Comment on one or both presentations today, as you wish. Siau Rui and Ty will be happy to have the feedback.
14 thoughts on “Midnight’s Children 1”
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Comment on one or both presentations today, as you wish. Siau Rui and Ty will be happy to have the feedback.
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One point that Ty touched on during his presentation that I found particularly interesting was when he mentioned the unreliability of time and memory. I believe that this idea ties into a greater theme of the book, which is what it means to tell a story and how much it matters whether or not every fact is, actually, completely accurate. For example, Saleem, in attempting to convince Padma as to the truth of his tale says to her, “Memory’s truth, because memory has its own special kind. It selects, eliminates, alters, exaggerates, minimizes, glorifies, and vilifies also; but in the end it creates its own reality, its heterogeneous but usually coherent version of events; and no sane human being ever trusts someone else’s version more than his own” (242). I believe that this also ties in to the passage that James pointed out in which Saleem makes an “error in chronology” but insists: “in my India, Gandhi will continue to die at the wrong time” (192). I believe is connected to the first sentence of that chapter which states, “Reality is a question of perspective” (189), so Saleem doesn’t feel the need to change the date of Gandhi’s death because in his memory, and therefore from his perspective, it took place on a different day. Furthermore, in another revealing moment, Saleem argues that, “what actually happened is less important than what the author can manage to persuade his audience to believe” (310).
Siau Rui I was impressed with the volume and diversity of material on Rushdie you presented yesterday. For an author with such a long and illustrious career it must have been a challenge to pick what to highlight. I found his reactions to the Booker Prize committee (and how that has changed over the years) and his frustrations with his readership (drawn to the scandal surrounding the publication of his work rather than its literary merit) fascinating. There was an interesting video interview conducted by Time in 2010 (http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=J0xysoqT2gs) that addressed the authors plans for the future and further brought to light the ambiguous relationship of the controversy on his printed material (boost in sales, iconic status as a media celebrity vs. purely literary acclaim) His discussion of plans to write a memoir, primarily focused on the untold stories of his years in hiding, to me felt more like a nod to the appetites of the media and popular audience than a serious work along the line of Midnights children. Additionally, his efforts to bring an adaption of Midnights children to the screen (he has already written the screenplay and begun negotiations with Canadian Indian director Deepa Mehta) struck me as interesting. Perhaps the desire you pointed to Siau Rui, to have the commendation of his literary genius at the forefront of his public image, has been overwhelmed by this opportunity to share Midnights children with a wide, and perhaps less discerning, cinematic audience.
After today’s discussion I went back into the book and reread the first few pages to try and regain some perspective on the novel. On the second page, Rushdie writes, “Consumed multitudes are jostling and shoving inside me; and guided only by the memory of a large white bedsheet with a roughly circular hold some seven inches in diameter cut into the centre, clutching at the dream of that holey, mutilated square of linen, which is my talisman, my open-sesame, I must commence the business of remarking my life from the point at which it really began, some thirty-two years before anything as obvious as…my birth.” This passage speaks to the idea that Ty brought up about temporality in the novel. When Saleem claims that his life precedes his birth, he conflates the linear notions of past and present (and future?) and folds them into a state of temporal ambiguity. All of history is accessible to him; an infinite number of plot lines and characters are at his disposal. As Saleem himself says, “I can find out any damned thing! There isn’t a thing I cannot know!” If we buy in to this idea that all of history is somehow always occurring and always knowable, then the real power behind the story is how it is being told; it is how Saleem chooses to guide the hole in the perforated sheet. This notion of temporality empowers the narrative.
This whole idea gets a little bit messier and more complicated if we zoom out one step beyond Saleem’s frame narrative and try to consider how temporality and narrative authority function for Salman Rushdie and how temporality impacts the writing of fiction. This idea is a bit much to tackle here, but there’s one quote that I like, if Ty or Siau Rui wants to think about this idea. In the chapter “All-India Radio” (sorry, I have different page numbers from everyone else, so you’ll have to search a bit for the actual quote), Saleem says, “…the feeling had come upon me that I was somehow creating a world; that the thoughts I jumped inside were mine…which is to say, I had entered into the illusion of the artist.”
I was particularly interested in Ty’s suggestion that the future rewrites the past. I think, perhaps, that instead of everything existing at once with either a location or a velocity (if I understand correctly), we can think of it as a matter of perspective. When an event that we personally find important occurs, it becomes a focal point of a story, and the events that specifically and clearly led up to it rise in importance, while other events fall into obscurity. So much is based on our perspective of what matters, which I think Midnight’s Children points out quite well. If we want to think about it in terms of psychology instead of in terms of quantum mechanics, we might consider schemas. These are the mental frameworks that simplify life. Essentially, the world has too many events and stimulants for us to concentrate on all of them, so instead we simplify by categorizing and creating different frameworks for events and people. For example, we know to buy tickets at a movie theater or to be quiet at a library or to treat an officer of the military with respect, etc. Stereotypes are born from schemas. More importantly, once we have schemas, we tend to only notice the details that reaffirm our schemas, and we ignore those stimuli or details that might contradict them. Thus, in terms of studying history, we study the details that reaffirm and support our ideas of cause and effect.
This kind of forward and backward of cause and effect and schema-related concentration pervades Midnight’s Children. My thinking gets a little messy here, but as an example, right as Saleem begins his story when Aadam Aziz is young, he says “And already I can see the repetitions beginning; because didn’t my grandmother also find enormous… and the stroke, too, was not the only… and the Brass Monkey had her birds… the curse begins already, and we haven’t even got to the noses yet!” (7). The details he finds important in the past reflect the details of his life experience that he finds important. He can find the connections amongst the multitudes of experiences in life. The story is cohesive because of the connections. Saleem is essential because he holds the story together as storyteller, and as storyteller he chooses what matters in history, trusting us to trust him. We feel we can do so, because Saleem, as Ty pointed out, can know everyone by infiltrating their thoughts. As Ty also pointed out, though, the sum is never the same as the parts, and so while Saleem can understand all the important events of the stories, they can never all come together fully and cohesively without him. He is the whole. Everyone’s parts create him, a different specimen altogether. The stories are Saleem’s truth because he creates the histories and hierarchies of importance. Furthermore, we must accept that this is enough, because their real purpose is to give meaning to Saleem, who has “been the swallower of lives; and to know [him], just the one of [him], you’ll have to swallow the lot as well” (4). He tells the story to “end up meaning—yes, meaning something… above all things [he] fear[s] absurdity” (4). This leads to Ty’s questions about chance and fate, “unless, of course, there’s no such thing as chance” (86). It is not all chance though, because Saleem chooses what is important, which is not chance. What happens may be fate, but how it all fits together (or not) to create a person and a meaning is all carefully constructed, conscious Saleem.
In yesterday’s presentations, the particular notion that has stayed with me is Rushdie’s fame in winning the Booker and the notoriety that his subsequent career has sustained has in fact created a sort of blockade against other Indian writers, who are overshadowed by this literary giant. Rushdie’s position reminded me of the place that Saleem and Shiva hold over the other Midnight Children, and how Saleem becomes the dominant force that tends to overshadow Shiva and the others, due only to his ability to understand all thoughts. Rushdie, in writing this novel, is in fact making a stab at understanding the inner psyche of multiple characters, and while he doesn’t have the telepathic abilities of Saleem, the connection can withstand that stretch. Siau Rui, it might be interesting for you to look into any other authors attempting to make a stab at Rushdie’s level of fame, and whether or not other Indian writers see him as a positive or negative force to the countries literary heritage.
Ty’s thoughts on time within the novel intrigued me as well, although I will admit that the more detailed science of things went over my head. I clung most to that idea of the future telling the past, as Saleem is forced to move fluidly through time in order to properly tell what would otherwise have been a mundane linear narrative.
According to Siao Rui, one of the debates surrounding Midnight’s Children is whether a story of the individual needs to be told through the lens of nationality. This question is especially pertinent to postcolonial literature, for which the mantra seems to be “the personal is political” or “everything is political.” The only semi-postcolonial book I’m aware of that skirts political matters is The Good Earth, a plain life tale about a Chinese farmer. But perhaps the fact that it was authored by an American woman supplied it with the cross-cultural, national aspect missing from the novel itself. During WWII, the novel helped Americans acclimate to the idea of the Chinese as allies. So perhaps it is difficult for people to avoid seeing individuals as somehow representative of their nation.
To tailor this question of the individual/ nationhood to Midnight’s Children, we should perhaps ask whether this book is concerned with individuality. I would argue that individuality isn’t its central concern. Every character’s behavior seems much more the effect of their social class than of self-determination. Aside from Saleem, other characters often lack insight into their own motivations. And Saleem only recounts childhood events as they are important in preparing him to connect with other Midnight Children. We agreed in class that this story is a meta-theatrical one about story-telling, especially since its being told in flashback gives Saleem absolute control of the narrative. Perhaps Rushdie makes storytelling rather than individual psychology the primary concern of his story because he wants to comment on the way Indian people tell stories about themselves. Perhaps he believes that Indians think of their heritage (postcolonial included) in the wrong way; they become caught up in bits and pieces of good and bad rather than taking in and learning from the whole picture. The conflict resulting from the Saleem’s family’s prejudices and simultaneous idolizing and villainizing of the British is ever-present like the house they live in. When they’re caught up in their own image and self-righteousness, their dreams become capitalizing in nature and they fail to realize themselves and the country fully. Perhaps the MCC is meant to symbolize the potential found in mindful youth of all backgrounds.
Siau Rui: I thought you did a great job providing background information on Salman Rushdie and his life after the publication of Midnight’s Children and, perhaps more importantly, after the publication of The Satanic Verses. Many of the Booker-winning authors never gain the sort of fame that accompanies writers whose product is geared more to the masses than to the literary elite, but Rushie is a common name even among those who haven’t read his works. I found the story of his condemnation and time spent in hiding quite interesting, and I look forward to reading more of his work after finishing Midnight’s Children to see how his writing changed over time.
Ty: I commend you for taking a daring leap by bringing a fairly complicated principle of physical science into a literature presentation. While I think the same ideas of temporality could be presented in several ways, taking a creative approach brought the idea across in a new way and led into a solid class discussion. The narrative voice in Midnight’s Children has some fascinating attributes in regards to the passage of time and the function of memory, and offering a somewhat scientific explanation for the function of Saleem’s supernatural abilities brought an interdisciplinary sense of breadth to our discussion of the first half of the novel.
Siau Rui
I am intrigued by the elitism that you exposed in Rushdie; his contempt for the Indian Novel, his britishisms, the fact of his being knighted etc. Reading Midnight’s Children, I thought I saw Rushdie in the character of Nadir Khan, the plump modernist poet who Rushdie ridicules, but also seems to endow with a quiet romance. Nadir Khan says, “I do not believe in high art, Mian Sahib. Now art must be beyond categories; my poetry and –oh- the game of hit-the-spittoon are equals” (45). I refer to this quotation because it seems to me that this is Rushdie’s aim in the novel to mingle the so called, transcendent qualities of classical art with the grotesque realities of human life. He merges the binary, attempting to create a complete vision of the world- the Lotus flower that grows in the dung- the lapis lazuli spittoon. Rushdie attempts to put the whole world is his book, as Lifafa Das tries to put “everything in his box” (81). To do this Rushdie must be “beyond categories” he must encapsulate all of reality. However, after hearing your presentation on Rushdie, I had to reassess my reading of the novel. Rushdie seems very concerned with an elite system, and I wonder whether his writing subverts or perpetuates British cultural and literary hegemony.
Ty
Thinking in terms of quantum physics is a fascinating way to approach this book; as I mentioned in class I think that modern science is touching on an ancient perception of divinity as something that cannot be divided. In the Song of Songs, God is often described as both male and female, creator and destroyer etc. There is an idea that the whole of God is something that cannot be perceived by the human mind because the human existence is necessarily fragmented and divided. Even our system of language is incapable of describing God, because our linguistic system is based on categorizing and establishing object and other. Divinity was perceived as a absolute unity of all things. Thus the experience of being human is an experience of fragmentation. The hole in Aziz prevents him from seeing the whole. Perhaps it is necessary, not to be able to perceive all of reality. There is a Hindu story about a man who tried so hard to understand the world that he eventually fell out of Vishnu’s ear, he discovered that the world and all its people were a dream of the sleeping god who was adrift on the ocean, and this discovery terrified him so deeply that he instantly went back into Vishnu’s mind and repressed the memory. Like Mumtaz and Aziz, perhaps we need to see in fragments in order to be happy, because it is impossible to digest the whole of the world.I see the idea of quantum, whole, as an scientific expression of this conception of divinity. The Qur’an is arranged in a nonlinear manner in order to encapsulate the unity of the divine. Ahmed Sinai’s desire to reorder the Qur’an speaks to the mechanism you discussed through which we perceive reality by making it linear. Yet, there is evidence of a wholeness beyond our understanding.
Siau Rui presented a clear background and history to Salman Rushdie, and more importantly, to the “persona” of Rushdie – a persona which has perhaps outgrown the “literary” Rushdie. The Satanic Verses controversy is quite interesting, an example of the story of the storyteller, something paralleled by Saleem in Midnight’s Children. How fitting that the author Rushdie would have a personal narrative as interesting as his written narratives. And more fitting that this idea would be formulated (predicted) in his written work before its “historical” occurrence. How very Saleem of him.
Ty of course presented a fascinating critical presentation that was sure to open discussion, one that seemed to revolve (from what I could hear in my feverish state) around the elaboration of the temporality theory that Ty explained and how it applied to the text. It definitely connects with Saleem’s structure of the narrative, and is supported by many passages in the text which others have posted up in the blog already. A good find to be sure, another angle to approach the novel. I’ve heard another, somewhat simpler explanation for such liminality, the Buddhist term “emptiness.”
I remember Rushdie as quoted in discussion saying something along the lines of: “I tried my hardest to not make the story an allegory.” I think this statement is tongue-in-cheek, or more likely revealing Rushdie’s feeling about allegories – that the best-told allegories are full stories on their own without true need to understand references. So I think Midnight’s Children’s greatest accomplishment is the merging of the personal narrative and the historical conscience. I say conscience because it is not quite a mergence of personal narrative and historical fact, or a true historical “timeline,” but a history of culture, myth and region combined. There are allegories, allusions littered throughout the text – actually in every chapter there is a major cultural parallel being drawn. It is important to remember the Post-Colonial nature of this novel as the text moves forward, especially as the “midnight” children evolve, in order to gain some perspective on Rushdie’s imagined post-colonial India and its future.
Siau Riu–
I was fascinated by the relationship between Rushdie and Islam that you talked about in your presentation. One thing that you mentioned that I found particularly interesting was how he reacted to the fatwa–specifically, that one of the things which upset him was the sympathy which he had for the people who issued it. It made me wonder about how cynically I should take Rushdie’s conversion (and subsequent… reversion? inversion?) to Islam–whether or not to read that as an oddly open-hearted attempt to honestly understand the people who condemned him, or as a sort of spiritual bribery. I also wondered how he was received by the Muslim world, both in Pakistan and elsewhere–not just who condemned him, sure, but also who supported him, if there were imans or scholars who defended the Satanic Verses, who argued for other readings of the text. I wonder what Ayatollah Khomeini’s advisors told him which made him issue the fatwa–and I wonder who started this idea, that it was heretical in the first place. It also makes me want to read the damn thing.
In Siau Rui’s presentation, I found it particularly interesting that Rushdie’s success was criticized to have intensified the neglect of non-English Indian literature. As we briefly discussed in class, many colonized writers come across the challenge of which language to adopt when trying to establish their own narratives in the postcolonial period. While it is understandable that there be more demand for literature in English given the wide adoption of the language, it is also intriguing that the Indian literature in English is considered a substitute for Indian literature written in other languages (which I believe are fundamentally different). While Rushdie offers a new perspective of a newborn nation through Midnight’s Children, he also abolishes others when the readers assume that they are all essentially the same and thus one is replaceable by another. I think such a sentiment, along with Rushdie’s special position as an anglicized writer compromises the legitimacy of Midnight’s Children as a national and representative Indian literature.
At the same time, I think there is something about Saleem that gives Midnight’s Children a new dimension. In connection with Ty’s description of Midnight’s Children as an “emotional history,” I think Saleem invites the reader into “retelling” of the past by opening up the process of rearranging historical events (that aren’t necessarily accurate). He isn’t shy about incorporating unrealistic details in his story, such as how the dogs in the night of Abdulla’s assassination attacked and killed the assassins (49) and the transformation of Ahmed Sinai into a Nadir look-alike solely through Amina’s “assiduity” (74).
Siau Rui
I think you picked the right material for the first presentation. Getting to learn a little about the author as a persona is always helpful especially in the context of a class that is focused on a literary prize. There are very few classes that get to talk about the politics involved in the creation of contemporary literature. So I find myself appreciating the discussion of Rushdie as an author especially someone who can be a controversial character. But I think what really comes with talking about Rushdie is the beginning of a discussion of Post-Empire novels in English. And possibly how Midnight’s Children is the first Indian-de-colonial novel (De-colonial in the sense that it’s producing and contributing to de-colonial knowledge in the Indian and the global literary conscience ). Professor Billings put it very well when he said (something along the lines of) : “Sometimes all the creative genius is above the novelist.” But I would add that Rushdie knows this. I argue that maybe we feel this way about this novel because it’s constantly double critiquing the western culture that it is engaged with and the indian culture it was built upon even the muslim culture that Rushdie is from. This constant critiquing is setting the frame and form of the novel which confuses us. But I think it falls exactly into a de-colonial agenda.
I have scribbled in my notes from Tuesday “Is the best way to win a booker prize to tell a national history through a personal history?”. While I don’t remember who posed the question, I thought I might speak to it, or speak around it. Yes, I think this seems to be a really solid way to win the booker prize, although as Rushdie might contend, national history often is personal history. Or at least, personal histories make national histories manageable. This is more than just “One death is a tragedy, a million deaths is just a statistic”, but rather that somehow Rushie’s unbelievably profuse detail functions very symbolically.
Ty’s very tight reading of time in Midnight’s Children supports this because Saleem manipulates time to bring a personal story out of the huge amount of raw material he has in national history. I’ve been trying to think of a way to describe time in the novel, and I think I’ve fallen short, but this is what I’ve got. It’s like Saleem is watching a DVD, he can control when it leaps forward and pauses, and rewinds. But he can also hold it as a complete unit in his hands. While he can’t change what’s going to happen, he can change what he shows, and there is a sense of inevitability against the flood of data.
I think my problem with the novel, with this reading that time is wholly a product of personal experience, is that it strips us of absolutes and is distinctly decentering. This is what I was trying to get at the end of Tuesday’s class. What is certain in the text amidst all this construction? Whenever anything seems certain in the text, it is pulled from under our feet. I felt Padma’s outrage when she realized Saleem was switched at birth, because it is precisely this type of undercutting of everything assumed that makes the text difficult. I also like the fact that, amid the incredible abundance of detail, Rushdie is in some ways as sparse as any writer because at heart all he is providing is a story with nothing concrete behind it.
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