If story books are your thing, you are in the right place, because “marley was dead” is one of them, a book with fourteen quite painful stories.
Carlos Zanón, author of the work.
marley was dead
marley was dead It is a book that has fourteen stories set in the dates close to Christmas and at Christmas itself. Thus creating a contrast between the happiness of these dates with the stories of these scourged characters, the colored lights that adorn the pain and misery and the star at the top of the tree that highlights them and makes them even more heartbreaking.
Zanón's stories represent revenge towards the crudest reality of the hubbub and emotion at those parties in which we all (or the vast majority) play the part of fools who live happily and get ready to spend nights of love and peace.
Elvis Presley shot between the eyebrows at the slide where his daughter split her lip, and up in heaven, Jesus Christ reproaches his father for sending him to earth. Up there, Jesus Christ tells his father God: "That's a father and not you" and disappears into the memory where, at the top of the Cross, with the crown of thorns, I look up wondering if that really should end that shape, with four black, mournful clouds at its feet.
The narrator, the little boy who remembers the stories his mother used to tell him and his sister, which were stories about Elvis and the Beatles, Jesus and Yahweh, about bad parents and good parents and also about terrible ones. Along with what follows, a ghostly Christmas Eve where an old 90-minute BASF tape is boxed up, because it is not necessary to press play to see again that recording of an old Christmas where everyone is, the living and the dead.
Characters and stories
There are some characters in these stories who do like Christmas, it is their favorite holiday, and that is why they return home at Christmas, the bad thing is that Christmas for him is at any time, so he can appear at home getting out of a taxi .
«Uncle Noel Loco could appear any day in our lives but never at Christmas. One morning in April, August or November, a taxi would stop in the middle of our street and Crazy Uncle Noel would get out of it dressed as Santa Claus».
There are some characters that appear and disappear through the stories, they leave in some, and return in others, they all share the characteristic that they do not have a hint of Christmas spirit, and reject anything that may appear to have it, even in a minimal way. .
Like Dolores Santaolalla, a disorganized and disastrous woman who is taken advantage of by men when the day comes to collect her pension for psychiatric disability. It is very likely that her giant imagination and her longing for love is what makes the men who are accused of abusing her look like boyfriends.
Like the Turki who bothers a lot, bothers for pleasure and bothers for work, but when he is most annoying is when they don't answer his question well: “Lennon or McCartney?”, however; she doesn't like to bother for christmas and there are those who are fed up with her question and have decided to put an end to it.
One or another situation borders the limit of despair. When you read them, a knot is formed with what is left of your soul, like the story of that woman you
"They had taken her children one by one for being a bad mother, whatever that means"; and you do not want to continue reading when you fall back into anxiety and anguish when reading that that woman "did not want to wake up every day and need to die"
Because he is tormented by the thought that his children prefer him dead, that he may be more useful to them dead than alive.
In "marley was dead” There are families that break up, broken families, families where violence has already taken root; women who are abandoned and abused, and men too, of course. There are men who spy on their family at night and not with good intentions, and luckily there is a dog.
There is also a lawyer who cannot forget Laura, he is a womanizer, a drinker, impertinent, who always says that from tomorrow it will be good; because tomorrow is another day, and there is always a tomorrow that we must go to, as long as it is necessary to do so.
What's more; there is a Romeo who abandoned his Juliet for Ophelia; and a Juliet who:
“He thinks that when two people fall in love, they are both driven to a time and place where they know they have to kill each other. With rare exceptions, they don't. Staying alive then is turning wine into water and turning the world into a tricky liquid that makes you fearful».
There are kids; past and present children, children whose childhood was stolen; children who ask for advice and gifts from a Melchior who reeks of beer and hides a sports bag under his seat. There is also a girl who has the ability to wake up and bring to the world the ghosts of her deceased relatives, to summon them to the table at Christmas because it is very painful to do without them and more so on those dates.
On the other hand, we have a Yahweh who is envious of Elvis Presley for being "a better father than him" so, out of revenge, he creates The Beatles. There are stories with a lot of humor; black humor, acid humor and with a touch of bitterness. However, this humor opens our pores and helps us breathe again for a moment, after so much tension.
And of course there's Marley, Michael Head's friend, but
“Marley was dead to begin with. Of that there was no doubt. He had been dead for seven years. Dead on a mattress that later had to be thrown away because no one wanted to sleep on it. Dead as a nail from a door, from a brain tumor.
Marley walks through the Barcelona night in the form of a specter, of the dead and revenants, because it is Christmas Eve, and that, that was Marley's night.
And it has been since Dickens taught us that Christmas was a day of ghosts, this is the time that Marley, who died exactly seven years ago, appears to Ebanizer Scrooge to visit him with the respective spirits at his Christmas past, present and future.
Christmas of "marley was dead” are quite acidic. They always leave a frustrated feeling in the reader, the reflection of the characters' frustration. Hope has no place. We are not sure how past Christmases were, but the present ones look sad, gloomy, when not violent. And future ones do not bring any improvement.
While Dickens continued to hope for the future, that it might redeem the present, which is the future of Dickens and Ebanizer Scrooge, we already know, or at least suspect, of all that we can expect of the future.
Interesting data
There is also music, very varied and in quantity, in all the stories. There are the obviously already mentioned Elvis Presley and the Beatles, Neil Young, Edith Piaf, Leonard Cohen, Roxy music, Roberta Flack, Manolo Escobar, Tom Jones and even "Don't call me Dolores, call me crazy"
Undoubtedly, marley was dead, borders the tenuous line of marginality in each of his stories. But this is not the best, the best of these stories, as indicated in the quotes, is how the author tells it. The tension that exists between what is counted and what is not. It is a beautiful literature despite the harshness with which it is impregnated, with strong phrases and images that hit your feelings.
If you have found this reading interesting and useful, do not forget to visit our related article on the slaughtered hen by Horacio Quiroga.