NYT and García Márquez

Two things I read in the New York Times this past week interestingly enough relate to Gabriel Garcia Marquez. First, Gabriel Garcia Marquez’s last novel, Memories of My Melancholy Whores was recently banned in Iran by the Minister of Culture and Islamic Guidance after its first printing and a second printing was not being allowed. My guess is the subject matter, a 90 years old man, who celebrates his birthday by arranging a night with an adolescent virgin, offended the “moral code” of the Iranian leaders.

I also read a review of the movie adaptation of Gabriel Marquez’s “Love in the Time of Cholera,” (review, Nov. 16, 2007) which basically panned the movie saying that the “crucial missing ingredient, for which no amount of lush scenery can substitute, is the voice of Mr. Garcia Marquez’s omniscient narrator.” Having read some of One Hundred Years of Solitutde, I can already appreciate the omniscient narrator who jumps back and forth in time. For example, Garcia Marquez constantly refers to Aureliano’s eventual execution. If Love in the Time of Cholera is anything like One Hundred Years of Solitude, it would be interesting to see how Garcia Marquez’s fantasy-like story and language could be captured in a movie. How could one project on the movie screen Garcia Marquez’s description of the gypsy girl’s room which “from being used so much, kneaded with sweat and sighs, the air in the room had begun to turn to mud?”