snow!

Reading a few things this weekend.

This one is good. This one is really good.

I haven't touched Rushdie since finishing my thesis in '07 and its very much like running into an old friend. His familiar narrative style, running on and on, moving in and out of reality feels like home. Themes of multiplicity, nations, food, smell, and most of all, stories are as strong and rich here as any other of his books.

Like other Rushdie novels, "the Enchantress of Florence" is full of stories. Overflowing with the voices of their stories drive the characters to complete Rushdie's. Remember Scheherazade, lying under the kings bed entertaining him with such good stories he eventually decides not to kill her? Rushdie's characters are driven by that same urge; to tell a story that will change, save or destroy lives.

Within his narrative, I've noticed that Rushdie is in a way, explaining his own compulsion towards story telling. Its not necessarily a conscious choice to write; instead it is like what Flannery O'Connor said: "To write is better than not writing".

I try to stay away from autobiographical readings of books, but that one point seems to be pretty clear. 

I haven't finished it yet, but here's a quote from the beginning. I read it ten times over before moving on:

"He could dream in seven languages: Italian, Spanish, Arabic, Persian, Russian, English, and Portuguese. He had picked up languages the way most sailors picked up diseases: languages were his gonorrhea, his syphilis, his scurvy, his ague, his plague. As soon as he fell asleep half the world started babbling in his brain, telling wondrous travelers' tales. In this half-discovered world every day brought news of fresh enchantments. The visionary, revelatory dream-poetry of the quotidian had not yet been crushed by blinkered prosy fact. Himself a teller of tales, he had been driven out of his door by stories of wonder, and by one in particular, a story which could make his fortune or else cost him his life".

Note how Rushdie makes language analogous to diseases; the gift of storytelling is hardly some fluffy happy gift which makes every one feel warm inside. It is, for this character at least, imposed upon him; he can't do anything about it. His blessing is his curse. He HAS to tell it. For better or worse.

For a lighter note, I'm on this:

This is about as much as can be expected.
I'm a sucker for conspiracy theories.