Take a photo of a barcode or cover
elle_reads's Reviews (446)
Some of my favorite quotes:
“green and black the Widow’s hair and clutching hand and children mmff and little balls and one-by-one and torn-in-half and little balls go flying green black her hand is green her nails are black as black” (15).
“Padma - did you have, when you were little, a world of your own? A tin orb, on which were imprinted the continents and oceans and polar ice? Tow cheap metal hemispheres, clamped together by a plastic stand? No, of course not; but I did. It was a world full of labels: Atlantic Ocean and Amazon and Tropic of Capricorn. And, at the North Pole, it bore the legend: MADE AS ENGLAND. By August of the nodding signboards and the rapaciousness of Narlikar women, this tin world had lost its stand; I found Scotch Tape and stuck the earth together at the Equator, and then, my urge for play overcoming my respect, began to use it as a football. In the aftermath...I clanked by tin sphere around the Estate, secure in the knowledge that the world was still in one piece...and also at by feet” (305).
“What my aunt Alia took pleasure in: cooking. What she had during the lonely madness of the years, raised to the level of an art-form: the impregnation of food with emotions...she fed us the birianis of dissension and nargisi koftas of discord; and little by little even the harmonies of my parents’ autumnal love went out of tune” (378).
“I had also been overwhelmed by an agonizing feeling of sympathy for the country which was not only my twin-in-birth but also joined to me (so to speak) at the hip, so that what happened to either of us, happened to us both” (444).
“We, the children of Independence, rushed wildly and too fast into our future; he [Saleem’s son, Aadam], Emergency-born, will be is already more cautious, biding his time; but when he acts, he will be impossible to resist” (489).
I was first introduced to Rushdie through a excerpt in my British Literature class. His use of sound fascinated me. I read his writing aloud to myself over a cup of tea in a small study room. Every iota of prose is treated as a line of poetry. He purposefully inserts chanting cadences throughout the narrative to slow the reader. I want my writing to sound like that - to have that intense connectivity of sound and structural meaning.
Rushdie pulls the reader alongside the narrator writer in Midnight's Children. The plot weaves in and out of present and past time - connecting minuscule details (his uncle's movie became famous because the characters kissed items so their scenes were deemed appropriate yet erotic) and major plot points (the movements of his mother and her lover in a cafe).
Throughout all of this intertwining events, Rushdie still focuses on social commentary. The narrator recognizes his own use of stratifying social cues in order to avoid going outside and perhaps to the doctor's office. He escalates the socio-economic dialect of his voice and purposefully passes around food motivating the other character to hear his stories of older days. As the reader, I see the manipulation utilized by the narrator. I am more cautious of his truth and begin to identify him as potentially an unreliable narrator.
Alongside the narrator’s layers upon layers of plot, I fell down the rabbit hole of Indian history. Again. Again. Again. Farther. Farther. Farther. I enjoyed it. To say I learned a lot just to understand all of the allusions in Midnight’s Children is an understatement. Rushdie is a master metaphorical allusions. His main character, Saleem Sinai, who begins the story recalling the life of his grandfather, parallels India’s tumulous ties to independence and national identity. Saleem Sinai is one of the children born on the midnight of India’s independence. His is given recognition by the officials, has his photo in the newspaper, and has telepathic powers. He is also the narrator of the story weaving the hardships of writing with his pen alongside the history of his time. Rushdie piles layers upon layers of story through a questionably reliable narrator with a very certain bias.
Yet, it is Rushdie’s ability to latch onto one particular metaphor and string it through the events that astounds me. Dust, cooking, bicycles, etc. and their relationship to Saleem are described in detail before disappearing and reentering the narrative with unvanquished force 78 pages later. I want to be able to blend the concrete and abstract together in my writing like Rushdie. The many difficult themes present in personifying a nation without a national identity find themselves in a small boy kicking around a broken globe.
“green and black the Widow’s hair and clutching hand and children mmff and little balls and one-by-one and torn-in-half and little balls go flying green black her hand is green her nails are black as black” (15).
“Padma - did you have, when you were little, a world of your own? A tin orb, on which were imprinted the continents and oceans and polar ice? Tow cheap metal hemispheres, clamped together by a plastic stand? No, of course not; but I did. It was a world full of labels: Atlantic Ocean and Amazon and Tropic of Capricorn. And, at the North Pole, it bore the legend: MADE AS ENGLAND. By August of the nodding signboards and the rapaciousness of Narlikar women, this tin world had lost its stand; I found Scotch Tape and stuck the earth together at the Equator, and then, my urge for play overcoming my respect, began to use it as a football. In the aftermath...I clanked by tin sphere around the Estate, secure in the knowledge that the world was still in one piece...and also at by feet” (305).
“What my aunt Alia took pleasure in: cooking. What she had during the lonely madness of the years, raised to the level of an art-form: the impregnation of food with emotions...she fed us the birianis of dissension and nargisi koftas of discord; and little by little even the harmonies of my parents’ autumnal love went out of tune” (378).
“I had also been overwhelmed by an agonizing feeling of sympathy for the country which was not only my twin-in-birth but also joined to me (so to speak) at the hip, so that what happened to either of us, happened to us both” (444).
“We, the children of Independence, rushed wildly and too fast into our future; he [Saleem’s son, Aadam], Emergency-born, will be is already more cautious, biding his time; but when he acts, he will be impossible to resist” (489).
I was first introduced to Rushdie through a excerpt in my British Literature class. His use of sound fascinated me. I read his writing aloud to myself over a cup of tea in a small study room. Every iota of prose is treated as a line of poetry. He purposefully inserts chanting cadences throughout the narrative to slow the reader. I want my writing to sound like that - to have that intense connectivity of sound and structural meaning.
Rushdie pulls the reader alongside the narrator writer in Midnight's Children. The plot weaves in and out of present and past time - connecting minuscule details (his uncle's movie became famous because the characters kissed items so their scenes were deemed appropriate yet erotic) and major plot points (the movements of his mother and her lover in a cafe).
Throughout all of this intertwining events, Rushdie still focuses on social commentary. The narrator recognizes his own use of stratifying social cues in order to avoid going outside and perhaps to the doctor's office. He escalates the socio-economic dialect of his voice and purposefully passes around food motivating the other character to hear his stories of older days. As the reader, I see the manipulation utilized by the narrator. I am more cautious of his truth and begin to identify him as potentially an unreliable narrator.
Alongside the narrator’s layers upon layers of plot, I fell down the rabbit hole of Indian history. Again. Again. Again. Farther. Farther. Farther. I enjoyed it. To say I learned a lot just to understand all of the allusions in Midnight’s Children is an understatement. Rushdie is a master metaphorical allusions. His main character, Saleem Sinai, who begins the story recalling the life of his grandfather, parallels India’s tumulous ties to independence and national identity. Saleem Sinai is one of the children born on the midnight of India’s independence. His is given recognition by the officials, has his photo in the newspaper, and has telepathic powers. He is also the narrator of the story weaving the hardships of writing with his pen alongside the history of his time. Rushdie piles layers upon layers of story through a questionably reliable narrator with a very certain bias.
Yet, it is Rushdie’s ability to latch onto one particular metaphor and string it through the events that astounds me. Dust, cooking, bicycles, etc. and their relationship to Saleem are described in detail before disappearing and reentering the narrative with unvanquished force 78 pages later. I want to be able to blend the concrete and abstract together in my writing like Rushdie. The many difficult themes present in personifying a nation without a national identity find themselves in a small boy kicking around a broken globe.
