Should have read classics discussion

This is the group read for August. Please remember spoiler alerts and the "nice" factor. Be nice to others! Happy reading!

I'm going to bow out of this one, so would anyone would be interested in leading the discussion this time?

I don't know how to lead a book discussion since I'm new to book groups but this is a book I've wanted to read for awhile. I'm happy to read it and participate!

I don't know how to lead a discussion either. So I can't be relied upon for any duties.

But I've read the book with meticulous attention--a real slog, believe me--so I'm sure I will be chock full of peanut-gallery comments. I've already salvo'ed mercilessly at the book's vociferous discussion page. Highly controversial novel.

A novel like this...so oddball...how can it really be categorized or assessed? Compared to what? Perhaps this is why people focus on the 'salacious ethics' of the book. It's the only thing they can get a handle on. Every discussion I've ever seen, wends this way. :(

It's really not oddball. It's classed as a historical romance, and since I've read it, I will agree with that assessment. I've seen other historical fiction that features the man loves unattainable woman scenario, over the lifetime of the woman. This one IS a slog, LOL.

Well by 'oddball' I mean what people usually shriek about: the age-difference romances; the prostitutes; the 'creepiness' of the suitor, etc

Yeah, it does have a little of a "creep" factor, LOL, but I actually think the parts where he sits & waits for her every day under the same place when they were young was really sweet :)

Oh and the way he 'used up' various women in town while he waited for her; boy do women readers hate that! Ha

I was like, what's all the fuss about? Like who hasn't done that? ::snicker::

I think I read this one last year. Or maybe the year before. I don't remember it well enough to say anything very reliable about it. I didn't like it as much as One Hundred Years of Solitude but enough to pick up the General in His Labyrinth (which is in my I'll-get-around-to-it-eventually stack). Otherwise, the details are a bit fuzzy. So I'll cheat: Pynchon wrote a pretty thoughtful review of it back in '88--I'll just steal from him. To your point about the serial women:

"Having sworn to love Fermina Daza forever, he settles in to wait for as long as he has to until she's free again. This turns out to be 51 years, 9 months and 4 days later,...the time of cholera....throughout a turbulent half-century, death has proliferated everywhere, both as el cólera, the fatal disease that sweeps through in terrible intermittent epidemics, and as la cólera, defined as choler or anger, which taken to its extreme becomes warfare. Victims of one, in this book, are more than once mistaken for victims of the other....Against this dark ground, lives, so precarious, are often more and less conscious projects of resistance, even of sworn opposition, to death....Florentino embraces Eros, death's well-known long-time enemy, setting off on a career of seductions that eventually add up to 622 "long term liaisons, apart from . . . countless fleeting adventures," while maintaining, impervious to time, his deeper fidelity, his unquenchable hope for a life with Fermina. At the end he can tell her truthfully -- though she doesn't believe it for a minute -- that he has remained a virgin for her.
So far as this is Florentino's story, in a way his Bildungsroman, we find ourselves, as he earns the suspension of our disbelief, cheering him on, wishing for the success of this stubborn warrior against age and death, and in the name of love. But like the best fictional characters, he insists on his autonomy, refusing to be anything less ambiguous than human. We must take him as he is, pursuing his tomcat destiny out among the streets and lovers' refuges of this city with which he lives on terms of such easy intimacy, carrying with him a potential for disasters from which he remains safe, immunized by a comical but dangerous indifference to consequences that often borders on criminal neglect. ... His lover's amorality causes not only individual misfortune but ecological destruction as well: as he learns by the end of the book..."
Pynchon's Review

My daughter has pointed out to me that certain old love songs are to her ears the ravings of creepers and stalkers. I guess there's a fine line, artistically anyway, between undying love and inappropriate obsession.

@feliks and @lisa it looks like you've started a discussion!

There's something in what you say. We will forge ahead, in the vanguard of this thread, if we have to commit arson or embezzlement to do so!

p.s. lol @ Thomas Pynchon (a lifelong recluse) talking about love?? Just teasing, I'm a Pynchon fan and his comments here are astute. This essay must have been written before he jumped-the-shark.

Longhare wrote: "My daughter has pointed out to me that certain old love songs are to her ears the ravings of creepers and stalkers. I guess there's a fine line, artistically anyway, between undying love and inappropriate obsession.
..."

p.s. She is incorrect, nevertheless. It's not the fault of the many talented songwriters (of that sweeter, more sentimental era) that there is now this later, more foolish (and more dangerous) era where a crass media exaggerates people's fears and everyone is scared witless from phantoms, hobgoblins, and bogeymen.

Today's society hasn't got a leg to stand on when it comes to talking about love. We have 'unlearned' all the most valuable lessons.

I would say "Bravo", you have started a discussion marvelously! Thank you, would any of you be interested in a co-moderator position? :)

Feliks wrote: "Longhare wrote: "My daughter has pointed out to me that certain old love songs are to her ears the ravings of creepers and stalkers. I guess there's a fine line, artistically anyway, between undyin..."

Hear, hear!

Sure, I'll step up and handle some minor chores if you're looking for some help.

Ella's Gran wrote: "Hear, hear! ..."


Yah for sure. What does a dumb kid today know about music anyway? Zero. Nil. Zilch. They have no frame-of-reference. Their tastes are totally steered and guided for them, like never before. Digital music provides a diversity 6 million songs for music fans these days, but these dopes just cling to what the stores/advertising/media lackeys promote as 'cool'. Mono-yield attracts them.

Plus, no one today is outspoken on another disturbing issue--namely, poor sound quality in digital media--which would have caused an uproar had it been introduced in the 1960s. How about today's vocalists using 'harmonizing computer software' to 'correct' their lame voices? How about all the lip-syncing going on?

Plainly stated: the neighborhood's gone to shyt.

Sure, I know that every generation tends to 'look down on the generation' to come after, but I refute that in this case. That old adage is wearing thin in light of the never-before-seen transformation of society from analog to digital. You just can't ascribe frowns-directed-downward to "generational antipathy" anymore. These shifts in taste are too massive. There has definitely been a slide in quality and a dropping of standards. Not even the most wild-eyed apologist for today's musicians can defend their musicianship against the traditions they come clumsily trailing after.

Well Feliks, I have to say I agree with your sentiments in the last paragraph above. I have often been heard to mutter about dropping standards in general. People no longer respect others or themselves. You only have to look at the behaviors displayed by people social media (including Goodreads) has bought out.

I also have to agree with your earlier statement "Oh and the way he 'used up' various women in town while he waited for her; boy do women readers hate that! Ha
I didn't like that aspect of Florentino, and yes I did describe him as being a bit creepy. I also wonder whether this was love or obsession brought on because Fermina 'dropped' him and damaged his ego.

Overall the book was a slog yet I found myself not only enjoying the writing and storytelling, but also the story itself. I often find myself thinking about it, so for me that says it was a good story that I enjoyed.

Enjoyed the posts here and hope to talk again soon.

Here's my review:
I think this is a good book, but it's not really all that fun to read. Starts out as a real slog. Somewhat sloggy in the middle. Almost not a slog any more toward the end. I'm glad to have read it, even though the experience was not all that enjoyable.

Garcia Marquez definitely creates a world. And he writes with exceptional insight into many different kinds of love/sex and other bodily happenings. But there's not a lot of suspense and not a lot of sensory information. It's all very heady. More telling than showing, even if he tells very well.

This book is like a languid hot afternoon.

The thing that helped me make sense of this book is that it starts with a suicide by someone who does not want to live as an old man, and then also describes the doctor's infirmities of age in detail. At the end, however, Fermina and Florentino find a wholesome love, even though the world disapproves. So, I see this book partly as a meditation on and affirmation of living life fully in old age.

Well said (both of you).

I only want to add that in writing, authors seems to cling tightly to one-or-the-other rubric. For a while, 'show don't tell' has been a whip with which to flail an author.

But when you're dealing with someone like Garcis-Marquez or Luis-Borges, let's set this aside. They know what they're doing. When you use the right words, don't ask for pictures.

Feliks wrote: "For a while, 'show don't tell' has been a whip with which to flail an author...But when you're dealing with someone like Garcis-Marquez or Luis-Borges, let's set this aside. They know what they're doing. When you use the right words, don't ask for pictures. "
Hi, Feliks-
I agree that Garcia-Marquez uses the right words to convey a rich reality of substance. I still think the showing vs. telling has relevance to the enjoyment of reading a book -- at least for me. I was reading Stephen King (11/22/63) at the same time as Love in the Time of Cholera. And while on some level Garcia Marquez is a more substantial and revered writer than King, the contrast between the two made me realize what a good story teller King is. The suspense King builds into his story and the sheer quantity of vivid sensory detail he gives you make you want to keep reading and makes the experience of reading enjoyable. Garcia Marquez, while constructing a complete, detailed, and nuanced reality is nonetheless experienced by many readers (including yourself, per your post above) as a slog to get through.

And many readers of literary fiction find a galaxy of faults with King's writing which makes him similarly a 'slog' to get through. The reasons differ in each case but the result is the same.

Anyway I can only suggest that we all remember that King is a genre writer. He can only write within the prescribed limits of something like 'suspense' or 'excitement'. That's really a narrow palette. He has a specific 'toolbox' for all his novels. The vocabulary he chooses, the narrative conventions he adopts, the characters he deploys...everything he does is driven by the rules of the product is is aiming to make. He knows he needs to meet a certain 'reader expectation' (how many people would read him if he wrote a novel about say...his marriage?). If readers picked up his books and found them *not* 'pulling them in', he would lose them pretty swiftly. But they want scares, and they know that's guaranteed with his fiction, so he's got loyal readers.

He's an excellent craftsman rather than an artist. He knows what he is setting out to do before he even sits down to work. He knows what his agenda is, what his task is. Subsequently, when constructing his novel's pace--he knows he can never dawdle or linger, never detour, never break stride. It's like a comedian telling a joke; there's a specific rhythm to be followed.

Suspense (not even an emotion, by the way) is too fragile to support deep characterization or philosophical musings, or any of the other things that real novels do. King can't afford to indulge in any of that. He can't let his suspense falter for even one second.

Whereas authors like say, Thomas Pynchon or Gabriel Garcia-Marquez can simply run rings around any genre writer. You finish their works having experienced a dozen emotions; finish a King novel and you've only experienced one.

The novels from those other guys are 1,100, 1,200 pages in length because they're describing truths of the human condition; they take as many pages as is needed. Whereas King is writing both an exaggerated and distorted 'tale'. Just sayin. No amount of sales makes King a classic novelist. He's effective at what he does the way a good mechanic is at fixing a certain kind of car; (rather than designing any features of the car itself).

p.s. I'm actually a fan of King myself, its just that in the wake of the nonstop hoopla for him, I insist people see him better for what he is and where he really stands. He himself would probably want it that way.