Today, I was listening to the musical equivalent of Midnight's Children - not, I hasten to add, a musical of Midnight's Children (it wouldn't make a great stage show...an event occurs, all action on the stage pauses for 10 minutes while the narrator explains the metaphor we are supposed to be understanding...in song...action continues, 4 hours later nothing has really happened...). No, I was listening to the new Gorillaz album. I've really liked their previous work, but this is just rubbish. It seems to be a mixture of bad rap, 80s electro pop, and generally unmemorable music. However, I know that they have often been heralded as making innovative use of different musical styles and so I didn't feel I could just write it off. So, I listened through to the end. I tried really hard to understand what they were doing with the album as a whole, rather than just feeling complainy because there is nothing singable on it. I felt a bit uncultured because I was probably missing the point.
It seemed to go on for a long time, and nothing of interest really happens. I don't ever want to listen to it again.
So, I'm left with the question - is it too clever for me, am I missing the point, or is it just not worth listening to?
I'll leave you to draw the parallel - I don't think I need to hit you over the head with it!
That did start me thinking about books that would make bad musicals (I was driving to work, I was bored, and all I had to listen to was the Gorillaz album). So - Midnight's Children, Jude the Obscure (totally inappropriate subjects for song), The Wasp Factory. Strangely enough, I think the lingering, trudging misery of Grapes of Wrath might lend itself quite well to song.
I'm reading the Hobbit at the moment, by the way. Only 30 pages in but so far I'm pleased to report that it's more interesting than I remember it being last time I tried. The seven book Lord of the Rings Millenium edition is looming ominously over my reading future...
Showing posts with label rushdie. Show all posts
Showing posts with label rushdie. Show all posts
Thursday, 11 March 2010
Sunday, 7 March 2010
Salman Rushdie - Midnight's Children - done!
I have finally finished Midnight's Children. It's been an interesting experience. Trying to plough through this book has made me challenge the way that I read, pretentious as that may sound. I think I've mentioned previously that I read really fast - my driver to find out what happens at the end means that I do miss details, and generally don't think that much about what I'm reading other than taking in the outline facts.
Midnight's Children was impossible to read in this way. I've already commented that nothing seems to happen for the first 200 pages and, another 150 pages on, I realised that nothing was going to happen going forwards, in the way that I was looking for it - i.e. significant events, in the present tense, which caused an unexpected change in the direction of the story. The narrative voice is so distant (despite the fact that he is telling his own story), and bound up in metaphor, that all events are just below the surface of the text - I'm struggling a little to put this into words - as a reader, you actually need to read and digest the metaphor, the very visual language, and the narrator's own uncertainty about the accuracy of his memory to get to the heart of the story.
It's a difficult book to read.
Rushdie plays with the reader's perceptions throughout. Saleem expresses doubt about the accuracy of his dates & memory, leading me to believe that the parallels between his life and the life of India as a nation are delusions of grandeur, entirely in his own mind, rather than the cause & effect that he believes. However, his arrest and subsequent events at the end of the book indicate that the group of children (obviously now adults) are seen as a significant threat - they clearly have some significance and relationship to the life of the nation beyond Saleem's own mind, leaving me then to revisit my previous perceptions. Having said that, belief in the events of the novel to any extent do involve a suspension of disbelief - but for some reason I find it easier to do this in relation to the magical powers of the children than in relation to national events. Perhaps a reflection of the individualist society we live in, perhaps a limit in my imagination - who knows?
I did also find the level of coincidence in the novel, putting lost friends & family in entirely random places to be found by Saleem, difficult to believe in. However, perhaps I'm being difficult to please here - I can't help but contrast this to the Grapes of Wrath, where I complained about the way that loose ends were not tied up, and people were never heard from again. Saleem ties up all loose ends in the narration of his story, sometimes convincingly, sometimes fantastically, and sometimes admitting that he doesn't know, and this is the way he likes to believe that it happened.
There is a passage which really stuck with me:
Who what am I? My answer: I am the sum total of everything that went before me, of all I have been seen done, of everything done-to-me. I am everyone everything whose being-in-the-world affected was affected by mine. I am anything that happens after I've gone which would not have happened if I had not come. Nor am I particularly exceptional in this matter; each 'I', every one of the now-six-hundred-million-plus of us, contains a similar multitude.
(p535 of the Vintage Books edition)
This is written in the context of his significance to the Indian nation (and gives a good example of the style of prose that I found so difficult to skim read), but I thought this was a great way of summarising an individual's impact on the world for those looking for their own significance...leaving questions of God and higher meaning to one side for the moment!
Having reached the end, I'm left with an appreciation of the complexity of this novel. I suspect that I might have got more out of it had I known more about the period of history it covers, or had I read the beginning with the same mindset as I read the end. However, I still feel that the metaphor is heavy handed...Rushdie wants to leave you with a particular interpretation of Saleem's significance, actions, and life, and therefore interprets this through the voice of the narrator. There is very little space or scope for a sense of discovery that comes with a subtler metaphor - I feel, rather, that I've been beaten about the head with what he wanted to say!
Would I read it again? I doubt it...but I'm glad I didn't give up this time.
Onto the next - I might go for Lord of the Rings or Nineteen Eighty-Four for something slightly gentler.
Midnight's Children was impossible to read in this way. I've already commented that nothing seems to happen for the first 200 pages and, another 150 pages on, I realised that nothing was going to happen going forwards, in the way that I was looking for it - i.e. significant events, in the present tense, which caused an unexpected change in the direction of the story. The narrative voice is so distant (despite the fact that he is telling his own story), and bound up in metaphor, that all events are just below the surface of the text - I'm struggling a little to put this into words - as a reader, you actually need to read and digest the metaphor, the very visual language, and the narrator's own uncertainty about the accuracy of his memory to get to the heart of the story.
It's a difficult book to read.
Rushdie plays with the reader's perceptions throughout. Saleem expresses doubt about the accuracy of his dates & memory, leading me to believe that the parallels between his life and the life of India as a nation are delusions of grandeur, entirely in his own mind, rather than the cause & effect that he believes. However, his arrest and subsequent events at the end of the book indicate that the group of children (obviously now adults) are seen as a significant threat - they clearly have some significance and relationship to the life of the nation beyond Saleem's own mind, leaving me then to revisit my previous perceptions. Having said that, belief in the events of the novel to any extent do involve a suspension of disbelief - but for some reason I find it easier to do this in relation to the magical powers of the children than in relation to national events. Perhaps a reflection of the individualist society we live in, perhaps a limit in my imagination - who knows?
I did also find the level of coincidence in the novel, putting lost friends & family in entirely random places to be found by Saleem, difficult to believe in. However, perhaps I'm being difficult to please here - I can't help but contrast this to the Grapes of Wrath, where I complained about the way that loose ends were not tied up, and people were never heard from again. Saleem ties up all loose ends in the narration of his story, sometimes convincingly, sometimes fantastically, and sometimes admitting that he doesn't know, and this is the way he likes to believe that it happened.
There is a passage which really stuck with me:
Who what am I? My answer: I am the sum total of everything that went before me, of all I have been seen done, of everything done-to-me. I am everyone everything whose being-in-the-world affected was affected by mine. I am anything that happens after I've gone which would not have happened if I had not come. Nor am I particularly exceptional in this matter; each 'I', every one of the now-six-hundred-million-plus of us, contains a similar multitude.
(p535 of the Vintage Books edition)
This is written in the context of his significance to the Indian nation (and gives a good example of the style of prose that I found so difficult to skim read), but I thought this was a great way of summarising an individual's impact on the world for those looking for their own significance...leaving questions of God and higher meaning to one side for the moment!
Having reached the end, I'm left with an appreciation of the complexity of this novel. I suspect that I might have got more out of it had I known more about the period of history it covers, or had I read the beginning with the same mindset as I read the end. However, I still feel that the metaphor is heavy handed...Rushdie wants to leave you with a particular interpretation of Saleem's significance, actions, and life, and therefore interprets this through the voice of the narrator. There is very little space or scope for a sense of discovery that comes with a subtler metaphor - I feel, rather, that I've been beaten about the head with what he wanted to say!
Would I read it again? I doubt it...but I'm glad I didn't give up this time.
Onto the next - I might go for Lord of the Rings or Nineteen Eighty-Four for something slightly gentler.
Wednesday, 3 March 2010
Midnight's Children - an interim report
I thought I should post something about Midnight's Children, even though I still haven't finished it, because it is taking me a while to read. I know it isn't a long time for most people, but as I read at the speed of light, generally, and this is something of a plod, it feels very slow.
I mentioned to my friend Simon that Midnight's Children was my next project; he said that this is one of the few books that he's started and failed to finish. This filled me with dread, as we tend to like the same books, but I carry on regardless - I have a challenge to complete!
So - Salman Rushdie. Simon's difficulty in finishing this novel is entirely understandable. It was 100 pages before anything happened, and 200 pages before the main protaganist, Saleem, is born. Given that the first 200 pages is laden with future hints about his birth, this seems like a long time to spin out the anticipation. Once Saleem enters the picture, the pace speeds up a bit and this is where I started to get interested, but if I didn't have another compelling reason to finish it, I would have given up before then.
You can't argue with the quality of the writing. Rushdie plays with form, both in choice of words & in the punctuation & structure of sentences, to create mood and impact. There's a particularly striking scene, with the retelling of a dream about a witch killing children, where he does this to great effect; and another where the repetition of the colours saffron and green in every element of a description creates a sort of driving rhythm that supports the urgency of the situation (Saleem's birth), as well as linking it in with the birth of India as a nation. His description of Amina taking a knife to her verrucas is, unfortunately, particularly vivid...my feet are curling themselves up in self-defence just thinking about it.
There is an enormous amount covered in this novel. Indian independence, the political system, Partition...childhood events, accidents, turbulent family life, and of course the magical realism elements of Saleem's psychic links with India's other "midnight children". The novel is written self-consciously - Saleem is writing his own story, and frequently breaks off to comment to Padma, his companion. This obviously gives him the advantage of hindsight, and the ability to hint at future events, but from a stylistic point of view, I find it much harder to become absorbed in the story - I feel as though I'm sitting by the narrator, watching from a distance, rather than being one with the story.
This could also be partly due to spending almost four hours today reading whilst on a train to and from London at unsocial hours - much more difficult to get involved (particularly when the seat in front is occupied by someone playing a game on their iPhone without switching off the sound - grr - but I'll calm myself as this is not a forum for train rants!).
So far - hmm. This is an enormously accomplished book, it's very well constructed, and complex but easily followed. It's difficult to get truly involved in, in the sense of emotional engagement, because so much of its style and construction is about creating parallels between people & events of national significance. When Rushdie gets involved in the "real time" story that he's telling, it's immensely compelling, but this does tend to happen in fits and starts, and so many misfortunes fall upon Saleem, both physical and emotional, that it's difficult to see him as a three-dimensional character rather than a living metaphor. Maybe that's the point & I'm just not sophisticated enough to like it!
I suspect I will be glad I've read it, when I finish it, but I'm not quite near enough the end to feel that yet! More to follow- about 150 pages to go, I think...
I mentioned to my friend Simon that Midnight's Children was my next project; he said that this is one of the few books that he's started and failed to finish. This filled me with dread, as we tend to like the same books, but I carry on regardless - I have a challenge to complete!
So - Salman Rushdie. Simon's difficulty in finishing this novel is entirely understandable. It was 100 pages before anything happened, and 200 pages before the main protaganist, Saleem, is born. Given that the first 200 pages is laden with future hints about his birth, this seems like a long time to spin out the anticipation. Once Saleem enters the picture, the pace speeds up a bit and this is where I started to get interested, but if I didn't have another compelling reason to finish it, I would have given up before then.
You can't argue with the quality of the writing. Rushdie plays with form, both in choice of words & in the punctuation & structure of sentences, to create mood and impact. There's a particularly striking scene, with the retelling of a dream about a witch killing children, where he does this to great effect; and another where the repetition of the colours saffron and green in every element of a description creates a sort of driving rhythm that supports the urgency of the situation (Saleem's birth), as well as linking it in with the birth of India as a nation. His description of Amina taking a knife to her verrucas is, unfortunately, particularly vivid...my feet are curling themselves up in self-defence just thinking about it.
There is an enormous amount covered in this novel. Indian independence, the political system, Partition...childhood events, accidents, turbulent family life, and of course the magical realism elements of Saleem's psychic links with India's other "midnight children". The novel is written self-consciously - Saleem is writing his own story, and frequently breaks off to comment to Padma, his companion. This obviously gives him the advantage of hindsight, and the ability to hint at future events, but from a stylistic point of view, I find it much harder to become absorbed in the story - I feel as though I'm sitting by the narrator, watching from a distance, rather than being one with the story.
This could also be partly due to spending almost four hours today reading whilst on a train to and from London at unsocial hours - much more difficult to get involved (particularly when the seat in front is occupied by someone playing a game on their iPhone without switching off the sound - grr - but I'll calm myself as this is not a forum for train rants!).
So far - hmm. This is an enormously accomplished book, it's very well constructed, and complex but easily followed. It's difficult to get truly involved in, in the sense of emotional engagement, because so much of its style and construction is about creating parallels between people & events of national significance. When Rushdie gets involved in the "real time" story that he's telling, it's immensely compelling, but this does tend to happen in fits and starts, and so many misfortunes fall upon Saleem, both physical and emotional, that it's difficult to see him as a three-dimensional character rather than a living metaphor. Maybe that's the point & I'm just not sophisticated enough to like it!
I suspect I will be glad I've read it, when I finish it, but I'm not quite near enough the end to feel that yet! More to follow- about 150 pages to go, I think...
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