Read Books Not Blogs

Gary sent me this picture which he got from The Girl in the Green Dress











Good fiction is packed with far more truth than most non-fiction. And it's a great escape from the here and now. But I've been trapped in Salman Rushdie for much too long.

I started reading The Ground Beneath Her Feet on the plane to Thailand last February. It starts out in Mumbai full of Rushdie's wild prose riffs that soar, race, even explode, always challenging.

Why do we care about singers? Wherein lies the power of the songs? Maybe it derives from the sheer strangeness of there being singing in the world. The note, the scale, the chord; melodies, harmonies, arrangements; symphonies, ragas, Chinese operas, jazz, the blues: that such things should exist, that we should have discovered the magical intervals and distances that yield the poor cluster of notes, all within the span of a human hand, from which we can build our cathedrals of sound, is as alchemical a mystery as mathematics, or wine, or love. (p. 19)

Some of his books are like that non-stop. In this one the gaps got longer and longer as he wandered off into cosmic collisions that didn't work for me. The second half of the book became a burden as I had to slog through the parts between the brilliance.

A fictional rock impresario explains why he bought the pirate radio ships blasting rock and roll into England in the 60's when the government stations on land only played the music of the past:

I understood then that the limit on the needle time was the enemy, the censor. The limit was General Waste-More-Land's broadcasting ally, General Haig's whore. Enough with big bands and men in white tuxes with bow ties pretending nothing was going on. I mean come on. A nation at war deserves to hear the music that's going mano a mano with the war machine, that's sticking flowers down its gun barrels and baring its breasts to the missiles. The soldiers are singing these songs as they die. But this is not the way soldiers used to sing, marching into battle bellowing hymns, kidding themselves they had god on their side; these aren't patriotic-bullshit, get-yourself-up-for-it songs These kids are using singing instead, as an affirmation of what's natural and true, singing against the unnatural lie of the war. Using song as a banner of their doomed youth. Not morituri te salutant, but morituri say up yours, Jack, those about to die give you the fucking finger. That's why I got the ships. (p. 267)

...and whenever someone who knows you disappears, you lose one version of yourself. Yourself as you were seen, as you were judged to be. Lover or enemy, mother or friend, those who know us construct us, and their several knowings slant the different facets of our characters like diamond-cutter's tools. Each such loss is a step leading to the grave, where all versions blend and end. (p. 509)

I kept putting it down, picking it up, putting it down again. Mostly I was caught up with work in Thailand, studying Thai, and just being in Thailand. And I've read some non-fiction - mostly trying to figure out how to use this computer better, but also Maimonides. I probably should have permanently set Rushdie aside a couple hundred pages ago. But like a gambler at a slot machine, I'd get another small prose jackpot which kept me plugging along until now I'm at page 518, only 57 to go. I'll be out from under the tyranny of this book soon, free to enjoy fiction again.

Books should be hard to put down. This one is hard to pick up. And today I picked up a totally different book. It's only 180 pages. It's by Angolan, José Eduardo Agualusa, and is translated from the Portuguese. Totally engaging. The Book of the Chameleons is narrated by a gecko on the walls of the house of Félix Ventura.

"But do tell me, my dear man - who are your clients?"
Félix Ventura gave in. There was a whole class, he explained a whole new bourgeoisie, who sought him out. They were businessmen, ministers, landowners, diamond smugglers, generals - people, in other words, whose futures are secure. But what these people lack is a good past, a distinguished ancestry, diplomas. In sum, a name that resonates with nobility and culture. He sells them a brand new past. He draws up their family tree. He provides them with photographs of their grandparents and great-grandparents, gentlemen of elegant bearing and old-fashioned ladies...He sells them this simple dream.