![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
primeidealIn "The Wizard and I" from Wicked, Elphaba sings about how her family resents her because of her unnatural green appearance. But she also hopes that meeting the wizard will allow her to find a purpose behind "this gift or this curse" of magic, and that he won't judge her by her looks. In Forrest Gump, the titular character inadvertently bumbles through decades of US history, exposing the Watergate scandal and teaching Elvis Presley to dance. From the viewers' perspective, there's a lot of dramatic irony, because they know the significance of those events, but the simpleminded protagonist does not. I recognize my pop culture allusions are not particularly diverse or scholarly, and I don't mean to denigrate or shortchange Midnight's Children by comparing it to these two. But Saleem Sinai is an incredibly compelling narrator, whether he's talking about the search for meaning in his magical destiny, his family drama, or the tragic weight of history.
I read an anniversary edition with a new preface from Rushdie, and he talks about the mythical-scale narration:
If you're willing to suspend disbelief and take for granted that Saleem, as the narrator, just knows all of this backstory (rather than ascribing it to being a fantasy), the speculative element is actually pretty slight. The eponymous "Midnight's Children," those born in the first hour after India's independence, have magical powers. But they really only communicate with each other during the age 10-14 timeframe, at which point none of them are really exerting large-scale influence on the world. Later, Saleem loses his telepathy and gains, instead, a preternatural sense of smell, which not only allows him to experience normal senses but also emotional, subjective ones. He perceives it as magic, but it's also related to his role as narrator which allows him to sense things that would be unnoticed otherwise.
If you're tired of the verbal tic "[concrete noun] of [abstract noun]"--the onions of injustice, the baby clothes of bitterness, the bicycles of colonialism--I am sorry to say that Midnight's Children is a worse offender here than a dozen purple-prose fanfics put together. On the other hand, some of the depictions of metropolis life often feature nouns thrown together without commas--"turning flamethrowers machine-guns hand grenades upon the city slums." This stylistic choice worked for me, in the sense of indirectly portraying everything happening all at once.
Before reading this book, my knowledge of the history of modern South Asia was limited to, approximately: "the British realized that they needed to give the area independence so they drew a very rough boundary that approximately separated the Hindus and Muslims, the Hindu side became India and the Muslim side became Pakistan, this was obviously a crude approximation and the border region was very contested, but the British were like 'eh we're done being colonizers it's someone else's problem now.'" I actually didn't feel like I needed to be an expert in order to appreciate the book--I will say I did learn a lot. For instance, the area that's Bangladesh was the "East Wing" of a non-contiguous Pakistan from 1947-1971. Is that good to know? Yes! Am I going to beat myself up for not knowing it? I could, but I won't, because...
...there is no one who beats themselves up about history more than Saleem Sinai. He sees everything that happens in history (including stuff before his birth, like the bombing of Hiroshima) as psychically linked to his family. Language riots, border clashes, coups--he is the twin of India, born in the same minute, so its suffering is his responsibility. In turn, when his magical powers emerge, he feels a desperation to do something important with them, to figure out a purpose. He feels like he has to earn his parents' love, to repay their investment in him, particularly when revelations come out that might threaten family loyalty (in the end they don't). I have a wonderful, healthy, loving relationship with my parents, and (as far as I know) have no telepathic powers. But I feel like everyone who's been called a gifted kid at some point or another has also struggled with the question of "so what do I do with these talents, what's my purpose?" And I'm not sure if everyone else feels the strain of "everything that's happening around the country, around the world, is my fault, oh no" as acutely or painfully as I do, but that made Saleem a very sympathetic woobie from my point of view!
A minus: the version of the book I read was about 648 pages (not including the preface). I feel like you could have cut out a lot of the potty humor and incestuous vibes and still had a very sizable, even more readable, book.
And some random bullet-point stuff I enjoyed or found striking:
-there's a funny interchange about a Catholic bishop giving advice to one of his priests about what to do if a parishioner asks you about what Jesus looked like.
-"When the blackmail letters arrived, they contained a list of “satisfied customers” who had paid up and stayed in business. The Ravana gang—like all professionals—gave references." Hahaha.
-one character plays "Kashmiri Song" (written by British people) on a player piano handed down from the Englishman who sold her the house. I recognized the opening line because Agha Shahid Ali riffed on it to write his own poem!
-When the identity of Mahatma Gandhi's assassin is discovered, the Muslim family are like "oh, thank God, it's not a Muslim name, there won't be backlash against us." Too real. :/
I read an anniversary edition with a new preface from Rushdie, and he talks about the mythical-scale narration:
I was thinking of India’s oral narrative traditions, too, which were a form of storytelling in which digression was almost the basic principle; the storyteller could tell, in a sort of whirling cycle, a fictional tale, a mythological tale, a political story, and an autobiographical story; he—because it was always a he—could intersperse his multiple narratives with songs and keep large audiences entranced.
As a narrator, Saleem is nearly omniscient (he goes into detail about events that happened in his grandparents' lives, decades before his birth, and it doesn't seem like even magical powers could have informed him of that), but also unreliable--in the frame story, we hear him addressing "Padma," who rolls her eyes at his flights of fancy. He interweaves different narratives very non-linearly, sometimes rapidly jumping back and forth between several different dialogues that would be part of consecutive but separate scenes in a more traditional chronicle, and other times foreshadowing his own future by namedropping characters who won't appear for several more chapters. I'm not an expert on other cultures' mythology, but from what I know, this kind of rapid-fire shift isn't specifically Indian so much as an epic-scale precursor to the "traditional" novel.If you're willing to suspend disbelief and take for granted that Saleem, as the narrator, just knows all of this backstory (rather than ascribing it to being a fantasy), the speculative element is actually pretty slight. The eponymous "Midnight's Children," those born in the first hour after India's independence, have magical powers. But they really only communicate with each other during the age 10-14 timeframe, at which point none of them are really exerting large-scale influence on the world. Later, Saleem loses his telepathy and gains, instead, a preternatural sense of smell, which not only allows him to experience normal senses but also emotional, subjective ones. He perceives it as magic, but it's also related to his role as narrator which allows him to sense things that would be unnoticed otherwise.
If you're tired of the verbal tic "[concrete noun] of [abstract noun]"--the onions of injustice, the baby clothes of bitterness, the bicycles of colonialism--I am sorry to say that Midnight's Children is a worse offender here than a dozen purple-prose fanfics put together. On the other hand, some of the depictions of metropolis life often feature nouns thrown together without commas--"turning flamethrowers machine-guns hand grenades upon the city slums." This stylistic choice worked for me, in the sense of indirectly portraying everything happening all at once.
Before reading this book, my knowledge of the history of modern South Asia was limited to, approximately: "the British realized that they needed to give the area independence so they drew a very rough boundary that approximately separated the Hindus and Muslims, the Hindu side became India and the Muslim side became Pakistan, this was obviously a crude approximation and the border region was very contested, but the British were like 'eh we're done being colonizers it's someone else's problem now.'" I actually didn't feel like I needed to be an expert in order to appreciate the book--I will say I did learn a lot. For instance, the area that's Bangladesh was the "East Wing" of a non-contiguous Pakistan from 1947-1971. Is that good to know? Yes! Am I going to beat myself up for not knowing it? I could, but I won't, because...
...there is no one who beats themselves up about history more than Saleem Sinai. He sees everything that happens in history (including stuff before his birth, like the bombing of Hiroshima) as psychically linked to his family. Language riots, border clashes, coups--he is the twin of India, born in the same minute, so its suffering is his responsibility. In turn, when his magical powers emerge, he feels a desperation to do something important with them, to figure out a purpose. He feels like he has to earn his parents' love, to repay their investment in him, particularly when revelations come out that might threaten family loyalty (in the end they don't). I have a wonderful, healthy, loving relationship with my parents, and (as far as I know) have no telepathic powers. But I feel like everyone who's been called a gifted kid at some point or another has also struggled with the question of "so what do I do with these talents, what's my purpose?" And I'm not sure if everyone else feels the strain of "everything that's happening around the country, around the world, is my fault, oh no" as acutely or painfully as I do, but that made Saleem a very sympathetic woobie from my point of view!
A minus: the version of the book I read was about 648 pages (not including the preface). I feel like you could have cut out a lot of the potty humor and incestuous vibes and still had a very sizable, even more readable, book.
And some random bullet-point stuff I enjoyed or found striking:
-there's a funny interchange about a Catholic bishop giving advice to one of his priests about what to do if a parishioner asks you about what Jesus looked like.
God is love, and the Hindu love-god, Krishna, is always depicted with blue skin. Tell them blue, it will be a sort of bridge between the faiths; gently does it, you follow; and besides blue is a neutral sort of color, avoids the usual color problems, gets you away from black and white: yes, on the whole I’m sure it’s the one to choose.
-speaking of colorism, there's a part where Padma is dismissive of Saleem's mother because the latter has very dark skin. This was also an issue in "A Master of Djinn." On the one hand, it's kind of a relief to know that Europeans don't have a monopoly on discrimination--people can be judgmental and petty everywhere! On the other hand, it sometimes feels cynical or hopeless--"look, even the Oppressed people aren't able to be Good and Just, because the Evil of the Oppressor people has irreparably worn off on them!" Might just be me.-"When the blackmail letters arrived, they contained a list of “satisfied customers” who had paid up and stayed in business. The Ravana gang—like all professionals—gave references." Hahaha.
-one character plays "Kashmiri Song" (written by British people) on a player piano handed down from the Englishman who sold her the house. I recognized the opening line because Agha Shahid Ali riffed on it to write his own poem!
-When the identity of Mahatma Gandhi's assassin is discovered, the Muslim family are like "oh, thank God, it's not a Muslim name, there won't be backlash against us." Too real. :/
-"Muhammad (on whose name be peace, let me add; I don’t want to offend anyone)" this aged well :/
-speaking of giving offense, Indira Gandhi (prime minister, daughter of the first prime minister, not related to Mahatma) is portrayed seizing power--tens of thousands of people were arrested, hundreds of thousands displaced, millions coercively sterilized. In the first printing of the book, Saleem suggests that her son blamed her neglectful attitude for his father's death and that that gave the son undue influence on her. Indira took offense to that last one.
-telepathy obeys the Doppler effect!
-There were 1001 original Midnight Children; Saleem points out that this is a symbolic number because of the 1001 Nights. Unfortunately, 420 died before he learned of their existence. This, obviously, is symbolic because 420 is a bad number. Is this a pot joke? Was 420 already the pot number in India in 1981? Nope: in the Indian Penal Code, Section 420 refers to cheating, con men, and the like. But wait a minute, the midnight children were born in the same hour as the country--were the laws already a known quantity pre-independence? Yes! The original code was first drafted in the colonial era and came into effect in the 1860s, so it had decades to become a known quantity (literally and figuratively) before Saleem came onto the scene. Meme numbers!
-Saleem sends an anonymous blackmail letter by clipping from newspaper headlines: "cutting up history to suit my nefarious purposes." Nice blend of personal and national.
-There's a long clipping from an in-universe document written in a very different register than Saleem's main narration, which paraphrases a story about a magical child who survives the destruction of his home to be raised by ordinary Earthlings. I don't know a whole lot about superheroes, but as I read this, I was like "...isn't this literally just the plot of Superman?" A few pages later, Saleem takes over again, and says "I guess I'm the only person here familiar with Western pop culture, because this is literally just the plot of Superman." Score one for me!
-"The way it was: Begin.—No choice?—None; when was there ever?" This is all Saleem talking to himself and girding himself up to talk about an extremely dark time, but the tone gave me Rosencrantz and Guildenstern vibes.
-Saleem's father once had an ambition to rearrange the entire Quran in chronological order. Muhammad Daily!
-"Time has been an unsteady affair, in my experience, not a thing to be relied upon. It could even be partitioned: the clocks in Pakistan would run half an hour ahead of their Indian counterparts." -"The sons of the great unmake their parents. But I, too, have a son; Aadam Sinai, flying in the face of precedent, will reverse the trend. Sons can be better than their fathers, as well as worse..."
In context (more than 70% of the way through), Saleem mentioning that his son is named after Saleem's grandfather comes as a hopeful sign. He also mentions that one reason he's writing the story is that his son can learn from him--no matter the failings and shortcomings of Saleem's generation, the younger Aadam will have a chance to build on it. But the very end is kind of bleak--yes, Aadam and his peers may have their own magic, but what if they're also cursed to suffer under the weight of history?
But there's one other hopeful twist, reading this book in 2022, that Rushdie couldn't have planned on:
Bingo: I planned on using it for Historical Fantasy; it's also a gimme for Family Matters, Standalone, No Ifs Ands Or Buts, Author of Color. I'm wondering now if it might be borderline for Urban Fantasy, Anti-Hero, and/or Revolutions/Rebellions? We'll see.
-speaking of giving offense, Indira Gandhi (prime minister, daughter of the first prime minister, not related to Mahatma) is portrayed seizing power--tens of thousands of people were arrested, hundreds of thousands displaced, millions coercively sterilized. In the first printing of the book, Saleem suggests that her son blamed her neglectful attitude for his father's death and that that gave the son undue influence on her. Indira took offense to that last one.
-telepathy obeys the Doppler effect!
-There were 1001 original Midnight Children; Saleem points out that this is a symbolic number because of the 1001 Nights. Unfortunately, 420 died before he learned of their existence. This, obviously, is symbolic because 420 is a bad number. Is this a pot joke? Was 420 already the pot number in India in 1981? Nope: in the Indian Penal Code, Section 420 refers to cheating, con men, and the like. But wait a minute, the midnight children were born in the same hour as the country--were the laws already a known quantity pre-independence? Yes! The original code was first drafted in the colonial era and came into effect in the 1860s, so it had decades to become a known quantity (literally and figuratively) before Saleem came onto the scene. Meme numbers!
-Saleem sends an anonymous blackmail letter by clipping from newspaper headlines: "cutting up history to suit my nefarious purposes." Nice blend of personal and national.
-There's a long clipping from an in-universe document written in a very different register than Saleem's main narration, which paraphrases a story about a magical child who survives the destruction of his home to be raised by ordinary Earthlings. I don't know a whole lot about superheroes, but as I read this, I was like "...isn't this literally just the plot of Superman?" A few pages later, Saleem takes over again, and says "I guess I'm the only person here familiar with Western pop culture, because this is literally just the plot of Superman." Score one for me!
-"The way it was: Begin.—No choice?—None; when was there ever?" This is all Saleem talking to himself and girding himself up to talk about an extremely dark time, but the tone gave me Rosencrantz and Guildenstern vibes.
-Saleem's father once had an ambition to rearrange the entire Quran in chronological order. Muhammad Daily!
-"Time has been an unsteady affair, in my experience, not a thing to be relied upon. It could even be partitioned: the clocks in Pakistan would run half an hour ahead of their Indian counterparts."
In context (more than 70% of the way through), Saleem mentioning that his son is named after Saleem's grandfather comes as a hopeful sign. He also mentions that one reason he's writing the story is that his son can learn from him--no matter the failings and shortcomings of Saleem's generation, the younger Aadam will have a chance to build on it. But the very end is kind of bleak--yes, Aadam and his peers may have their own magic, but what if they're also cursed to suffer under the weight of history?
But there's one other hopeful twist, reading this book in 2022, that Rushdie couldn't have planned on:
There were also coconuts and rice. And, above it all, the benign presiding influence of the goddess Mumbadevi, whose name—Mumbadevi, Mumbabai, Mumbai—may well have become the city’s. But then, the Portuguese named the place Bom Bahia for its harbor, and not for the goddess of the pomfret folk...
Well, in 1995, Saleem's hometown changed its name back to the local Marathi-language name. It's not easy, and it's not always linear, but India--like everywhere else--is building its own history, one bigger than any one person can take the blame for.Bingo: I planned on using it for Historical Fantasy; it's also a gimme for Family Matters, Standalone, No Ifs Ands Or Buts, Author of Color. I'm wondering now if it might be borderline for Urban Fantasy, Anti-Hero, and/or Revolutions/Rebellions? We'll see.
