Salman Rushdie: The Enchantress Of Florence

[Mirabell]

More tomorrow. The Enchantress of Florence, Rushdie's latest book, is, well. A strange beast. On the one hand it's his best book in a long while. On the other it's full of stuff that's as bad as the worst passages in the -so far- low point of his oeuvre, Fury. I enjoyed it.

Some reviews:

Kakutani in the NY Times

a very evasive review by his pal Hitchens in the Atlantic

LeGuin in the Guardian

JOhn Sutherland in the FT

[Eric]

Remember I'm a man of intuition and vibes.

I get the feeling (Sybarite: don't say anything) from the reviews that Mirabell points us to that many people are bored with Rushdie, but for obvious reasons (it's not joke to have to live secretly in safe houses for years, with the threat of being murdered) feel a bit sorry for him. So they avoid saying directly that his intricate magical realism has maybe had its day. They feel it's bad taste in the circumstances. (Deirdre Donahue in USA Today is less subtle.)

Personally, I admire Rushdie for his bravery, but am not going to read his books. He's become too much of an establishment icon, that no one dare criticise. Judging by the reviews, he seems to have got seriously stuck in the rut of a Thousand and One Exoticisms, with a lot of circus tricks and mystification. He will have a regular band of readers, for whom he can do no wrong. But maybe the rest of us aren't so patient. He mixes European and Islamic history in a potpourri of prestidigitation, dredging up all manner of weird and wonderful authors, historical personages, and places that most of us never visit, or have changed unrecognisably over the centuries. All these names, allusions, literary hints, intertextuality, are already overpowering in his older works. I see no hint of a sea change here.

[Mirabell]

Yeah, well, Kakutani is basically ripping apart that book. So your feelings...well.

but am not going to read his books.

Does this mean you haven't read ANY of his books yet?

[Mirabell]

My own comments on the Enchantress

[Funhouse]

Originally Posted by Eric

Remember I'm a man of intuition and vibes.
Personally, I admire Rushdie for his bravery, but am not going to read his books. He's become too much of an establishment icon, that no one dare criticise. Judging by the reviews, he seems to have got seriously stuck in the rut of a Thousand and One Exoticisms, with a lot of circus tricks and mystification. He will have a regular band of readers, for whom he can do no wrong. But maybe the rest of us aren't so patient. He mixes European and Islamic history in a potpourri of prestidigitation, dredging up all manner of weird and wonderful authors, historical personages, and places that most of us never visit, or have changed unrecognisably over the centuries. All these names, allusions, literary hints, intertextuality, are already overpowering in his older works. I see no hint of a sea change here.

Puzzling comments. Almost half of the reviews of The Enchantress of Florence have been negative. There are plenty of people who dare criticise Rushdie. Lots of people revel in it. There's a good review overview here. I'm a huge fan of Rushdie, but in no way do I think he can do no wrong. I hated Fury. Mirabell has similar thoughts in the interesting blog post (I was forwarded the link through the Fictional Woods, by the way Mirabell). The new novel is different in subject matter to Rushdie's previous works, with any political content being allegorical rather than explicit.

[Mirabell]

I don't know. It's very explicit in the way (as I said in the post) that he practically quotes all kinds of inane anti-religious and anti-islamic tracts written in the past two years. Maybe my ear is attuned to that but sometimes I felt that all it needed were quotation marks for everyone to notice.

I thank you for the recommendation of Kunzru and Frame by the way. Am writing a review of Kunzru's amazing last novel and am reading Frame's "To the Is-land".

[Funhouse]

Originally Posted by Mirabell

I thank you for the recommendation of Kunzru and Frame by the way. Am writing a review of Kunzru's amazing last novel and am reading Frame's "To the Is-land".

Ah, glad to hear it.

[Eric]

To answer Mirabell, no, I haven't read any of his books to the end. I tried "Midnight's Children", but I got rather fed up with all the complicated flood of ideas, people and images. Then I tried one of his other books (can't remember which), ditto. Since then I have watched Rushdie very much from the sidelines.

I don't like this kind of Márquez-like magical realism, I'm afraid. But I did shake Rushdie's hand once in the early 1980s, long before all the rumpus about him and the fatwas. This was at the PEN Club in London.

Funhouse: I haven't discovered the negative reviews of his latest book you mention. But I'll take your word for it, as I haven't been looking exceptionally hard for them. As you gather, we have different ideas on him as an author, and I'm not going to spend as much time on him as you would.

[Heteronym]

I find it amusing this complaint about Rushdie's magical realism when his last novel before 'Enchantress' was the reality-grounded, exploration-of-the-causes-of-terrorism novel Shalimar the Clown (I wouldn't call it realistic though; Mr. Rushdie seems to understand terrorism less than Mr. Auster; apparently people become terrorists because foreign diplomats sleep with their wives).

But the novel didn't mix European and Islamic history in a potpourri of prestidigitation; it didn't dredge up all manner of weird and wonderful authors, historical personages, and places that most of us never visit, or have changed unrecognisably over the centuries. And it didn't overpower me with names, allusions, literary hints, intertextuality. And if it did, isn't that why we're reading an Indian-born author, to get from him ideas we don't get from our own cultures?

[Mirabell]

Mr. Rushdie seems to understand terrorism less than Mr. Auster; apparently people become terrorists because foreign diplomats sleep with their wives

Hold, hold
He neither says nor implies such a thing. The one character in the novel is 'turned' that way. There are many other terrorists in that novel (the camp!) but they have no such motivation, if I am not mistaken.

Amd I don't think I would describe Shalimar ever as

reality-grounded, exploration-of-the-causes-of-terrorism novel

hell, all that Kashmir stuff. the cooking and then the strange story of that wife. It's all very cooky, not a bit more reality grounded than Midnight's Children. The only part that is realistic and appears to be a first in his work is the part about the résistance, no?

[Eric]

Heteronym: good try. I believe every word you say and note that Shalimar is different (though Mirabell seems to dispute this). But I think I'll give Rushdie a miss. There are perhaps a hundred novels I could read before getting round to him, all of which I have at home here.

Rushdie has experienced terrorism at first hand, much more tangibly than most of us, no doubt. It's his narrative style I'm not keen on.

[Heteronym]

Originally Posted by Mirabell

Hold, hold
He neither says nor implies such a thing. The one character in the novel is 'turned' that way. There are many other terrorists in that novel (the camp!) but they have no such motivation, if I am not mistaken.

Most of them seemed caricatures anyway; they don't have motivations at all. Shalimar is the protagonist, and his motivation is rather uninspired.

[Eric]

Oh dear, what can the matter be...?

Salman Rushdie locked in cupboard while fatwa police protection team went to pub - Telegraph

Not much of an enchanter, if you ask me.

[Stewart]

Originally Posted by Eric

Not much of an enchanter, if you ask me.

To be fair, he's not from Florance.

[Eric]

See him on Newsnight on Monday (28-07-2008), interviewed by Gavin Esler?

Recording at:

BBC NEWS | UK | Salman Rushdie on his latest book