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j3mm4 's review for:
Memories of My Melancholy Whores
by Gabriel García Márquez
dark
funny
reflective
fast-paced
Plot or Character Driven:
Character
Strong character development:
No
Loveable characters:
Complicated
Diverse cast of characters:
Complicated
Flaws of characters a main focus:
Yes
I read this book because it was a source of inspiration for Julia Leigh's first film, <i>Sleeping Beauty</i>, alongside Yasunari Kawabata's <i>House of the Sleeping Beauties</i>, which in turn inspired this novella. It feels odd that I've finished this before the collection in which <i>Sleeping Beauties</i> resides, but my impressions of <i>Memories of My Melancholy Whores</i> are grounded in comparison to it.
Márquez employs a sense of humor here that stands in stark contrast to Kawabata's voice in <i>Sleeping Beauties</i>, and the overall structure and execution of the novella are very different, too. Despite the plurality of the title, the protagonist and POV character is largely focused on a sex worker he calls Delgadina; brief reminiscent forays into his other sexual partners are present, but they don't occupy his mind or narration in the same way. His obsession with "Delgadina" is largely possible because their nights together are spent sleeping; he does not have to encounter her as a whole person, and so he is free to construct a fantasy identity for her around what little scraps of specific and true information he receives from her madam, Rosa Cabarcas - she sews buttons in a factory as a day job, she rides a bike, she's only fifteen years old. The fear "Delgadina" is reported to feel in preparation for their first night together is mitigated by Cabarcas drugging her with valerian, and Cabarcas assumes her persistent virginity is because the protagonist finds her lacking in some way rather than him finding her virginity and her sleeping state appealing. When they go an extended period without contact, he assumes she is the victim of every violent crime he hears about and not only stalks those victims at the hospital to determine whether they are one and the same, but also attempts to stalk her at her place of work, only to realize that he couldn't recognize her while conscious and wouldn't know what to do with her if she was awake.
Similar details, like the drugging and the red light-reflective curtains in the room where he first sees "Delgadina," are treated differently; Cabarcas doesn't typically traffic in sleeping beauties and is a little disturbed by his interest in her unconsciousness, and the red refraction not only stains her skin but makes puddles of her sweat on the sheets look like blood. Márquez' protagonist's projections onto "Delgadina" stray beyond the realm of sex, and he feels no shame in visiting her. In fact, he seems immune to shame. He makes mention of hearing some of the sex workers he frequented as a younger man assume he remained unmarried because he preyed upon his students at a local boys' school and immediately disregards it because he'd also heard other, more flattering rumors; his actual relationship with those students involves total disregard for their capacity to learn, dismissing the opportunity to instill in them a love of language or reading or poetry in favor of beating his personal favorite poem into them, and at home, he rapes one of his maids and then ups her pay by the equivalent of visiting a top sex worker at the frequency with which he intends to continue assaulting her because it is a point of pride for him that he pays every woman he has sex with for the service, even if she isn't a sex worker.
Unlike Kawabata's Eguchi, the financial aspect of these liaisons matters to him; also unlike Eguchi, he comes to the conclusion - as do all those who know about his patronage of Cabarcas' business - that he is in love with "Delgadina" and he is incredibly willing to take their insistence that she loves him back as gospel. We never hear in her own words what she feels for him; when he assumes, meeting her after a long separation, that her newly lavish manner of dress come from her having sold her virginity, he flies into a rage and destroys her room, and she is so terrified that she quits sex work altogether, but sure, she loves him. We never hear her name, either; when she isn't called "Delgadina," he refers to her as "the girl." For the protagonist, both the financial control he has as a wealthy man exchanging money or expensive gifts for access to a girl's body and the emotional absolution granted through the idea of loving and being loved by "Delgadina" shield him from shame. He ends the novella, too healthy at ninety-one to die of old age despite his declining physical health, committed to "Delgadina," to "the girl," without ever really thinking of her as a person; a consummate storyteller, he is so tangled up in the yarn he's spun that he can't see the horror of his own actions, and though he's not the most reliable of narrators, it seems the people around him (both at work and as his reader base) are similarly bound by his words. They read his reminiscing about his conquests, about his pursuit of a fifteen-year-old girl who is afraid of him, and think he's some great romantic; only we, the readers who exist outside the diegesis of the novella, are able to choose to peer past his filter at the truth of him. It's all fascinatingly grim.
Reading this as a conversational touchstone with Leigh's <i>Sleeping Beauty</i> makes it all the more horrifying. A consistent image in all three stories, only the film reframes the narrative from the sleeping beauty's point of view; Eguchi imagines the beauties' sexual histories and acts of violence he could commit against them while reminiscing about his dalliances outside the inn, Márquez' protagonist imagines a life outside that room based on snippets of incomplete information because a fantasy of a person he can track down and possess increases his enjoyment of her sleeping company, but only Lucy actually lives and exists and is given the chance to react, unfettered and unfiltered, to the reality of her night job, and though the narration of the men patronizing a sleeping beauty would be disturbing without that context, with it, their selfishness and projection and objectification becomes undeniable. Critics referring to <i>Memories of My Melancholy Whores</i> as erotic can find it so because they allow themselves to remain comfortably seated in its narrator's point of view, in the lies he tells himself so he can also remain comfortable with his actions and choices. Lining it up side by side with the story that inspired it and the story that it helped inspire makes the abject horror of it all totally undeniable, and that makes the reading experience all the stronger.
Márquez employs a sense of humor here that stands in stark contrast to Kawabata's voice in <i>Sleeping Beauties</i>, and the overall structure and execution of the novella are very different, too. Despite the plurality of the title, the protagonist and POV character is largely focused on a sex worker he calls Delgadina; brief reminiscent forays into his other sexual partners are present, but they don't occupy his mind or narration in the same way. His obsession with "Delgadina" is largely possible because their nights together are spent sleeping; he does not have to encounter her as a whole person, and so he is free to construct a fantasy identity for her around what little scraps of specific and true information he receives from her madam, Rosa Cabarcas - she sews buttons in a factory as a day job, she rides a bike, she's only fifteen years old. The fear "Delgadina" is reported to feel in preparation for their first night together is mitigated by Cabarcas drugging her with valerian, and Cabarcas assumes her persistent virginity is because the protagonist finds her lacking in some way rather than him finding her virginity and her sleeping state appealing. When they go an extended period without contact, he assumes she is the victim of every violent crime he hears about and not only stalks those victims at the hospital to determine whether they are one and the same, but also attempts to stalk her at her place of work, only to realize that he couldn't recognize her while conscious and wouldn't know what to do with her if she was awake.
Similar details, like the drugging and the red light-reflective curtains in the room where he first sees "Delgadina," are treated differently; Cabarcas doesn't typically traffic in sleeping beauties and is a little disturbed by his interest in her unconsciousness, and the red refraction not only stains her skin but makes puddles of her sweat on the sheets look like blood. Márquez' protagonist's projections onto "Delgadina" stray beyond the realm of sex, and he feels no shame in visiting her. In fact, he seems immune to shame. He makes mention of hearing some of the sex workers he frequented as a younger man assume he remained unmarried because he preyed upon his students at a local boys' school and immediately disregards it because he'd also heard other, more flattering rumors; his actual relationship with those students involves total disregard for their capacity to learn, dismissing the opportunity to instill in them a love of language or reading or poetry in favor of beating his personal favorite poem into them, and at home, he rapes one of his maids and then ups her pay by the equivalent of visiting a top sex worker at the frequency with which he intends to continue assaulting her because it is a point of pride for him that he pays every woman he has sex with for the service, even if she isn't a sex worker.
Unlike Kawabata's Eguchi, the financial aspect of these liaisons matters to him; also unlike Eguchi, he comes to the conclusion - as do all those who know about his patronage of Cabarcas' business - that he is in love with "Delgadina" and he is incredibly willing to take their insistence that she loves him back as gospel. We never hear in her own words what she feels for him; when he assumes, meeting her after a long separation, that her newly lavish manner of dress come from her having sold her virginity, he flies into a rage and destroys her room, and she is so terrified that she quits sex work altogether, but sure, she loves him. We never hear her name, either; when she isn't called "Delgadina," he refers to her as "the girl." For the protagonist, both the financial control he has as a wealthy man exchanging money or expensive gifts for access to a girl's body and the emotional absolution granted through the idea of loving and being loved by "Delgadina" shield him from shame. He ends the novella, too healthy at ninety-one to die of old age despite his declining physical health, committed to "Delgadina," to "the girl," without ever really thinking of her as a person; a consummate storyteller, he is so tangled up in the yarn he's spun that he can't see the horror of his own actions, and though he's not the most reliable of narrators, it seems the people around him (both at work and as his reader base) are similarly bound by his words. They read his reminiscing about his conquests, about his pursuit of a fifteen-year-old girl who is afraid of him, and think he's some great romantic; only we, the readers who exist outside the diegesis of the novella, are able to choose to peer past his filter at the truth of him. It's all fascinatingly grim.
Reading this as a conversational touchstone with Leigh's <i>Sleeping Beauty</i> makes it all the more horrifying. A consistent image in all three stories, only the film reframes the narrative from the sleeping beauty's point of view; Eguchi imagines the beauties' sexual histories and acts of violence he could commit against them while reminiscing about his dalliances outside the inn, Márquez' protagonist imagines a life outside that room based on snippets of incomplete information because a fantasy of a person he can track down and possess increases his enjoyment of her sleeping company, but only Lucy actually lives and exists and is given the chance to react, unfettered and unfiltered, to the reality of her night job, and though the narration of the men patronizing a sleeping beauty would be disturbing without that context, with it, their selfishness and projection and objectification becomes undeniable. Critics referring to <i>Memories of My Melancholy Whores</i> as erotic can find it so because they allow themselves to remain comfortably seated in its narrator's point of view, in the lies he tells himself so he can also remain comfortable with his actions and choices. Lining it up side by side with the story that inspired it and the story that it helped inspire makes the abject horror of it all totally undeniable, and that makes the reading experience all the stronger.