After three years and at least five attempts, I've finally finished Midnight's Children. I think my reaction to it is as convoluted as the book itself.
For historical fiction about the rise of modern India, Pakistan and Bangladesh, there's really nothing like it. The transfer of power from Britain to the newly independent India (the famous optimism bug that I talked about here), the various wars and skirmishes between India and its neighbors Pakistan and China, the civil war that splits West Pakistan from East Pakistan (now Bangladesh) are all chronicled in Rushdie's inimitably sardonic and luxuriously adorned prose. I also liked the account of Indira Ghandi's emergency powers crackdown, during which the fictional Saleem Sinai sees the government arrest his cohort of children who can communicate telepathically with one another by virtue of all having been born in the first hour after the midnight of India's independence (hence Midnight's Children). One particular segment rang like a literary version of a Ray Bradbury type sci-fi saga, which was the tale of Saleem and two other deserters from the Pakistani civil war end up in a cave of illusions that slowly starts to consume them and drain their will to leave (which in the end they do).
The actual experience of reading the book, however, reminded me a lot of reading Julio Cortazar's Rayuela. I read it in Spanish, mostly to prove how tough I was, at great detriment to my actual comprehension of the already convoluted text. The book is set up such that after each chapter you're told to flip to another non-sequential chapter, which takes you through the book in the non-chronological order the author determined (This Cortazar described as the “masculine” form of reading the book, as opposed to the “feminine” style which involved reading the chapters sequentially. Fortunately much has changed since the book’s publication in 1961). I made this even more interesting by jumping to the wrong chapter at least once. The experience of reading Latin America's version of Ulysses suddenly became a bit more like reading a version of Ulysses with the pages mixed up.
My stop-start approach to Rushdie's cornerstone work led to much the same experience. I could never quite tell if I had read something already, had read it years earlier on a previous attempt, had accidentally bookmarked the wrong spot, or if the story line was simply repeating itself. I couldn't remeber why The Hummingbird was killed. I couldn't remember why Mumtaz slept in a basement with Nadir Khan. I couldn't remember the story of the fire at the godown that destroyed Saleem's father's bicycles, or the related mafia extorsion that was somehow linked to a family of bats living in a church steeple (I think).
Adding to that, the plotlines were as difficult to follow and remember as the thematic and metaphorical undertones they evoked. Ok, let me see if I can get this straight. Saleem is the son of General Aziz and his wife Amina Sinai (formerly known as Mumtaz), only he is switched at birth from the hands of his actual parents, a poor British street entertainer named Wee Willy Winkie and his servant wife. Nanny Mary Pereira (married to a man named Joseph -- metaphorical maybe?) takes baby Saleem out of his poor-family crib into the lap of wealth, condemning the true son Shiva, who will turn out to be Saleem's arch-rival, to a life of poverty. However, Saleem, it turns out, is not his father's son, because his servant mother had been sleeping with the wealthy British landlord known as Lord Methwold.
Again, let me see if I can get all these metaphors straight. The bastard Muslim son of India, born to a cuckolded father who is not his father, is switched at birth by conniving Christians who steal the birthright of Hindu boy? I can't even remember how many times I had to flip back and reread that saga.
I will hand it to Rushdie, he really can write like nobody else. At the same time I will admit on several occasions feeling like I was going to shout out loud "OK, Mr. Rushdie, lovely writing, but can we get ON with it PLEASE!!!"
Reading my first Stieg Larsson book earlier this year made me understand why the average person doesn't read books like Midnight's Children. I read all of The Girl with the Dragoon Tattoo at the same time as I fumbled through about 25 pages of the Rushdie classic. I've got thick literary teeth, as my brother likes to say.
For historical fiction about the rise of modern India, Pakistan and Bangladesh, there's really nothing like it. The transfer of power from Britain to the newly independent India (the famous optimism bug that I talked about here), the various wars and skirmishes between India and its neighbors Pakistan and China, the civil war that splits West Pakistan from East Pakistan (now Bangladesh) are all chronicled in Rushdie's inimitably sardonic and luxuriously adorned prose. I also liked the account of Indira Ghandi's emergency powers crackdown, during which the fictional Saleem Sinai sees the government arrest his cohort of children who can communicate telepathically with one another by virtue of all having been born in the first hour after the midnight of India's independence (hence Midnight's Children). One particular segment rang like a literary version of a Ray Bradbury type sci-fi saga, which was the tale of Saleem and two other deserters from the Pakistani civil war end up in a cave of illusions that slowly starts to consume them and drain their will to leave (which in the end they do).
The actual experience of reading the book, however, reminded me a lot of reading Julio Cortazar's Rayuela. I read it in Spanish, mostly to prove how tough I was, at great detriment to my actual comprehension of the already convoluted text. The book is set up such that after each chapter you're told to flip to another non-sequential chapter, which takes you through the book in the non-chronological order the author determined (This Cortazar described as the “masculine” form of reading the book, as opposed to the “feminine” style which involved reading the chapters sequentially. Fortunately much has changed since the book’s publication in 1961). I made this even more interesting by jumping to the wrong chapter at least once. The experience of reading Latin America's version of Ulysses suddenly became a bit more like reading a version of Ulysses with the pages mixed up.
My stop-start approach to Rushdie's cornerstone work led to much the same experience. I could never quite tell if I had read something already, had read it years earlier on a previous attempt, had accidentally bookmarked the wrong spot, or if the story line was simply repeating itself. I couldn't remeber why The Hummingbird was killed. I couldn't remember why Mumtaz slept in a basement with Nadir Khan. I couldn't remember the story of the fire at the godown that destroyed Saleem's father's bicycles, or the related mafia extorsion that was somehow linked to a family of bats living in a church steeple (I think).
Adding to that, the plotlines were as difficult to follow and remember as the thematic and metaphorical undertones they evoked. Ok, let me see if I can get this straight. Saleem is the son of General Aziz and his wife Amina Sinai (formerly known as Mumtaz), only he is switched at birth from the hands of his actual parents, a poor British street entertainer named Wee Willy Winkie and his servant wife. Nanny Mary Pereira (married to a man named Joseph -- metaphorical maybe?) takes baby Saleem out of his poor-family crib into the lap of wealth, condemning the true son Shiva, who will turn out to be Saleem's arch-rival, to a life of poverty. However, Saleem, it turns out, is not his father's son, because his servant mother had been sleeping with the wealthy British landlord known as Lord Methwold.
Again, let me see if I can get all these metaphors straight. The bastard Muslim son of India, born to a cuckolded father who is not his father, is switched at birth by conniving Christians who steal the birthright of Hindu boy? I can't even remember how many times I had to flip back and reread that saga.
I will hand it to Rushdie, he really can write like nobody else. At the same time I will admit on several occasions feeling like I was going to shout out loud "OK, Mr. Rushdie, lovely writing, but can we get ON with it PLEASE!!!"
Reading my first Stieg Larsson book earlier this year made me understand why the average person doesn't read books like Midnight's Children. I read all of The Girl with the Dragoon Tattoo at the same time as I fumbled through about 25 pages of the Rushdie classic. I've got thick literary teeth, as my brother likes to say.
Midnight’s Children was one I really had to fight my way through. It reminded me of other books that I enjoyed but had to battle my way through, unlike the seductive and almost narcotic pull of Larson's detective fiction (the inevitable deus-ex-machinas felt a bit cheap, but still, I get the appeal). I remember pushing my way through Mario Vargas Llosa's La Fiesta del Chivo, the novelistic take on the fall of Dominican dictator Trujillo, while sitting in my hot living room in Puerto Rico, finishing the last pages with an almost breathless urgency of wanting be done with this epic (I did like it, in fact). Or plowing through the end of Ghost Wars, Steve Coll's authoritative and unparalleled journalistic account of the Soviet invasion of Afghanistan, the ensuing civil war and rise of the Taliban, while on a plane from Caracas to San Francisco. You fight through books and you remember them.
Midnight's Children still does not top what I consider to be the most readable Rushdie -- The Ground Beneath her Feet, the tale of a rock star Indian couple that take a ten-year vow of celibacy. I also read, around the same time, a Rushdie book called Shame which was about Pakistan. I definitely did not get much of what was being said there. I do remember a character named the Virgin Ironpants, who years later I learned was Benazir Bhutto (might have helped to know that).
I spied a copy of The Moor's Last Sigh on my dad's bookshelf when - was at his house last month. I decided to leave that for some future endeavor, while I read something else -- and continue to figure out what I thought of Midnight's Children.
Midnight's Children still does not top what I consider to be the most readable Rushdie -- The Ground Beneath her Feet, the tale of a rock star Indian couple that take a ten-year vow of celibacy. I also read, around the same time, a Rushdie book called Shame which was about Pakistan. I definitely did not get much of what was being said there. I do remember a character named the Virgin Ironpants, who years later I learned was Benazir Bhutto (might have helped to know that).
I spied a copy of The Moor's Last Sigh on my dad's bookshelf when - was at his house last month. I decided to leave that for some future endeavor, while I read something else -- and continue to figure out what I thought of Midnight's Children.
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