Piffka, I am not saying that the Marquez novel is bad, exactly. But it seemed to me to suffer from an uncertainty of tone, as if Marquez couldn't make up his mind whether he wanted us to laugh at his characters or sympathize with them. This led to a certain blurriness of effect, a weakness of overall design. Of course that is just one man's opinion. I know you and other people liked it much better than I did.
The result of this tone problem was that I couldn't take the book seriously as a love story, and it wasn't funny enough to be a comedy.
I should try to read Love in the TIme of Cholera again -- it has been ten years or more. But I liked the quirkiness of it, the indecision of whether or not it to laugh or sympathize. In fact, I think Marquez wants us to do both. To me, life is something of a joke, without a sense of humor and an ability to see the absurdity of it all... well, life would be awfully boring and dry. But life isn't really a comedy either. So I sympathize totally with the characters and also see them for the fools that they are.
I particularly like the joke in the title, that love makes you feel just like you've got cholera -- you're sick to your stomach and ill.
On Cholera, I did personally want to find out what happened to all concerned - somewhat. As I indicated in another Topic, I was taken on a desultory trip to another place and time, and appreciated the ride.
On comic bits mixed into a dramatic/tragic whole, I have liked the mix for decades when I see it, because it tweaks my antennae for resonance to real life. This has been understood, I believe, as a no no, in terms of screenplays and other writing for quite a while, and I have heard that criticism of work that mixes them with a personal sigh. I gather that screenplay writing has had some interesting mixes of the two in the past decade or two; one seems to see it more often.
I know that the comic bit can dilute a sense of foreboding, the complex buildup of angst, and I don't always like it. But I am open to it in what I read.
I am open to mixing the modes of comedy and seriousness. Some of my favorite novelists like Evelyn Waugh and Philip K. Dick, and even Dostoevsky, do it brilliantly. I guess I thought Marquez just didn't do it successfully. If you want to see it done superbly read Waugh's A HANDFUL OF DUST.
