weakdance

done reading rushdie's grimus. for a first novel this one's very ambitious, though not grandly ambitious as rushdie's more famous the satanic verses. here we see a writer whose mastery of the english language, seen in his extreme manipulations of the word, remains unparalleled and unmatched by any modern writer. then he mastered storytelling too. the second novel midnight's children shows us how the folk and the popular can be combined in a single work to give us grand (rushdie is all about repetition) entertainment while making transparent too, notions of self, country, and nationality. grimus is about science and art-philosophy. sir salman would later discover the uses of satire and allegory (midnight's, shame), and would apply those in his commentaries on the political and cultural situations of east and west.

a completely unrelated thought. i'm used to deifying (thanks for the word alanah). which makes it so difficult when, erm, figures you thought would make you feel like trash start acting like ordinary people. then you see right through them, realize they're your equal, and start not liking them anymore. gayatri spivak (i think i've quoted spivak a thousand times already!) calls herself a practical marxist feminist deconstructionist. can we call this practical masochism? haha. tanizaki, you're next.