The Alleged Failings of Rushdie's Shalimar the Clown

I've been following the reviews for Salman Rushdie's new novel, Shalimar the Clown and the bulk of them appear to be negative. Is that because it is simply mediocre work of literature, or is Rushdie being evaluated according to inflated standards that were established by the tremendous critical claim his early works, e.g., Midnight's Children received? Writing in The Nation, Lee Siegel notes that recent Rushdie reviews have presented a common narrative about Rushdie's artistic trajectory: the fall from an artistic state of grace. Siegel then proceeds to argue that the critcial consensus is correct: Rushdie has lost his subtle artistic touch and "seems to be writing novels that insisently annoate and reiterate what he believes to be a priori truths about life." And the main a priori truth that Rushdie reiterates concerns connectedness, the extent to which our lives are intertwined with others.

Unfortunately, Siegel suggests, Shalimar the Clown fails to present us with believeable characters and as a consequence never achieves the level of intimacy necessary to illuminate Rushdie's vision of the world's connectedness.

Siegel's damning judgments include the following:

"Alas, there is not a single real, intimate moment between characters in this book; not a single scene or situation unfolding according to its inner laws, away from the disheveling hurry of the novel's judgments and opinions; and barely any dialogue."

"Rushdie hastily comments on his characters and their milieus from the outside; he never gives them an inner life out of which they can act and speak for themselves."

"Max, for example, seems less a character than somebody's ego-ideal: i.e., the construction of a flawless self-image in response to feelings of humiliation and shame."

"But Rushdie himself apparently doesn't believe that we're all connected, because he portrays some of the people in this novel's world as if they lived on an alien planet."

"But so confused is this book beyond its complacent clarities, beyond its easy, all-embracing, platitudinous politics that its story finally undermines its theme. (Even the name "Noman," seemingly heavy with all kinds of significance, drifts through this mess of a novel into a portentous meaninglessness.) By attributing, as Rushdie does, the central violence in Shalimar to jealousy rather than to ideology, he is unwittingly affirming that people's stories are not alike; that whereas ideology funnels diverse thoughts and feelings into a single, pinpoint intensity, experience--for example, the experience of jealousy--shapes each person in a different way. Only tyrants delude themselves into seeing people and places as one undifferentiated mass, to be manipulated at will. Only tyrants, that is, and writers whose egos have been scarred and then inflated by the fury of tyrants."

The last remark, actually the final paragraph of the essay, interests me most, because the underlying claim presented here - that Rushdie presents us with a post-ideological vision in which people's differing beliefs about what's true or false are effectively rendered irrelevent - is one that Walter Benn Michaels makes against many 'postmodern' texts, both fictional and nonfictional.

The artistic challenge facing today's novelists, it would seem, is to write narratives that are genuinely dialogic, i.e., that present us with characters who [Internet connection acting funky; will save & follow this up later]

How to Write a PhD Dissertation: Get Down Words on Paper That are 'Good Enough'

To complete a PhD dissertation one should abandon aspirations of greatness, decide to finish the damn thing, and simply write. Easier said than done, especially if the ABD harbors perfectionist tendencies that can trigger crippling bouts of writer's block. Brian Bialkowski suggests repeating the following mantra in order to stay focused on what matters most: words on paper, words on paper, words on paper, words on paper....

And don't forget to remind yourself that "nobody is really going to care about what you write." Is that last reminder a blessing or a curse? Being told that what you're working on doesn't matter, to anybody, sort of takes the motivation away. Unless the ambition is simply to get the degree.

Three other 'secrets' that Bilakowski provides for the ABDs of the world out there.

1. The first great secret about finishing is that there is no great secret.

2.Stop telling yourself that the dissertation has to be great, that it has to redefine your field, that it has to be such a wonderful piece of scholarship that you will be able to trigger a bidding war between publishers the day after your defense

3. Repeat “words on paper” to reign in your wandering thoughts and commit to writing

Note to self: Get back to your research and writing.

Please Don't Call It Postmodern Science

Read Andrew O'Hehir's excellent piece on the science wars, i.e., how Republicans have politicized science in order to assist corporate interests and appease the religious right. By politicized, I mean that conservatives have contested the truth claims made by the scientific community in order to advance a parisan agenda that benefits an elite few. They argue, for example, that because no absolute proof exists for ideas such as global warming, it is merely one hypotheses among many and should not influence our public policy.

One aside: As an observer in the humanities with an interest in rhetoric and postmodern literature, I just wish that 'postmodern' (as in postmodern science) wasn't the modifier chosen to describe the pseduo-scientific pap that the conservatives in the anti-science camp spew. I suppose the author equates associating postmodernism with relativism, an equation that is not entirely unjustified. Without launching into a lengthy and complicated genealogy of postmodern thought, I just want to observe that some of America's foremost postmodern fiction writers - Thomas Pynchon, Richard Powers, Samuel Delaney, and Kurt Vonnegut immediately come to mind - and are distinguished by the extent of their scientific knowledge and their ability to integrate complex scientific ideas into their writing.

Reyonds Writes on Post-Punk

File Under: Must Read. Simon Reynolds is one of the best rock critics around, and his account of 'post-punk' (don't call it New Wave) is officially on my 'wish list.' Chances are that it'll have to wait for some time. Fortunately, Andy Beckett's review Another Tribe provides an overview.

I Want to Believe in the Young Literati

This week's New York Times Magazine section features a profile of the latest wave of literary journals written by A.O. Scott. The article, titled Among the Believers focuses primarily on The Believer and N + 1 both of which are based in Brooklyn. Reading about these publications filled me with both admiration and, I'll admit, envy. My admiration is based on my sense that the group of young editors and writers working on these publications are sincere about creating a space for eclectic and thoughtful literary writing (a term I won't try to define here) that doesn't slavishly follow publishing-industry trends. I say sense because I don't read these publications regularly, though I occasionally read articles from them, typically online. I remember being very impressed by Marco Roth's memorial essay on Derrida, Derrida: An Autothanatography, for example, which deftly blended personal ancedoctes with smart glosses on deconstructgion. It's heartening to find my generation of writers successfully integrating academic theory and philosophy, which is almost always denigrated when the mass media dains to refer to it, into non-academic publications. More importantly, it's fantastic that young writers are talking about the need to create an impersonal forum for debating ideas.

My envy comes from a sense that these young writers are engaging with many of the same ideas that I am in my PhD program. The difference is that they get to have a lot more fun doing so. But that's not the true source of my envy. To put it bluntly, my envy is class based. When I read this article, I first wondered how these young literati managed to support themselves and to pay for the magazine. Then I read about their backgrounds. Almost all of them attended the same prestigious East Coast Universities (Harvard, Columbia, etc.) and appear to come from rather privileged backgrounds. There's nothing wrong with that, but it did make the whole scene seem rather insular and somehow inaccessible. It's kinda like learning that the Beastie Boys and The Strokes were all rich kids. I don't hold that against them, and I respect the way that they seem not to take their class privileges for granted. Nonetheless, what they've achieved seems diminished somehow by the fact that they've had a huge safety net (financial and cultural capital) that has protected and enabled them to focus their energies on art, literature, philosophy and other things generally devalued in our profit-driven society. Is it possible for people from poor and middle-class backgrounds to devote lives to such pursuits?

Without launching into a lengthy litany about funding for the arts and humanities, let me conclude by stating a sincere concern of mine: I fear that due to market pressures, pursuing a career in the arts and the humanities is increasingly becoming an option available primarily for members from the wealthy classes. I hate to think of a world in which the study of history, philosophy, literature, etc. was regarded as a luxury and not a necessity. Unfortunately, I think America is moving ever closer to such a world. So, let's hope that the young generation of thinkers, wherever they may be, can start to reverse this trend. We don't want an intellectual oligarchy.