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A review by lizziekam
The Mambo Kings Play Songs of Love by Oscar Hijuelos
2.0
A fever-dream of a book, in which the protagonist, drunk and dying in a hotel room, reminisces about his past, the Mambo Kings Play Songs of Love won the Pulitzer Prize back in 1990. It reminded me how far we have come in 27 years, because there is no way a book this retrograde would win a Pulitzer in the current era.
First, the good. This book tells a very specific immigrant story - the pre-Castro Cuban story. Cesar and Nestor come to America in the 1930s to pursue their dream of being musicians. This time period, when Cuban mambo orchestras dominated pop culture and the music scene is fading into memory as that generation dies off, and the only people left living associate Cuba with the oppressive Castro-regime. I am a big fan of afro-Cuban music and Tito Puente and all that, so I really enjoyed any time the book explored music and culture and Cuba.
However, (here comes the bad) the protagonist, Cesar, is a stereotypical macho Latin lover type, and there is so. much. misogyny. Every woman (and there is a lot) is either a whore or a madonna. Most women are the former, as this book has a lot of sex. Like, a lot. Like more than erotic novels lots of sex. And the sex is compulsive and always, always in service of the man and his urges. The dying protagonist's final thought is sexual. To be fair, Cesar is not a sympathetic character. Throughout the novel, he is bloated and dying from too much drink and he is lonely. The sheer volume of sex in the novel does suggest a pathology around the Latin lover machismo, and it shows that despite the constant fucking, Cesar ultimately is alone due to his inability to connect to anyone, women or men.
In the end, I was left feeling like this novel would have worked really, really well as a short story or novella. The form of the novel, as an extended cyclic, out-of-sequence flashback, covers up that the book lacks much of a plot. Seriously, other than one really significant event, it's a lot of traveling, playing gigs, going to clubs and restaurants, wearing hats and sexsexsex.
In the end, I am left wondering if this book isn't as timeless as the Pulitzer's imprimatur suggests. I can't see this book being as lauded today as it was in the early 1990s.
First, the good. This book tells a very specific immigrant story - the pre-Castro Cuban story. Cesar and Nestor come to America in the 1930s to pursue their dream of being musicians. This time period, when Cuban mambo orchestras dominated pop culture and the music scene is fading into memory as that generation dies off, and the only people left living associate Cuba with the oppressive Castro-regime. I am a big fan of afro-Cuban music and Tito Puente and all that, so I really enjoyed any time the book explored music and culture and Cuba.
However, (here comes the bad) the protagonist, Cesar, is a stereotypical macho Latin lover type, and there is so. much. misogyny. Every woman (and there is a lot) is either a whore or a madonna. Most women are the former, as this book has a lot of sex. Like, a lot. Like more than erotic novels lots of sex. And the sex is compulsive and always, always in service of the man and his urges. The dying protagonist's final thought is sexual. To be fair, Cesar is not a sympathetic character. Throughout the novel, he is bloated and dying from too much drink and he is lonely. The sheer volume of sex in the novel does suggest a pathology around the Latin lover machismo, and it shows that despite the constant fucking, Cesar ultimately is alone due to his inability to connect to anyone, women or men.
In the end, I was left feeling like this novel would have worked really, really well as a short story or novella. The form of the novel, as an extended cyclic, out-of-sequence flashback, covers up that the book lacks much of a plot. Seriously, other than one really significant event, it's a lot of traveling, playing gigs, going to clubs and restaurants, wearing hats and sexsexsex.
In the end, I am left wondering if this book isn't as timeless as the Pulitzer's imprimatur suggests. I can't see this book being as lauded today as it was in the early 1990s.