Sunday, July 06, 2025

Memories of My Melancholy Whores ~ Gabriel Garcia Marquez

 


Nandakishore Varma CBC writes on : *Memories of My Melancholy Whores*

*by Gabriel Garcia Marquez*

*spoiler alert*

> The year I turned ninety, I wanted to give myself the gift of a night of wild love with an adolescent virgin.


Thus begins this slim novel by the inimitable Gabo. The unnamed narrator is a man on the eve of his ninetieth birthday, a mediocre journalist by profession, who has spent his entire life imbibing the pleasures of the flesh but never loving anyone. Living in the aristocratic mansion bequeathed to him by his parents, he spends his days in the refined pursuit of music and literature, and his nights, in the not-so-refined pursuit of ladies of easy virtue.

> Sex is the consolation you have when you can’t have love.


Rosa Cabarcas, the madame of an illicit house, fulfills his birthday wish. She procures for him the services of a fourteen-year-old factory worker, whom the narrator names Delgadina. However, the only problem is that the girl sleeps through the night, and her lover has to satisfy himself by kissing and fondling her supine adolescent body - there is no consummation in real terms.

As the novel progresses, we are taken along with the narrator on a journey through his memories of loveless sex, reminisced during the current episodes of sexless love - until one fine day he realises that he is in love with his sleeping beauty. By that time, he has already become estranged from her. The old man is brought to his senses when one of his former whores tells him to go back to her.

> Don't let yourself die without knowing the wonder of fucking with love.


He does return, back to his love and back to life, as the novel ends on a strangely upbeat note for all its talk of melancholy.

---

This is not your typical Gabo tale. It's pretty straightforward: there is no magical realism or the rich symbolism of his acclaimed works, and his hardcore fans are likely to be disappointed. Also, this story is one male gaze, held without blinking - women readers are likely to be put off by a privileged man's objectification of the female body as a source of pleasure and pleasure alone.

But all said and done, I believe the unlikeable protagonist is purposefully created in such a way - a very old man who looks to sex to rejuvenate himself - to force us to look at the intertwined aspects of love, lust and sex. When does one turn into the other? Attraction between opposite sexes is an evolutionary trait, created by the selfish gene so that it can ensure its survival. Sex is the only biological requirement for the continuation of the species. The pleasure we derive from the act of copulation, and the emotional attachment we feel towards the object of our lust is a purely human trait.

Thoughts worth pondering on.


 Nirmala Aravind: This is one reader who is totally put off by Marquez. A dirty old man is a dirty old man. Period

Harish CBC: From my review of Memories of My Melancholy Whores written in 2010:

Three themes that I feel recur in this novel are Love, Sex and Solitude. You can find it in the novels of Marquez in different proportions, providing varied interpretations.  Sex for Marquez is a refuge from unrequited love. Like in other novels, the protagonist sleeps with countless prostitutes, but never falls in love. Sex is a way to vent the solitude out of life. And love that appears late in life is an escape from the clutches of solitude to reality (sanity) and its beauty.


Nandakishore Varma CBC : Well, I don't know anything personal about Marquez. Personally, I separate the art from the artist. And as a writer, I feel he is one of the greatest ever.

As for this book - the narrator is a dirty old man. Agreed. But so is the narrator of 'Lolita'. And as for John Fowles' 'The Collector', the most powerful novel about the objectification of women ever written, it's mainly narrated by Frederick Clegg, a man who kidnaps a young woman and keeps her prisoner just for the sake of "owning" her. He can't even have sex with her!

Unlikeable protagonists are there in many novels. That doesn't automatically make the book bad, IMO

All good literature has layers. Like M. T. says, the story on the unwritten pages. One has to look beyond what is literally written.

Steinbeck's masterpiece, "The Grapes of Wrath", was banned once because its final scene depicted a mother, whose newborn baby had just died, breastfeeding an old man on the verge of death. Actually, she is a metaphor for the fruitful "promised land" the travellers reach after a long journey. Jerusalem has been depicted as a feeding mother too.

But if one doesn't understand the metaphor, the picture would seem vulgar.

Also many books need a different kind of reading and not just the level of 'knowing the plot'. Sometimes the dirty old writer is not a dirty old writer, a young woman is not a young woman and gazing at a sleeping girl is not just that. In such books the plot is only a gateway to a different realm.

You are entitled to your opinions, so am I

If one wants to see male libido unleashed, one should read Padmarajan.

Sarah, the sex worker in "Udakappola", is a masterly creation. The epitome of every man's sexual fantasies. And played to perfection by Sumalatha in "Thoovanathumbikal". 

But you started me thinking about the male gaze in literature. Now I can't stop

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