Book Review: Chronicle of a Death Foretold

(From Wikipedia's entry on the book... wow seriously what an encyclopaedia!!!)

I'm really glad I finally discovered Gabriel Garcia Marquez! I have never encountered a writer whose various books I've been reading in such relatively rapid succession! And who has still not stopped fascinating me with his myriad lyrical thought-provoking observations on human tendencies, however rooted in his semi-imaginary world they may be!

So this review is about his little 140-odd page novella, Chronicle of a Death Foretold. I had no idea what it was about since the book jacket didn't have a plot summary. I just read it on Kush's behest. And man! Was I glad I did!

It's a rather makes-you-feel-like-you're-getting-dizzy-but-you-don't-feel-it-so-you-have-to-blink-to-make-sure kinda book about a young man who was killed in the aftermath of a grand wedding that the entire town was celebrating. The atmosphere of the entire book is worn out, yet infused with a sense of the wonder one encounters in dreams that have the aura of familiarity - the hush of the revelry only interrupted by the occasional stumbling and tuneless singing of thelast couople of drunks settles around you, such that in the peaceful silence the anticipation of a murder is like the activities in reverse, slowly increasing from increasing like a bubbling violent whirlpool into a tidal wave that sweeps away a village, leaving only some bloody entrailsss, some refugees, and the echoes of shouts and unforgettable visions that became the stuff of oral lore.

This, apparently, is the sensation magical realism creates, and I like it! After so much media coverage of news, soap operas and simulated 'reality TV' that is designed to blatantly shock and sensationalise life, it is refreshing for me, who often feel desensitized to much of what i hear and read, to be able to widen my eyes at a very strange, yet ordinary, yet strange, but yet ordinary (yes it warrants redundancy!) sequence of events that could not POSSIBLY have happened in real life! Or could it? Marquez makes us question the wisdom and sense of people and situations and yet leaves ample room for fate to say its piece.

Marquez's storytelling can quite safely be called circular in this work. Starting from the moment Nasar woke to the moment of his death, Marquez intersperses the plot with personal observations, memories, witness accounts and feelings, the past before the death to the future years after the death, the background, the intentions, the case study. I seriously recommend that you try to read this book in one sitting to fully appreciate the skill with which he crafted the chronicle, and chronology (not like me, who took over a week to read such a delicious rapid book - I didn't even NOTICE there were 5 chapters!), such that the air of langour and wonder at the whims and schemes destiny still pervades a story that essentially only took a few hours to come to its conclusion. The langour is due to his lyrical use of words and rather unique perspective on human beings - almost like he is stuck in his time warp between the centuries. John Fowles comments that "One could not find a more vivid caricature of that ledthal blend of machismo,braggadocio, and hypertrophic sense of honor that sullies South American society." Strong words, and more exagerrated than the book is, in my opinion.

His writing contains the poetry of a Latin India if you will, but adding glamour to the grime and antiquated values that modern Indian writing doesn't, - whether it is in Hindi or English. His is a semi-rural world just marginally touched by industrialisation, enough to communicate and trade, but not enough to change the moral mindset of the natives. Their mindset is only changed when something actually happens to them. The description of the scenery evokes the tropics that we inhabit as well, but the people are just... different, so much so that Publishers Weekly commented that "On finishing this short novel the reader will reemerge into a world less vivid and colourful than the story he's just left". The supernatural plays a more subtle, even gentle role in his work. In fact, the Los Angeles Times review is to me the most appropriate because it captures the cryticness and sharp-edged softness of the work: "The story is comical, horrifying and curiously tender... Garcia Marquez launches himself at the impassivity of the South American heartland with a jeweler's toolbox. Working with precision, he assembles the grotesque, the hilarious and the surreal into a mosiac freize carrying a message: silence, no change"

The New York Magazine review is the stupidest and unbearably pretentious: "Remarkable, graphic and grisly... about the impotent revenges of the impotent; about misdirected rage; about the heart blowing to bits from the burden of its own beat".

The only thing I'm slightly uncomfortable with, (and I'm really not trying to be politically correct of bourgeoise), is how Nasar could be described as so well-liked and an overall good guy and still be portrayed with such passivity in relation to his ambiguous behaviour, ranging from respectful to peremptory and ill-mannered in his relaionships with women. How can behaviour be separated in this manner? I realise there's a class issue at stake, but in a society that places so much emphasis on virginity (much like ours), there is still a blatant unconcern regarding a woman's chastity or feelings if a man is in a position to have his way, especially in terms of scio-economic power. I don't understand the incongruity between one's behaviour and expectations. I simply fail to grasp this concept of moral double standards (economic double standards is fine, if the man is the sole breadwinner then the woman should be able to manage the home, but if they're both working, that is something the couple must negotiate for itself). How can you expect a virgin wife when you yourself are not one? If you have bedded women, chances are 100% that other men as as unscrupulous as you and have bedded women too, and chances are that one of the bedded women will become your wife, unless all men bedded the same women, in which case they should never get married because of all the horrible STDs they will have contracted. The virgins are left with a tough choice - get sick and live or die untouched after a long and lonely life filled with embroidery. I can't condone the passivity with which he describes this ambivalent morality. It's alright when its a personal choice that benefits both parties concerned, as long as its willing and mutual, such as with Ariza in Love in the Time of Cholera, but not when one party is taken advantage of the other for whatever reason. And if every individual in society is willingly engaging in an activity that is considered immoral, even if they are doing so secretly, then it automatically becomes permissible. Because eventually someone's secret will leak and everyone will know and then no one has the right to be hypocritical anymore.

The above was a dangerous argument because one can apply it to fanatic right-wing societies and claim that it is thus permissible for men to behave in disguting oppressive ways in women as the Taliban did in Afghanistan and Khomeini in Iran and these neo-conservative freaks that seem to be popping up in unlikely places in India, beating up hapless couples and what-not. Like I said above, it's only okay if it is complied with willingly, with a consensus of all parties involved, and for benefit to all. This can potentially become a debate based on my sweeping statements that I would e delighted to engage in in little spurts but unfortunately I am short of time at the moment. Don't try to tell me that India will become immoral and we will lose our culture to the Godless westerners if we all decide to abandon our traditions. What traditions? Which traditions? Which ruling culture's traditions, that have mutated over centuries of cosmopolitanness are you referring to?

Sorry, this has gone way off track!

Here's a New York Times Book Review of the novella. Pretty much tells you the whole plot, but has a few decent, if obvious, points.

Oh, and my favourite sentence in the book: Upon a widower who died 2 months after being compelled to sell his conjugal home for a ridiculously extravagant amount of money "He was healthier than the rest of us, but whne you listened with the stethoscope you could hear the tears bubbling insidehis heart."

I say: Read read read yay!