Jayson’s Reviews > Memories of My Melancholy Whores > Status Update
Jayson
is starting
Notes:
(1) I read this book a really long time ago. It's one of the very first books I read when I started reading recreationally.
- I chose it because I'd read "A Very Old Man with Enormous Wings" for a university English class and always had Gabriel GarcÃa Márquez down as an author whose work I wanted to explore more of.
- Incidentally, it's still the only GarcÃa Márquez book I've read, and now for the second time.
— Feb 13, 2025 03:00PM
(1) I read this book a really long time ago. It's one of the very first books I read when I started reading recreationally.
- I chose it because I'd read "A Very Old Man with Enormous Wings" for a university English class and always had Gabriel GarcÃa Márquez down as an author whose work I wanted to explore more of.
- Incidentally, it's still the only GarcÃa Márquez book I've read, and now for the second time.
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Jayson’s Previous Updates
Jayson
is 99% done
Notes:
(1) The narrator attempts to pawn his mother's jewels to continue financing his brothel habit. The jewels, it turns out, are fake, which he ends up keeping for sentimental reasons.
- Ultimately, the only value that matters here is sentimental value. His love affair with Delgadina is as artificial as his treasured family jewels.
(2) Love here inflames many things: illusion, addiction, delusion, affliction, etc.
— Mar 03, 2025 07:30PM
(1) The narrator attempts to pawn his mother's jewels to continue financing his brothel habit. The jewels, it turns out, are fake, which he ends up keeping for sentimental reasons.
- Ultimately, the only value that matters here is sentimental value. His love affair with Delgadina is as artificial as his treasured family jewels.
(2) Love here inflames many things: illusion, addiction, delusion, affliction, etc.
Jayson
is 82% done
Notes:
(1) We finally get to the point where the virgin speaks, which initially excites the narrator, though upon hearing her "plebian" voice he laments: "I preferred her asleep."
- As long as she's a blank slate, bereft of idiosyncrasies, he can project upon her whatever he desires.
- This absence of individuality backfires later when she disappears, and he sees her in every young girl he encounters and hears about.
— Feb 25, 2025 07:30PM
(1) We finally get to the point where the virgin speaks, which initially excites the narrator, though upon hearing her "plebian" voice he laments: "I preferred her asleep."
- As long as she's a blank slate, bereft of idiosyncrasies, he can project upon her whatever he desires.
- This absence of individuality backfires later when she disappears, and he sees her in every young girl he encounters and hears about.
Jayson
is 64% done
Notes:
(1) The girl is both explicitly and implicitly compared with the old man's cat.
- They're both beautiful and rescues of a sort.
- The girl is his imaginary housemate, while the cat is his actual housemate.
- He knows the cat too intimately: "The stink of his rancid urine and warm shit contaminated everything."
- He knows the girl not at all, remaking their brothel love nest into an oasis of ersatz domesticity.
— Feb 20, 2025 05:40PM
(1) The girl is both explicitly and implicitly compared with the old man's cat.
- They're both beautiful and rescues of a sort.
- The girl is his imaginary housemate, while the cat is his actual housemate.
- He knows the cat too intimately: "The stink of his rancid urine and warm shit contaminated everything."
- He knows the girl not at all, remaking their brothel love nest into an oasis of ersatz domesticity.
Jayson
is 46% done
Notes:
(1) "For the first time in my long life I felt capable of killing someone."
- All because someone publicly cast into doubt his knowledge of classical music.
- It's a window into what he values.
(2) "Poor thing, she's right here in front of me. Do you want to talk to her? No, for God's sake, I said."
- Of course, because then she'd be an imperfect human being instead of an uncorrupted ideal of youth and beauty.
— Feb 16, 2025 11:35AM
(1) "For the first time in my long life I felt capable of killing someone."
- All because someone publicly cast into doubt his knowledge of classical music.
- It's a window into what he values.
(2) "Poor thing, she's right here in front of me. Do you want to talk to her? No, for God's sake, I said."
- Of course, because then she'd be an imperfect human being instead of an uncorrupted ideal of youth and beauty.
Jayson
is 25% done
Notes:
(1) "Oh, Señor, she said, with a mournful lament, that wasn't made for coming in but for going out."
- At the risk of sounding juvenile or crass, there's been an awful lot of butt talk so far—butt talk in seemingly every way conceivable.
- I guess this is meant to underscore the unnamed narrator's gross and profane morality and mindset, and to draw stark contrast with the 14-year-old virgin he seeks to defile.
— Feb 14, 2025 10:30PM
(1) "Oh, Señor, she said, with a mournful lament, that wasn't made for coming in but for going out."
- At the risk of sounding juvenile or crass, there's been an awful lot of butt talk so far—butt talk in seemingly every way conceivable.
- I guess this is meant to underscore the unnamed narrator's gross and profane morality and mindset, and to draw stark contrast with the 14-year-old virgin he seeks to defile.
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Rachel
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Feb 13, 2025 03:27PM
It's so funny that you just posted this! I read 'Love in the Time of Cholera' years ago and loved it, and was just thinking earlier today that I should read more of Márquez's work. This is definitely a sign haha
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Rachel wrote: "It's so funny that you just posted this! I read 'Love in the Time of Cholera' years ago and loved it, and was just thinking earlier today that I should read more of Márquez's work. This is definite..."Happy to hear that, Rachel! Yes, funny how that happens. I just decided to listen to this audiobook today on a whim because I just finished my last one and this was available at my library. All my audiobooks are novels I've already read, since I know the gist and don't have to pay full attention to them Lol
Anyway, glad I could be a prompt for you to read more of his work! I have Love in the Time of Cholera and One Hundred Years of Solitude, both in hardcovers just collecting dust on my shelf. I've been meaning to get to them for years but just have never been in the mood or felt the urgency 😅
