until they start posting in this chain.. =)
Not being a devotee of asparagus, I guess I've never noticed and significant change in urine smell after eating it. Perhaps I shall have to investigate. Devilled eggs, however, are quite another story!
Also I guess we'll just have to leave it at whatever happened in the backseat was unpleasant, and the driver very discreet.
After researching the story of Messalina, I find myself wanting to throw her name into various conversations but don't because I'm fairly certain she's not widely known. I am just waiting for the day she comes up in Jeopardy!
Speaking of Jeopardy, Melville and Moby Dick came up again a couple nights ago. Good grief, don't their quizmasters read any other books?
There was a lot of commentary on bodily functions in this book, wasn't there? From enemas to menstruation to urine frangrance.
As a side note, Ken came home in the middle of the movie and watched the end of it with me. At some point in one of the many sex scenes, he turns to me and says, "What the hell kind of books are you guys reading, anyway?" :-)
Ok,Ok. I will post ; ) I finally finished this one yesterday. I have to say that the ending really pissed me off. Like Melissa, I was hoping that someone would die so that Florentino would never achieve his dream of having Fermina. Although I was hoping that it would be Fermina Daza because I wanted Florentino to suffer at least a little bit as revenge for all of the nasty things he did to the many women he screwed and screwed over. I was appalled at his affair with America. Pedophilia always makes my stomach turn. But with such an old man and a young tween. Ewwww! I had hoped that Fermina would find out about that and reject him and that he would be arrested. But, alas America kills herself and he walks off as if it never happened. I will be watching the movie soon. I'm glad to hear that it is better than the book. Sorry Angie. This one is not going to make the list of "My Favorites" either.
Oh, and as for the bodily functions. It was my understanding that Florentino messed himself in the back of the car. One thing that made me happy was that this asshole had to suffer with this affliction. But I think it is totaly gross that Fermina was helping him with his enemas at the end of the book. YUCK! Oh yeah, as for Rosalba raping Florentino, what a crock of crap. Marquez is dreaming. How often does a male get raped by a female? Although I did see on Law and Order SVU where a woman drugged a man and then inserted an electrical prod into his anus, gave him a shock, and was able to rape him and become pregnant by him using that method. That was quite interesting : ) Oh and my husband has mentioned several times in the past that when he eats asparagus his urine smells different.
Okay, so I am FINALLY finished and have read all your comments.
I am SHOCKED, SHOCKED, SHOCKED that no one has mentioned the whore with the pacifiers. Or maybe (hee hee) you enjoy this sort of thing and thus were not shocked as I was.
Must agree, gotta love that parrot. At least there was some comical character.
I didn't like the no chapters, not even some blank lines between thoughts. But then, again, it was just one long continuous rambling thought.
Florentino Ariza was a stalker. How could he love Fermina his whole fricky frick life and just go fricky frick wherever and whenever, I don't get it.
Fermina on the other hand was not much better. Did she love her husband or not? I think not. She didn't care much for her children. And she was a hoarder. Bleh.
I so got the soap argument, Randy and I have had a similar disagreement. He will NEVER EVER get out a new bar of soap. He will use the same little sliver for days until I FINALLY break down and get out a new bar.
Another comment on Florentino Ariza (page 309), "she didn't need to return the letters, he'd made carbon copies". Are you kidding me?
Also didn't like the ending, is this supposed to be happy ever after going up and down the river? How do they get supplies? And they kept the staff and band with them for dinner and dancing?
In my Gender and Women's Studies class we just had a discussion about whether men can be raped by women (based on a recent news story of female serial rapists of male victims in Zimbabwe). It can happen, but it usually takes more prep time than Florentino was given, which makes me really wonder about this account.
J., I like your comment of "Sex in the Time of Cholera" since that seems to better describe this book. I took small mental note of the pacifiers, but in all the strange things in the book, it didn't make it into my comments. :-) So glad to move on, aren't you?
20 comments:
I'm somewhere in the mid 100's so far, but I probably won't get much chance for reading this weekend as I'll be out of town <>. It seems to be taking me forever to read this, even though I am really enjoying it. Several laugh out loud moments, and also several bits I have read to Harold and Kaylene.
There was passing reference to the Roman Empress Messalina that prompted me to further research. Messalina was the 3rd wife of Claudius, who was emperor between Caligula and Nero. Apparently she was a real... character. Here is how she was described by Juvenal in his Satire VI:
Then look at those who rival the Gods, and hear what Claudius endured.
As soon as his wife perceived that her husband was asleep,
this august harlot was shameless enough to prefer a common mat to the imperial couch.
Assuming night-cowl, and attended by a single maid, she issued forth;
then, having concealed her raven locks under a light-coloured peruque,
she took her place in a brothel reeking with long-used coverlets.
Entering an empty cell reserved for herself, she there took her stand, under the feigned name of Lycisca,
her nipples bare and gilded, and exposed to view the womb that bore thee, O nobly-born Britannicus!
Here she graciously received all comers, asking from each his fee;
and when at length the keeper dismissed his girls,
she remained to the very last before closing her cell,
and with passion still raging hot within her went sorrowfully away.
Then exhausted by men but unsatisfied,
with soiled cheeks, and begrimed with the smoke of lamps,
she took back to the imperial pillow all the odours of the stews.
Fricky frick, indeed.
I'm somewhere in the mid-30s, but have found lots of things to comment on! :-)
p 8 "He took something every hour, always in secret, because in his long life as a doctor and teacher he had always opposed prescribing palliatives for old age; it was easier for him to bear other people's pains than his own." Oh, how many of us do things in secret that we tell others not to do? For me, reading a novel when I should be doing school work. :-)
p 16- Tying the dog to the bed too! Evil man. Let the poor dog live; it still enjoys life.
p 21 "... for two desperate hours the parrot refused to sa a single syllable, ignoring th epleas and threats and public humiliation of Dr. Urbino, who had insisted on that foolhardy invitation despire the sage warning of his wife." He he he.
p. 23 "The only animal to escape, because nobody remembered him, was the giant lucky charm tortoise." How do you miss a giant tortoise?
p 27- I loved the part about the fight over the soap in the bathroom and the fact that his wife insisted there was soap when she knew there wasn't.
This book does meander quite a bit, doesn't it?
I'm winding down now, into the last 100 pages. I have to say, my dislike of Florentino Ariza has been growing steadily since the first third of the book, and there was a point around page 272 that I lost all good feelings toward him. You’ll know it when you get there. I really hope that Fermina Daza scorns him again, permanently.
Overall the book has not been what I expected. Although it does fall nicely into my category of depressing international/softcore porn. I do wish that he would not use the character's full names every time he refers to them.
Hopefully at some point we come back to Jeremiah de Saint-Amour's big-super-mega-huge secret, but I don't have high hopes for that mystery being resolved.
Here are my passages of note:
Pg 8 the bit about Dr. Urbino taking all the medicine in secret that M already mentioned.
Pg 17:
"At nightfall, at the oppressive moment of transition, a storm of carnivorous mosquitoes rose out of the swamps, and a tender breath of human shit, warm and sad, stirred the certainty of death in the depths of one's soul." Cheery.
Pg 19:
"Throughout the house one could detect the good sense and care of a woman whose feet were planted firmly on the ground." This seems to contrast with Florentino's view of Fermina Daza – haughty, doe like, other wordly.
Pg 21:
"The first three were Dalmatians named after Roman emperors, who fought for the favors of a female who did honor to her name of Messalina, for it took her longer to give birth to nine pups than to conceive another ten." I just love this sentence.
Pg 136:
"At one point Hildebranda confessed that when Dr. Juvenal Urbino covered his eyes and she saw the splendor of his perfect teeth between his rosy lips, she had felt an irresistible desire to devour him with kisses. Fermina Daza turned to the wall and with no wish to offend, but smiling with all her heart, put an end to the conversation:
'What a whore you are!' she said." hahaha Reminds me of me and Joy.
Pg 140:
"Then his journey seemed yet another proof of his mother's wisdom, and he felt that he had the fortitude to endure forgetting." I liked this idea. What is strength but surviving the forgetting?
Pg 142, Florentino Ariza looses his virginity via rape by an unknown woman. Srsly?
Pg 151:
"He had taught her that nothing one does in bed is immoral if it helps to perpetuate love. And something else that from that time on would be her reason for living: he convinced her that one comes into the world with a predetermined allotment of lays, and whoever does not use them for whatever reason, one's own or someone else's, willingly or unwillingly, loses them forever." This is the point where I started to dislike Florentino, and his character begins to be unbelievable. So many widows-turned-prostitutes, not because of economy, but because of lust. So many prostitutes willing to sleep with him at no charge. You can tell the author is male.
Pg 152:
"..he recorded with the rigor of a notary in a coded book.. His first notation was the Widow Nazaret. Fifty years later, when Fermina Daza was freed from her sacramental sentence, he had some twenty-five notebooks, with six hundred twenty two entries..." See, he's just SKANKY!
Pg 177:
"..she thought it was bad luck to have a clothed man in the house. This was the cause of constant discord with Captain Rosendo de la Rosa, because he had the superstitious belief that smoking naked brought bad luck, and at times he preferred to put off love rather than put out his inevitable Cuban cigar." hahaha! Decisions, decisions!
Pg 222:
"He was a perfect husband: he never picked up anything from the floor, or turned out a light, or closed a door. ... He would say that they never prepared lunches as appetizing and unusual as on the days when he could not eat because he had taken a laxative, and he was so convinced that this was treachery on the part of his wife that in the end he refused to take a purgative unless she took one with him."
I once had a professor who pointed out to us that what the author says about a character, and what the character's actions say about the character, can be vastly different. Here, Dr. Urbino's laxative story tells me that he is an asshole.
Pg 224:
"..he suffered the disadvantage of being ten years ahead of her as he stumbled alone through the mists of old age, with the even greater disadvantage of being a man and weaker than she was." Finally, some woman power!
Pg 258, Leona Cassiani pines for the man who raped her. Seriously?! "she had wanted that man to stay forever so that she could die of love in his arms." SERIOUSLY?
I'm getting on toward the end myself after devoting myself almost entirely to reading this book over all others. Honestly, I just haven't found it that engrossing. It seems rather dense and seems to wander around the main plot with various offshoots with questionable relevance.
I also found Florentino Ariza to be obnoxious. My feelings against him began with the way he overreacted to his supposed love for Fermina, and then his sickness while waiting for her answer, then his overreaction to her leaving and finally rejection. I kept wanting to tell him to get a life outside of his morbid obsession with Fermina. Later passages of his (many) sexual liaisons just strengthened my opinion.
I enjoyed Euclides' character immensely (the 12 year old diver), even the fact that he took advantage of Florentino. That's what you get when you're a gullible idiot who thinks of nothing but love and buried treasure. :-)
I have a few other passages to mention, though A covered a lot of them in her posts. I had also noted the rape of Florentino and subsequent sexual descriptions and agree that it seems pretty apparent that a man is writing this.
P. 41: "'You scoundrel!' he shouted. The parrot answered in an identical voice: 'You're even more of a scoundrel, Doctor.'" You have to love this parrot.
P. 98: 'She felt the heavy weight of the time they had lost while she was away, she felt how hard it was to be alive and how much love she was going to need to love her man as God demanded." This sentence made me laugh a lot. Oh, to be a teenager.
P. 110: "...he could not avoid a spasm of horror at the sight of men with ruptures sitting in their doorways on hot afternoons, fanning their enormous testicle as if it were a child sleeping between their legs." I can't believe you didn't mention this one, A. I don't know what I find more disturbing, the image this brings to mind or the fact that the men were proud of these hernias.
This post does include some spoilers so read at your own risk.
I'm putting this book into the "I didn't really enjoy it but I'm glad I can cross it off my list" column.
I thought the ending was a little lack-luster and I was very disturbed by the lack of concern Florentino showed for his (niece?) America after he dumped her, her grades failed and she killed herself. The entire relationship with her was disturbing, incestuous and statutory. What a sick, sick little man.
All I could think at the end was "what about all the staff on the boat with them? Do they have to wander up and down the river now too? Surely they have families they need to go home to?
When I was reading about Dr Urbino's affair, I recalled a line right after the no soap in the bathroom argument. On page 29, re soap, it says:
"..now that they had rounded the corner of old age, neither could believe the astonishing truth that this had been the most serious argument in the fifty years of living together, and the only one that had made them both want to abandon their responsibilities and begin a new life."
Uhm, really? Because his screwing around with Miss Lynch made her leave him (and the kids) for 2 years, and seems a little more substantial than his sleeping on the couch for a couple of months.
The other issue I have with the book is pretty much the main plot line. I just can't accept that a man would pine away emotionally for 50 years for his first puppy love. I certainly wouldn't. Maybe a couple of months, but once it was clear her life as taking another path and she wasn't pining, it would be time for me to move on. My feeling has always been that if you don't want me, then you're not worth me wanting you. All the driving by her house? And buying the mirror from the restaurant? Stalker!
It's also a little hard for me to swallow that in the end he finally won Fermina over with his intuitive commentary on male/female relationships when it's painfully obvious that they only healthy one he really had his entire life was with his mother.
M, I too loved the parrot, and I did take note of the hernia description, it just got dwarfed by everything else.
This is going to be VERY similar to A's last comment, but I had already written it when her comment showed up and I hate to delete what I've already written.
I just finished this morning and have to say that I didn't really care for this book (sorry, A). It seemed to meander through the plot, and I disliked how Marquez would return to earlier events and tell them in a different light and in ways that sometimes seemed contradictory (for example, as A pointed out, the whole soap in the shower issue being their biggest marital fight, supposedly, and then we find out about their separation over Urbino's affair).
Like A, I really grew to dislike Florentino and for most of the last half of the book was actively hoping he would die. I kept waiting for it. Boy, was I ever disappointed. I don't like the ending because I didn't want them to end up together, especially after he told Fermina that he waited as a virgin for her (granted, she didn't believe him, but it was still a bold-faced lie.) I especially disliked and was disgusted by the whole story line between him and America Vicuna. EWW. How could he not feel guilty over corrupting her and ultimately bringing her to her death? AND the whole murder of Olimpia Zuleta because he had to write "This pussy is mine" on her (p 217). He didn't seem very upset about that either. Selfish, selfish.
But then, I didn't really care for Dr. Urbino either. He seemed like a selfish man who only loved Fermina for being his wife. I agree with A that he did not seem like an ideal husband at all.
The only characters I really liked were Uncle Leo, Euclides, Fermina's daughter-in-law, and Leona Cassiani, with the exception of her pining for her rapist.
It did have many sections that I did like, though:
P 166: Uncle Leo's singing and his later comment that his only regret was that he couldn't sing at his own funeral.
P 194-195: The discussion of the poor Chinese poet who won the Golden Orchid and how no-one ever believed he wrote the poem until it had become outdated.
P 201: Sara Noriega's rejection of Florentino. So there.
P 209-210: The whole eggplant subplot and the discussion of married sex, especially Urbino's comment that "after ten years of marriage women had their periods as often as three times a week."
P 271: "It was she who attributed a distinctive sensuality to the enemas he used for his crises of constipation, who convinced him to share them with her, and they took them together in the course of their mad afternoons..." There is NOTHING sexy about enemas. No.
The movie is better than the book, in my opinion. They change quite a bit, making Florentino and Juvenal less obnoxious and Fermina more romantic.
OMG I just remembered a scene we forgot to mention - When Floretino goes to Fermina's house and gets the runs - then craps himself in the car. The chauffeur doesn't even take a second look! How freaky do you have to be for your driver to be used to something like that happening?!
You know, I reread that scene twice because I wasn't sure if he had pooped in his pants or simply let out a massive fart. I just can't see him soiling himself and the driver NOT acknowledge it in any way, no matter how discrete the driver was. I'm so glad you brought that up! :-)
I had a hard time deciding too, until the driver said "careful, that looks like the cholera" It must have been visible, right?
But how could the driver see it, wasn't Florentino in the backseat?
Also, let's not forget how Dr. Urbino liked to eat asparagus because he liked the way it made his urine smell.
I hope that Joy and Tracy realize that we will contiune to discuss bodily functions (quite literally ad nauseum) until they start posting in this chain.. =)
Not being a devotee of asparagus, I guess I've never noticed and significant change in urine smell after eating it. Perhaps I shall have to investigate. Devilled eggs, however, are quite another story!
Also I guess we'll just have to leave it at whatever happened in the backseat was unpleasant, and the driver very discreet.
After researching the story of Messalina, I find myself wanting to throw her name into various conversations but don't because I'm fairly certain she's not widely known. I am just waiting for the day she comes up in Jeopardy!
Speaking of Jeopardy, Melville and Moby Dick came up again a couple nights ago. Good grief, don't their quizmasters read any other books?
There was a lot of commentary on bodily functions in this book, wasn't there? From enemas to menstruation to urine frangrance.
As a side note, Ken came home in the middle of the movie and watched the end of it with me. At some point in one of the many sex scenes, he turns to me and says, "What the hell kind of books are you guys reading, anyway?" :-)
Ok,Ok. I will post ; ) I finally finished this one yesterday. I have to say that the ending really pissed me off. Like Melissa, I was hoping that someone would die so that Florentino would never achieve his dream of having Fermina. Although I was hoping that it would be Fermina Daza because I wanted Florentino to suffer at least a little bit as revenge for all of the nasty things he did to the many women he screwed and screwed over.
I was appalled at his affair with America. Pedophilia always makes my stomach turn. But with such an old man and a young tween. Ewwww! I had hoped that Fermina would find out about that and reject him and that he would be arrested. But, alas America kills herself and he walks off as if it never happened.
I will be watching the movie soon. I'm glad to hear that it is better than the book. Sorry Angie. This one is not going to make the list of "My Favorites" either.
Oh, and as for the bodily functions. It was my understanding that Florentino messed himself in the back of the car.
One thing that made me happy was that this asshole had to suffer with this affliction. But I think it is totaly gross that Fermina was helping him with his enemas at the end of the book. YUCK!
Oh yeah, as for Rosalba raping Florentino, what a crock of crap. Marquez is dreaming. How often does a male get raped by a female? Although I did see on Law and Order SVU where a woman drugged a man and then inserted an electrical prod into his anus, gave him a shock, and was able to rape him and become pregnant by him using that method. That was quite interesting : )
Oh and my husband has mentioned several times in the past that when he eats asparagus his urine smells different.
Okay, so I am FINALLY finished and have read all your comments.
I am SHOCKED, SHOCKED, SHOCKED that no one has mentioned the whore with the pacifiers. Or maybe (hee hee) you enjoy this sort of thing and thus were not shocked as I was.
Must agree, gotta love that parrot. At least there was some comical character.
I didn't like the no chapters, not even some blank lines between thoughts. But then, again, it was just one long continuous rambling thought.
Florentino Ariza was a stalker. How could he love Fermina his whole fricky frick life and just go fricky frick wherever and whenever, I don't get it.
Fermina on the other hand was not much better. Did she love her husband or not? I think not. She didn't care much for her children. And she was a hoarder.
Bleh.
I so got the soap argument, Randy and I have had a similar disagreement. He will NEVER EVER get out a new bar of soap. He will use the same little sliver for days until I FINALLY break down and get out a new bar.
Another comment on Florentino Ariza (page 309), "she didn't need to return the letters, he'd made carbon copies". Are you kidding me?
Also didn't like the ending, is this supposed to be happy ever after going up and down the river? How do they get supplies? And they kept the staff and band with them for dinner and dancing?
Sex in the time of Cholera.
In my Gender and Women's Studies class we just had a discussion about whether men can be raped by women (based on a recent news story of female serial rapists of male victims in Zimbabwe). It can happen, but it usually takes more prep time than Florentino was given, which makes me really wonder about this account.
J., I like your comment of "Sex in the Time of Cholera" since that seems to better describe this book. I took small mental note of the pacifiers, but in all the strange things in the book, it didn't make it into my comments. :-) So glad to move on, aren't you?
Post a Comment