sure fire way to cheapen a good novel (and novelist)

MY FRIEND JENN recently let me borrow Love in the Time of Cholera. I've read Chronicles of a Death Foretold by Gabriel Garcia Marquez and found his writing style to be intense, raw and beautifully vivid with a lively strain of magical realism that seems to be a running theme amongst Spanish speaking novelists.

In dating we have things that turn us off and turn us on. Turn offs for me include bad breath, loud chewing and high pitched laughter. Turn on's include wit, humor and a good vocabulary. I always knew that I was a bit of an intellectual snob - this realization coming shortly after becoming irrationally distressed and nearly breaking up with an old boyfriend over him not recognizing Picasso's Guernica ("I just don't know who you are anymore!")but my intellectual snobbery has reached new, uncontrollably geeky heights since my discovery yesterday that not only do I have dating turn offs, I also have literary turn offs. Cue downward spiral leading to me living alone in a studio flat cluttered with dusty books and too many cats...

On this particular book at the top edge of the cover are these words (written in what suspiciously looks like Times New Roman font - what blind person designed this??): NOW A MAJOR MOTION PICTURE. I did not capitalize that line for effect, it is in fact capitalized on it's own volition. As if the mark of a good read is if it's been converted, stripped and mass marketed as a blockbuster. Really?

That line is only a minor infarction when compared to this gushing wound of a story description on the back cover (which includes this quote - once again the capitalization is not my idea - from someone named "Opran Winfrey" - ONE OF THE GREATEST LOVE STORIES I HAVE EVER READ. IT IS SO BEAUTIFULLY WRITTEN. What kind of a book recommend is that? It's like a food critic visiting Le Cirque and saying, "Food was good. I like wine. Yum!"). Anyways, I digress. Here is the story description:

"Fifty-one years, nine months and four days ago, Florention's adoring love was rejected by the beautiful Fermina. While she became the model wife to a wealthy doctor, pore Florentino pined for her, and has done so ever since, never finding love of peace as he yearns for the day he can woo her again. When Fermina's husband is killed falling from a mango tree, Florentino seizes his chance to declare his enduring love. But can young love find new life in the twilight of their lives?"

Wow. Good going, book jacket description writer, you've managed to reduce one of the most eloquent writers of the modern era into a soap opera script hack.