Book Review – Memories of My Melancholy Whores
A Novella by Gabriel García Márquez, Translated by Edith Grossman
Apr 15, 2009
The title of this book is a loss leader. It pulls the reader in with expectations that will not be entirely fulfilled. Once into the story, though, other more valuable insights are exposed.
The Service of Prostitutes
With this short novella (U.S. ed., Alfred A. Knopf, 2005, ISBN-10 0739466941), Colombian writer and Nobel Prize winner, Gabriel García Márquez, turns from his noted serious depth of writing to visit the self-absorbed reflections and belated awakenings of a 90-year-old man, a journalist and critic, the story’s protagonist.
The man unabashedly announces at the beginning of the story that he has "never gone to bed with a woman I didn’t pay.” The reason for this, he muses, is his physical ugliness. It could also be his obvious narcissism or the hint of a mother fixation suggested in the man’s reflections on his childhood. Marquez leaves these ponderables to the reader’s interpretation.
The setting is La Paz at an indeterminate time within the first half of the 20th century. The book title raises the expectation that the story will center on the man’s lascivious descriptions of the purchased women in his life, the city's prostitutes who twice voted him their "client of the year.” Indeed, the man is not shy about explicit, randy narration.
The Quest
But little is really disclosed about the whores who inhabited the man’s carnal moments over his long life. Instead, Márquez sometimes dramatically and always engagingly surprises both his readers and his protagonist with a new lease on life, as the old man pursues his quest to capture a newfound love.
His epiphany comes with his purchase of a night with a 14-year-old virgin, a 90th year reward to himself. He calls her Delgadina, from a song. (Does one hear an echo here of Cervantes’ “Dulcinea”?) Whatever he expected of this treat is lost, for the old man becomes hopelessly besotted with the girl within a dreamlike image of reality. “I preferred her asleep,” he says.
The man’s overwhelming feelings aroused by Delgadina trap him in the starting gate. Throughout his expensive, carefully orchestrated night in the brothel he never consummates the transaction – a purity of moment that signals his rebirth from a man past caring (if he ever did) into someone capable of worrying about and yearning for another.
Tilting at Windmills?
Following this surreal experience, the girl disappears from the old man’s world, leaving him obsessively committed to find her again. Is he seeking the impossible dream, a parallel of Don Quixote, another aging fool when viewed in the spotlight of harsh reality?
The hint of Cervantes appears to play out as the old man flies into a destructive rage when he finally meets the girl again, only to find her transformed from the sleeping virgin of his memory into all the trappings of a trollop. The question does not mature, however, for the dream proves not only possible but capable of impressing even the jaded, larcenous madam who procured him the girl.
An Unexpected Twist
To everyone’s surprise Delgadina proves to be real after all. And so, instead of following this nonagenarian to a final reflection on his deathbed (the logical denouement of this story, indeed the man’s own expectation), Márquez awakens him to a new dawn with a promise of consummated true love and continued work.
Marquez's Genius
For those accustomed to Márquez’s other writings, this book may seem frivolous, even disappointing. Such judgment would do Márquez a disservice. He simply does here what all great writers can do – something different yet compelling in its own way. The power and skill of his writing, as interpreted by Edith Grossman’s inspired translation, is not in the least diminished by the subject.
All great literature tells a story that transcends time and place, well and profoundly told. In Memories of My Melancholy Whores, Márquez has delivered just such a story with insight and wry humor.
At its heart this book is a love story. In its writing Márquez reveals himself to be a hopeless romantic. Don Quixote would approve.
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