Monday 23 September 2019

Quichotte


It was settled. He climbed out of bed in his striped pyjamas – more quickly than was his wont – and actually clapped his hands. Yes! This would be the pseudonym he would use in his love letters. He would be her ingenious gentleman, Quichotte. He would be Lancelot to her Guinevere, and carry her away to Joyous Gard. He would be – to quote Chaucer's Canterbury Tales – her verray, parfit, gentil knyght.

The first chapter of Quichotte recalled for me all of the elements I had so admired in early works by Salman Rushdie – the organic magical realism, the easy intertexuality, the engagingly polymathic factoids, the humour – and I thought I was in for a real treat (and especially since this book had already made the cut to the shortlist for the 2019 Man Booker Prize before I picked it up). And then the second chapter reframes what happens in the first – curiouser and curiouser! – and I was thoroughly enjoying this book right up until it all got to be just too much. In the end, I admire many passages and ideas from Quichotte, but it didn't add up to the piercing social critique that I believe Sir Rushdie intended with this one; will still round up to four stars. [Note: I read an ARC and passages quoted might not be in the final forms. Slightly spoilery from here.]
He talked about wanting to take on the destructive, mind-numbing junk culture of his time just as Cervantes had gone to war with the junk culture of his own age. He said he was trying to write about impossible, obsessional love, father-son relationships, sibling quarrels and, yes, unforgivable things: about Indian immigration, racism towards them, crooks among them; about cyber-spies, science fiction, the intertwining of fictional and “real” realities, the death of the author, the end of the world. He told her he wanted to incorporate elements of the parodic, and of satire and pastiche.
Quichotte (pronounced Key-SHOT) begins with the story of Ismail Smile: an aging Indian-American pharmaceuticals salesman who, after a stroke, so obsessively binge-watched television that he began to mentally blur the lines between reality and fiction; eventually, like Don Quixote himself, declaring an undying love for an unattainable fair maiden (in this case, a Bollywood-turned Hollywood-turned Daytime Talkshow Star) and commencing on a quest to win her hand. In the second chapter, we meet “Brother” (aka Sam DuChamp): an aging Indian-American second-rate crime writer who has decided, late in life, to attempt to write something of more literary value, beginning with the preceeding chapter. As the book progresses, we alternate between reading of Brother's personal history and seeing how he transforms the facts of a real life into fiction, and as a concept, that was all interesting enough. What starts as a grail quest – a journey through the seven valleys that must purify the soul before one can be joined with the Beloved – ends (weirdly) in more sci-fi territory, and along the way, Brother's characters expose America's opioid epidemic, racism and violence towards brown-skinned people, “cancel” culture, billionaires pushing at scientific frontiers, and with Brother's own quick trip to England, the rise in nationalism and identity politics in that country as well. Rushdie crams in incessant references from pop culture and high culture, and by having Brother explain to his son (named “Son”) his writing processes, we can never forget that Rushdie is writing a book about writing a book and he wants us to know what he's doing:
He tried to explain the picaresque tradition, its episodic nature, and how the episodes of such a work could encompass many manners, high and low, fabulist and commonplace, how it could be at once parodic and original, and so through its metamorphic roguery it could demonstrate and seek to encompass the multiplicity of human life. 
In a time filled with fake news and where reality TV stars can attain high office, it does seem a fitting moment to examine the nature of “reality” itself, but I really didn't find any new ideas in this book. I liked that Quichotte's Sancho was wished for from thin air – and therefore able to examine the nature of his own reality (all while sensing the presence of the author writing his story; or is that God?) – but his conclusions didn't shatter my worldview:
I am new to the human race, he thought, but it seems to me that this species is mistaken, or perhaps deluded, about its own nature. It has become so accustomed to wearing its masks that it has grown blind to what lies beneath. Here in this bus I'm being given a glimpse of reality, which is more fantastic, more dreadful, more to be feared than my poor words can express. Tonight we are a capsule containing evidence of human life and intelligence, sent hurtling into the black deeps of the universe to tell anyone who might be listening, we are here. This is us. We are the golden record aboard the Voyager, containing memories of the sounds of the Earth. We are the map of the Earth engraved on the Keo spacrcraft, the drop of blood in the diamond. We are the Hydra-headed representative of Planet Three, the many melded into one. Maybe we are the Last Photographs in the time capsule satellite orbiting the Earth, which, long after we have extinguished the last traces of ourselves, will tell aliens who we once were. We are scary as shit.
As the reviews here on Goodreads are overwhelmingly favourable for Quichotte, I'm going to note that professional critics seem less impressed. Johanna Thomas-Corr writes in The Guardian: While Quichotte is funny, it’s rarely as funny as Rushdie thinks it is. Sometimes, it reads like the work of a man trying to have the final word on everything before the world ends. Or at least before he ends. And Ron Charles at The Washington Post concludes: It would be easier to step over these thematic bricks thrown in our path if the novel’s characters offered any emotional substance, but by design they’re just constructs in this literary game. And so we die-hard fans of Salman Rushdie keep turning the pages, hoping for a reward commensurate to the journey. Alas, that’s starting to feel like an impossible dream. 

I agree with both of those reviews but I'll still round up to four stars: Rushdie is an undeniably fine writer, and while what he put into Quichotte feels a little commonplace and obvious, it is so stuffed with cultural references and truthful observations that I can imagine this book being read many years from now as a true artefact of our times.

Man Booker Longlist 2019:




Eventually won by The Testaments and Girl, Woman, Other in a tie, my favourites on the list were Lanny, Night Boat to Tangier, and An Orchestra of Minorities. I fear the Man Booker has become too political for me - favouring identity politics over excellent storytelling - and I don't know how much longer I'll think it a badge of honour to keep reading the longlists.
Posted by at