ah, i love the smell of MISOGENY in the morning

[scoradh]

You guys. YOU GUYS. (I have got to stop beginning entries like this, you guys.) I am literally EXHAUSTED with HATRED after finishing Love in the Time of Cholera. Gabriel Garcia Marquez, ladies and gentlemen. After years of dipping into the most salacious and borderline criminal pornography ever written - after braving Melvin Burgess not once, but

Comments

[daniellafromage]

I bought Love in the Time of Cholera two years ago, and I've always felt ashamed that I've never been able to get beyond the first page or so whenever I pick it up.

...I guess it's one that I won't be picking up again.

[scoradh]

TRUST ME. If it weren't for The Vow, I would not have bothered. And I suppose, once I got so far, I thought it might magically turn better! And I'd never know if I didn't finish it! And - it didn't.

The point is - I got so mad I never lj-cut, so I couldn't spoil - is that towards the end it stops being just horrifically boring and turns horrific.

[anyotherknight]

You're brave to have finished it -- I shuddered and gave it back to the library. (Then again I only read Melvin Burgess' Bloodtide because I'd picked it up in the young adult section and kept thinking it had to get better. I am not bright.)

[scoradh]

I read Flypie and the Baby when I was a kid. Thinking back, I'm pretty much OMWTF that something like that was shelved in the kid's section, because it was pretty damn traumatising. Ditto Doing It, although I was an adolescent when I read it - and it made me so freaking scared of being an adolescent, I can't tell you.

I'm sure there's a point to authors like this existing - to show the very bottom of the barrel, or something - but they should come with a 'don't read' warning. >.>

[karorumetallium]

... I have yet to read that book. But you're making me glad I haven't. Because I can't help but think, if you found it disgusting in the english translation, the original in spanish (the one I'll read... someday, when I get my hands on it. Because I. WON'T. BUY. IT) must be truly HORRIFYING...

[scoradh]

That's an angle I never considered. You can always tell a translation because it's stilted - I think translators must make the ethical choice to translate exactly as is, instead of putting their own twist on it to make it more readable but less true to the original. Personally I don't think reading it in Spanish would help - not that I could, anyway! - because it's not so much the style that bothered me but the content, the plot and characterisation. And that's not something a translator would change.

[karorumetallium]

You're scaring me more and more XDDD

[kessie]

I borrowed it from a co-worker and I was doing okay until Ariza took centre stage. Then I gave up on it. Even as someone who has done some things which may be regarded as surprisingly romantic in the past few months, I found his entire attitude to be ridiculous and not a little silly. I threw the book at the wall at one point, I was so frustrated.

...I should probably give it back to my co-worker already.

[scoradh]

I must say the first part (Dr Urbino's POV) is okay. I started reading that in Eason's - bored out of my skull - which in retrospect might have had coloured my initial opinion. To the point of buying it, for one. I got pissed when I realised all the people in the first part of the book - like the chessplayer who died - had ABSOLUTELY NO RELEVANCE WHATSOEVER AND WERE NEVER SEEN AGAIN.

Oh, and the Fermina/Florentino thing? THERE WAS NO THING. I never for a minute bought that either of them was in love with the other! Even when Fermina thought she was. So effing STUPID.

Do, do. You don't want this much capslock in your life. >.>

Wandered in

[maiamcw]

Wandered in on accident but glad I did!

Love of Cholera, in the original Spanish, has some of the most beautiful prose ever written. While the translation is not BAD, per say...The issue in translation is far more cultural in nature. In Spanish writing, the preferred style leads to very run on sentences. Writing a sentence that spans a page or more is praiseworthy, as opposed to English, where economy of language is prized. Also, Marquez, stylistically, uses very little dialogue. It is a trademark of his.

I'm not saying I disagree about the book in English, and I KNOW Oprah did not read it in Spanish, so she would have no idea of these things haha.

Also, I think Marqeuz was Fucking Crazy. But in Spanish, the man can WRITE. I almost forgot how crazy he was while I was reading. It was like, the Tim Burton effect.

Anyway, just wanted to share a little bit of my culture to shed some insight on the WAY it was written. No comment on the content itself haha.

Re: Wandered in

[scoradh]

*drums fingers* I didn't express myself very well in this post - see CAPSLOCK OF RAGE - so I can't blame people for thinking that it's the ... lyricism, for want of a better word, of the story that I have a problem with. I don't! It's about the only thing that I did like. Also, I doubt it suffered much in the translation. 'Explosions of happiness' is a metaphor from one of the first few pages and it made me buy the book. So the beauty of the prose is not in question

Re: Wandered in

[emila_wan]

I agree with scoradh. The beauty of the prose is not in question. But it's like wandering down a lovely, colorful garden path for hours and hours, but the path never takes you anywhere ... until you end up dying of hunger and thirst.

Re: Wandered in

[scoradh]

LOL YES! *kicks heels*