A Few Words on Rushdie and Postmodernity
Sorry for the lack of productivity as of late. Due to the time constraining nature of “the grind”, my free-time is rather limited and most of it goes to reading and studying. I keep on telling myself I need to write more; however, writing seems to be the last thing on my daily list and so the most often neglected. I’m changing pace the end of next month and hope to be back to a more “productive” capacity as a writer. But for now I’ll fancy you with a few words about one of my favorite authors and literary genres.
I could easily see myself becoming something of a disciple of Salman Rushdie. For many reasons. He’s got a very peculiar postmodern/post-colonial writing style and the uncanny ability to write about a thousand different things in the span of a short sentence. His writings are filled with political, historical, and pop-culture references galore – a literary cocktail so strong that it makes your head spin with either delight or confusion, depending on your level of tolerance. He can be most daunting to read sometimes due to his unique wordplay, obscure vocabulary (made-up words included), and jab-like prose; from the get-go you’re peppered with innuendo, double entendre, political smears (targeting all across the spectrum), religious veneration, blasphemy, and everything in between. One chapter covers the life of a prominent Indian movie star. The next is a revisionist story about Muhammad’s revelation in the Cave of Hira. His plots are a twisted weave of history, fiction, and fantasy. He jumps about from modern times to ancient history, all the while maintaining a tenuous link to the central plot easily lost if not careful.
It’s in his characters where the true brilliance and intrigue of his writing style is borne. His characters almost always suffer from some crisis of identify, “otherness,” or social marginalization. Embedded deep within his plots (and probably his own mind – if we can read them as one in the same) is a waging conflict of ideologies. It’s this trait that is perhaps the hallmark of all post-colonial (read also: postmodern) literature, particularly Rushdie’s. The East-West hybrid dilemma. The unintended consequences of attempting to reconcile modernity with traditionalism and Coca-colonization with nationalism. What you wind up with is a torn and scattered mind, unable to find its home roots or re-plant them. A ex-pat of Bombay and an alien to London.
The characterization of these traits in Rushdie’s novels makes for quite a stimulating read and what I think is a rather accurate portrayal of the flat, confused, and hybridized world that we live in today. He is an Indian author writing in English about matters that are fundamentally incompatible. He is seemingly everywhere and nowhere all at once – really, those who’ve read him have probably, on more than one occasion, asked themselves: what the hell is he talking about? Or, where does this fit into the story? I imagine that’s what our postmodern world might like to a disinterested observer eavesdropping from Mars.
Of the thousand different passages I could pick from the few books I’ve read by him, I choose one that seems particularly appropriate to the times. It’s from his infamous book The Satanic Verses. You know, the one that received praised and awards from the West and condemnation by the East – well, at least the Ayatollah of Iran didn’t like it (he issued a fatwa calling for Rushdie’s assassination). One side showered praise, the other bombs! You see that West-East conflict thing here, too? Anyway, the passage:
‘The modern city’, Otto Cone on his hobbyhorse had lectured his bored family at table, ‘is the locus classicus of incompatible realities. Lives that have no business mingling with one another sit side by side upon the omnibus. One universe, on a zebra crossing, is caught for an instant, blinking like rabbit, in the headlamps of a motor-vehicle in which an entirely alien and contradictory continuum is to be found. And as long as that’s all, they pass in the night, jostling on Tube stations, raising their hats in some hotel corridor, it’s not so bad. But if they meet! It’s uranium and plutonium, each makes the other decompose, boom’ – ‘As a matter of fact, dearest,’ Alicja said drly, ‘I often feel a little incompatible myself.’
The modern city and its disjointed qualities can be interpreted as more than simply the modern city. It’s allegorical of the forced mixture between modernity and ‘things of the less-advanced past.’ We no longer live in a bi-polar world order. There’s no clear good or bad like in the good old days. We’re members of a hodgepodge of ideas, theories, and styles. There is no cannon, literary or otherwise – perhaps the CoC/Southern Baptists think so, but let’s not go there. The traditional novel is dead, just like traditional religion, the traditional family, and to some extent tradition itself. We pledge allegiance to Google of the international community of the world. Who was my great grandfather and what did he do? Don’t know. And frankly, I don’t really care. We’re living in an unconventional, unrecognizable, never-sleeping, always-doing world. Don’t feel so bad if you feel a little incompatible yourself. Perhaps the only solution is to revel in your incompatibility. If everyone did that, wouldn’t we be compatible? Perhaps some loathe or deliberately avoid the run-in bound to happen, but not Rushdie. He invites the confusion with joyous reception.
Anyway, I may have deviated a bit off mark. Rushdie doesn’t say anything that I did, per se. If that bothers you I invite, no no… challenge you to tell me, in 500 words of less, what exactly Rushdie is saying with his crazy creation of words and cultural cocktails and how I’ve missed the point. If I buy it I’ll rescind. Promise.
