Re: Love in the Time of Cholera

Hi Britt,

You're quite right about the story being "an old one." In fact, it's one of
the oldest, I suppose. But that's partly the point for me. The book takes am
already established set of literary conceits and conventions and, as it tells
its tale of passion and endurance, explicitly considers the assumptions
behind them and plays with them in loving and yet challenging ways.

It also, incidentally, takes a set of "real" events (you can find out more
about them if you check out GGM's bio) and rewrites them in very specific and I
think fascinating ways. GGM's novels are always interested in the
relationship between history and fiction -- sometimes, as in "Tale of a Shipwrecked
Sailor" or "News of a Kidnapping" or "Chronicle of a Death Foretold," that interest
is immediate and explicit and at the center of everything in the book, other
times, as here or in "100 Years..." (where the entire history of late 19th and
early 20th century Colombia can be found more or less hidden) it is reworked
and rewoven into the magic-realism of the narrative and the prose. The
history in "Love in the Time..." is mostly very personal.

Also, I love the stuff in the book about writing, about sending and receiving
messages and how much that means, even if it is notoriously unreliable and
sometimes leads to tragic results. There are lessons there for all of us who,
here on lists like this, live and love each other electronically.

But read on, and enjoy what is one of my very favorite novels of the last
century and share life with the Buendias for a time.

All the best,

--John

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Received on Sat Aug 23 07:20:28 2003