Backlight

I very much dislike this whole Fifty Shades of Grey fashion that is going on at the moment. This is not  because I am particularly prudish, but instead because I find the whole concept of the craze rather distasteful and patronising. I do not believe that women need to be given permission to be able to admit to enjoying something written about sex, and I don't like how books like this reinforce the belief that to make sex acceptable to women, it needs to be dressed up as a second-rate romance. Furthermore, its utter crap, and in the few paragraphs I have read (out loud, in a dramatic voice, from our office communal copy which has since mysteriously gone missing) I have been driven to distraction by the poor quality, half-arsed writing style of it (denote that she is thinking by writing in italics. Finish every sentence with either Holy crap, Holy Jesus, Holy shit etc etc, because then the reader will know how very innocent she is and will be able to identify with her because we are all delicate flowers)

Miller's anti-narrative of life in 1920s New York reads like a rude, careering, vent of frustrated ambitions and intelligence; a bad-mouthed On The Road that goes nowhere until after the narrative finishes. There are numerous things that will put a reader off this book: the plot-less, almost stream-of-conscious delivery that gallops along through the chaos of the author's life, the crudity of the language, particularly in reference to sex (this has to be the most uses of the C word in a classic novel I've encountered). Indeed, accusations of misogyny have troubled the book for years, and the casual (at least) attitude toward women and sex may shock some, but perhaps no more than fans of On The Road. Speaking of other books, the contrast of this life style to the more upper class lives of F. Scott Fitzgerald's characters, albeit in the same period and similar area, is considerable. This is a story of raw, rude, visceral, frustrating intelligence trapped in a mundane life of working drudgery. What marks Miller's Tropic books out are his philosophical underpinnings. Miller sees an emptiness pervading America, in every coast, city, street, apartment, room and mind. He loathed and feared the acceptance of consumerism before it became consumerism, rebelling against it in his daily existence, seeing a nation of automatons defined by their pointless consumption. Long before the counter-culture of the 1960s espoused such values, Miller was railing against this creeping emptiness and vowing to never fall to it. As such, he moved to Paris for some years, where the precursor to this novel (Tropic Of Cancer) was wrote and published, detailing his time there in much the same manner as Capricorn. Like On The Road, and Tropic Of Cancer, the writing left me breathless, a tumbling, reckless, thundering storm of intelligence, self demanding, questing and questioning. It is self aware to a painful, self loathing, degree: all too aware of his failings, his cravings, his deceptions and lusts. But at the same time, his expectations and belief in what people can be, what he can be, are the driving force of this restless book.

Love In The Time Of Cholera is a Nobel Prize winning novel by Colombian writer Gabriel Garcia Marquez, first published in Spanish in 1985. The book is set in an un-named city on the Caribbean coast over the adult lifespan of the main characters – roughly from the 1880's to the 1930's. It follows the love life of Florentina Ariza, a persistent man of romance, novels and most of all, letters. He falls in love with the other main character of the novel, Fermina Daza, during their early teens; a love that is entirely correspondence and passing at distance at public events. Unfortunately for Senor Ariza (spoiler alert) Ms Daza turns him down and marries a doctor who is prominent in the city. Thus begins the dominant dynamic of the novel – Ariza's decision to devote himself to her, to wait for his opportunity, if he has to wait for her husband to die of old age or accident if necessary. Perhaps surprisingly, Florentina Ariza avails himself of women, sexually and romantically, although he does limit his commitments. As a premise, this might sound like a yawning and protracted essay on unrequited love, and in many ways it is. I found it did swerve dangerously close to a sense of self indulgence, but there is a quality to the writing that never lets the attention drift from the story. It is detailed and clamorous, much like the sweltering days, sticky nights and the fevered passions of the protagonist. Throughout, the novel tests one's sympathies towards the lovelorn Ariza who, despite his total devotion, carries on a life of sexual indulgence that cares little for the feelings and life of those he, effectively, uses. Ariza's archaic, secretive and romantic optimism is established as an opposition to the controlled, dignified and public determinism of Fermina Daza and her husband. As the novel progresses, these two forces and approaches to life each become eroded in the face of time and the impossible progress of age. As time progresses and the characters find themselves aliens in their own city, their own society and to their own bodies, the novel brilliantly takes you from the certainties of their earlier years and their commitments, to the acceptance of time, life and even love. Not an easy novel to get through and appreciate, the style seems almost as monomaniac as the protagonist, but if you can adhere to it as he did you may find a surprising and rewarding denouement.