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This book is funny. It may not be the point of the book, as love time and especially cholera are rarely funny, but it is certainly the most entertaining part of the novel. The comedy keeps the story rolling. Rather than bogging down in the sentimentalism that comes with a story about old people’s former love, Marquez keeps the story moving along briskly with a light humor that does not interfere with the plot.

In the first section the humor was pretty simple. Marquez focused on the always funny subjects of old age and lengthy marriages. Rather than exaggerating Marquez just states everything how it is, so the humor comes off as witty rather than contrived. He is also not afraid to resort to humor that some might consider crude. Rather than being a detriment, this is what really gave me in many cases a sense of what sort of a world the characters live in. This crudeness showed me that this Caribbean setting is one where parrots flirt, men are measured by their flow, and marriages reach the brink of disaster over a bar of soap. Through all of this, what is important is that Marquez is able to get to the point, Dr. Urbino’s death and the appearance of Florentino, and fill us in on many of the mannerisms of the main characters.

The Second section was funny in a different way. Rather than the kind of humor previously seen that got chuckles out of me, the story of Florentino’s and Fermina’s early love was more a constant satire on the subject of love struck teenagers. All of the torture Florentino put himself through, although not entirely realistic, showed how obsessed he had become with this girl. He got arrested, he drank perfume and ate flowers, he was nearly shot, and he searched for treasure all in the name of love. Then at the end of the section I had to question my own morality as I found the rejection sort of hilarious. Part of this is because it was actually realistic. Fermina did not even have to think of what to say to him. Her feelings changed in an instant and then the section was over. Marquez didn’t force 30 pages of Florentino’s sorrow. That would be unnecessary, as it is obvious how he would feel after that, and we had been told in the first section that he had loved her for fifty some odd years waiting for Urbino to die. So this abrupt ending is very funny, but also all that is needed to convey the message.

I love Dr. Urbino. He is to this point, almost done with third section, 90827389123710273 times cooler than Florentino. Urbino is chill and persistent without being annoying. Rather than doing stupid things and not recognizing it for love, Urbino knows that doing such a thing as drinking large quantities of alcohol with Lorenzo was not a great choice. Doing many of the same things as Florentino to woo Fermina, Urbino faces a new barrier. Instead of Lorenzo, this time it is Fermina’s reluctance to love again. Marquez was able to use this new attempt at love to satire young love again in a different light.

I am starting to enjoy the novel more and more as I read, especially now, having read the Quentin section and started the Jason section, as the story is actually starting to unravel. The Benjy section along with some of the Quentin section I found to be rather stagnant. Faulkner gets across the point that the family has issues, but other than that he just gives us slight hints of what might happen/have happened. With his intense style my mind skipped over the possible significance of many of these hints, which only gain meaning when you have gotten farther into the novel.

Now, onto what I actually thought of the going-ons of the Quentin section. The first half boring, depressing, and confusing; the second half interesting, depressing, and funny at times. Yes Quentin was depressed and it certainly showed, this also just happened make it excruciating to read at certain points. But, as I stated earlier, this was when I started to enjoy the novel more. Not because I enjoy Quentin’s inner pain, or even because I like Herbert, I enjoyed it because all of the new characters who weren’t just miserable Compsons.

Spoade, Shreve, Gerald, Gerald’s mom, even Dalton Ames were all pleasant surprises, as I thought all the characters would have been introduced by this point in the novel. Quentin’s classmates and classmate’s mother add a sense of humor that I believe was missing earlier in the novel. Even though the book is meant to deal with serious topics, a little humor is always nice and is executed excellently. Dalton Ames I enjoyed just because of the sincerity he spoke with. He has in Quentin’s opinion defiled Caddy and seems like an easy target to point at for many of the resulting problems, but after his conversation with Quentin I came away liking the fellow. This I think shifts the reader’s focus to Caddy as the source of the problem, with Dalton Ames just being a catalyst, where as if he was a total asshole we would place the majority of the blame on him. What made it so I could enjoy all of these characters was that the novel actually became easy to read. Many of the scenes were longer and more linear than anything before.

Some of the longer understandable scenes gave good looks into Quentin as a person. The one I really enjoyed was when he met the foreign girl in the bakery, who like Caddy had been before was young and innocent. There were parallels of course with him referring to her as sister, her getting dirty, in the end costing him and ending up in what appeared to be an unhappy situation, but that was not what I enjoyed. I liked the simple interaction between the two who could not communicate verbally. This seemed to be how Quentin wished Caddy could have been. The girl followed him and ate his buns and was unhappy to leave him.

Good results this week hopefully more next.
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