The New Canon is a regular feature, contributed by Ted Gioia, focusing on great works of fiction published since 1985. These books represent the finest literature of the current era, and are gaining recognition as the new classics of our time. In this installment of The New Canon, Gioia looks at Love in the Time of Cholera by Gabriel García Márquez.

Some people see an endearing romance in Gabriel García Márquez’s Love in the Time of Cholera, and are ready to grant this novel a place on their shelves next to Romeo and Juliet, Pride and Prejudice, the DVD to Titanic, and The Collected Works of Erich Segal. After all, we never get tired of love stories, do we?

But Márquez is setting you up. As the author himself has warned: "You have to be careful not to fall into my trap." Readers are so fond of love stories, and so comforted by their stereotypes, that they even find ways of romanticizing the criminal intentions of Humbert Humbert or the self-delusions of Emma Bovary. When the subject is love, we let our guard down. As with Nabokov and Flaubert, Márquez takes advantage of this, as he explores the ways love turns into an obsession, a way of deceiving ourselves, or even a type of illness.

Of course, the title is a dead giveaway. The marketing department could have told you before the end of the first focus group that you don’t put the word “cholera” on the cover of a novel (Okay, maybe it could have been worse: have you seen the episode of The Simpsons, in which Marge is reading a book called Love in the Time Of Scurvy?). In truth, Márquez wants to undermine the marketing department. One of his goals is to show how easily people are afflicted and betrayed by their romantic notions –- how they get caught up in the hype, so to speak. In Love in the Time of Cholera, this is seen most clearly in the character of Florentino Ariza, who is rejected as a young man by Fermina Daza, a “beautiful adolescent with . . . almond-shaped eyes . . . [who] walked with natural haughtiness, her head high, her eyes unmoving.”

Despite his failure to impress the young lady, Ariza cannot give up his hopes. He has the psychological profile of a stalker, so deep is his obsession with Daza. Even after she marries Dr. Juvenal Urbino, and enjoys a modestly happy life with her husband, Ariza continues to pine. And he waits . . . and waits and waits.