Memories of My Melancholy Whores

Memories of My Melancholy Whores
by Gabriel Garcia Marquez
read: circa 2007

Gabriel Garcia Marquez' last novel (really more a novella), Memories of My Melancholy Whores was written almost two decades after Love in the Time of Cholera, but shares some of the same focus on aging. The protagonist is a man who is given a virgin prostitute for his 90th birthday, but the story is more touching than creepy. It's not his magnum opus, but it's a fitting final tale to a great writer's career.

Love in the Time of Cholera

Love in the Time of Cholera
by Gabriel Garcia Marquez
read: circa 2003
Guardian 1000 Novels

I liked but didn't love One Hundred Years of Solitude, but I adored Love in the Time of Cholera. Part of that was the time when I read it; in my livelorn early 20's, the struggle of protagonist Florentino Ariza really resonated with me. Now, his obsession kind of smacks of the classic Onion headline "Romantic-Comedy Behavior Gets Real-Life Man Arrested."  Really, asking a woman out at her husband's funeral?

Aside from the love story, the novel has a number of passages of what it means to grow old. There's one passage about Dr. Juvenal Urbino and his memory of being able to urinate long distances in a tight stream, and how that contrasts with the present indignity of having to sit down like a woman to pee. It's a silly detail that's stuck with me because of how evocatively it captures aging's effects on even the most mundane activities.

One Hundred Years of Solitude

    
One Hundred Years of Solitude
by Gabriel Garcia Marquez
read: circa 1997
Guardian 1000 Novels

This was one of the assigned books before senior year of high school, world literature. One of the quotes on the back of the book was "the first piece of literature since the Book of Genesis that should be required reading for the entire human race." I read the novel and liked it, but that praise seemed overblown to me, and my senior year English teacher told me once he felt the same way. Still, I always felt like I was missing something.

Under the Volcano

Under the Volcano
by Malcolm Lowry
read: 2014
Time 100 Novels, Modern Library #11, Guardian 1000 Novels

I'm not a lover of stream-of-consciousness novels, but Under the Volcano uses the technique to great effect, putting the reader in the mind of consul Geoffrey Firmin as he descends into alcoholic destruction. Time sometimes jumps to simulate an alcoholic blackout, disorienting the reader, and the narrative swirls between the present and the past, obscured with a haze of beer, tequila, and the devil mescal.

Cat's Cradle

    
Cat's Cradle
by Kurt Vonnegut
read: circa 1997

Cat's Cradle is an almost wistful post-apocalyptic novel.

Breakfast of Champions

    
Breakfast of Champions
by Kurt Vonnegut
read: circa 2000
Guardian 1000 Novels

I read this back in college, but I remember almost nothing about it - just the fictional painting "The Temptation of St. Anthony," one vertical line on a solid field. The painting draws a lot of criticism, but the artist feels that the fact that any child can reproduce it is a good thing, not a drawback. I think about this a lot when it comes to music: many great folks compositions have simple rhythms, chord structures, and rhyme schemes.

Sirens of Titan

    
Sirens of Titan
by Kurt Vonnegut
read: 2014
Guardian 1000 Novels

Vonnegut was one of the first "literature" authors I got into, reading books like Cat's Cradle and Slaughterhouse Five when I was in high school. He's a natural bridge into more serious stuff for someone like me who grew up reading science fiction almost exclusively, as his books often have sci-fi elements. He also has a conversational narrative style that's easy to read. Sirens of Titan was written in 1959, but the prose still feels fresh because it's written in the same style modern authors like Jonathan Safron Foer use today.