Comments on: Mr Rushdie & I http://amitavakumar.blogsome.com/2006/09/22/salman-rushdie/ Reading Writing Teaching Wed, 20 Aug 2008 19:00:42 +0000 http://wordpress.org/?v=1.5.1-alpha by: vivek iyer http://amitavakumar.blogsome.com/2006/09/22/salman-rushdie/#comment-809 Mon, 03 Dec 2007 11:19:59 +0000 http://amitavakumar.blogsome.com/2006/09/22/salman-rushdie/#comment-809 Dear Mr.Kumar, I think Rushdie is misunderstood because nobody has as yet made the attempt to write down in simple terms the defining conflict in his conflict and what this has meant for the trajectory of his ouevre. I believe Rushdie, from childhood, stood out in three respects- language/logic (left hand brain) activity making him a good scholar marked for success in our 'enlightenment' day-time culture. Secondly, Rushdie had a powerful anima, in other words a strong right hand brain, and ability to process information in this non-linear visual symbol dominated hemisphere. This meant that his transition from childhood heteronomy to autonomy happened at both the level of submission/internalisation of the law (Kantian autonomy)- thus qualifying him to be a spokesman of the 'Enlightenment'- as well as the level of the anima, the unconscious. My guess is that Phantasms of early infancy were what the mapped the powerful beings and forces around him onto. Thus following the non-linear, 'magical', adventures of these phantasms enabled Rushdie to achieve autonomy- not in the complete sense of having a fully predictive model of his milieu inside his own head- but a feeling of familiarity, a sufficient sense of security to be able to follow the adventures of those phantasms in the knowledge that ultimately wisdom would be gained, everything explained. In other words by putting himself in the hand of his anima Rushdie would gain a mystic type of wisdom. If it is the case that left brain logic operates in a binary manner- good/bad, boy/girl/ etc- whereas the spandrels of the anima permit a more complex, multi dimensional ranking of judgements then it follows that Rushdie's strong anima would give him superior tolerance, by making him less judgemental and further boost his powers of observation. In other words,he Rushdie gets a comparative advantage as actor or novelist. However there is a price to being anima ridden. The anima rebels strongly changes in its milieu which cause the left hand side to impose a new 'Universal Law' to regulate cognition and therefore behaviour. The anima's night time rebellion forces the individual into a manic protestation of ego-unassailability, a manic protest against the abrupt and abject reversion to infantile heteronomy,which takes the shape of attitudinising, posturing, in other words turning into a prancing ninny. Now elite coteries have a soft spot for the prancing ninnies- they consider it a hallmark of authenticity,a ticket to the inner circle . Indeed the Cambridge Apostles cult of Nous rapidly degenerated (or, if you went to Cambridge) achieved apotheosis as the cult of the prancing ninny. Now the psychology of migration is actually (for most people) about a strenghtening of left brain autonomy- i.e. the emergence from the thymotic to the legalistic and contractual. Thus, though elite sub-cultures may encourage their ethnic college chums to represent the migrant as prancing ninny and ludicrously celebrate this as a reclaiming of authenticity, no actual migrant (i.e. a guy who moved for a better life) does this. Rather you see migrants focusing on legal and institutional matters. Nostalgia is another thing. Now/ clearly,not of such stuff are prancing ninnies made. If Rushdie was to achieve ego-integration he would have needed to compartmentalise his life- the enlightenment part of himself working with others in a rational Weberian organisation, the prancing ninny- who at any moment (by the clemency of the anima) might turn into a real mime- like that Memphis who could communicate the whole of the Pythagorean philosophy with a twitch of his butt cheeks- the prancing ninny part of Rushdie could have been employed in experimental theatre or giving talks for Amnesty and so on- while the anima ridden part of Rushdie could have had a career as a fantasy novelist. In other words Rushdie could have followed his phantasms wherever they led and thus furnished the world with a topography of a lost continent of our own uncounsciousness. Rushdie, who I believe had a Jungian theory of himself coz that was the zeitgeist of the time, refused however to compartmentalise himself. That was the way the pre-independence provincials had played things, greatly to the benefit of their vernaculars, but Rushdie was different. He owed it to the spirit of the times to use all three parts of himself in his next book- his big gamble. He almost pulled it of. He actually had all three qualities needed. All the information was available to him. Yet he failed. Why? His anima rebelled. It wouldn't work to order. So powerful were the villains he conjured up his power to make balanced judgements deserted him. He reverted to prancing ninny. & Thus made his name, sealed his fate. Ultimately he was the prancing ninny chased of the stage by the pantomime horrors he had himself cut out of garish coloured cardboard. Rushdie's life became more fantastic than his books. But was this inevitable? Not at all. Let us look at the concept for his Midnight's children. It is based on Attar's parliament of the birds. Now Attar shows how Spirituality and Social Reconstruction on the basis of equality of outcome are mirror images, tow sides to the same coin. Thus, the book Rushdie is really writing is exactly paralles to the Gandhian novels of Social Reconstruction of the '30's or the Marxist novels of the succeeding generation. Rushdie could be doing something similar except in a New Age idiom which would provide a template for individual metanoia going hand in hand with mutuality and Social Reconstruction. Rushdie's left brain was on the side of the angels. Yet his anima subverted the project, brought the roof down on him and condemned a whole generation to prancing ninnydom. Why? He had tried to force her and she will not be forced.Rushdie, as prancing ninny has to depict authority figures as Pantomime villains. That strain of vulgarity in Rushdie we would like to mistake for the joi de vivre of Mumbaikar untraumatised, unashamed of his 'post-colonial'status is actually nothing of the sort is the uttering of obscenities by a priggish child who is so terrified of the bogey man under his bed he is trying to prove to the grown ups that he is actually a tough little street-urchin. Now Rushdie as prancing ninny becoming the Solzhenitsyn of Islam is exactly what the doctor ordered as far as his Cambridge is concerned. How does it help us Indians? Prancing ninnies from Cambridge fucked up the economy, the polity, the legal system- and were richly rewarded for their pains. Even where their own Frankensteins rose up to strike them down- think Bhutto, Bandarnaike, Indira- it was only so they could become immortal and fuck us up for all eternity. In this context, why people like you call Rushdie a great author is totally beyond me. In every book he attempts something intersting and then totally fucks it up for the apotheosis of the prancing ninny. If Rushdie were serving himself (his real self, the object of his literary metanoia) fine. Praise him. A guy who is doing well for himsef should be celebrated so that there is a template for others to follow. But if he's fucking himself up- what's the point? The only answer is in terms of the crudest sort of Girardian mimetic desire. But we're better than that. Well we want to be better than that. At least we've got to pretend to want to be better than that. Or was there like a memo that I missed? Dear Mr.Kumar,
I think Rushdie is misunderstood because nobody has as yet made the attempt to write down in simple terms the defining conflict in his conflict and what this has meant for the trajectory of his ouevre.
I believe Rushdie, from childhood, stood out in three respects- language/logic (left hand brain) activity making him a good scholar marked for success in our ‘enlightenment’ day-time culture. Secondly, Rushdie had a powerful anima, in other words a strong right hand brain, and ability to process information in this non-linear visual symbol dominated hemisphere. This meant that his transition from childhood heteronomy to autonomy happened at both the level of submission/internalisation of the law (Kantian autonomy)- thus qualifying him to be a spokesman of the ‘Enlightenment’- as well as the level of the anima, the unconscious. My guess is that Phantasms of early infancy were what the mapped the powerful beings and forces around him onto. Thus following the non-linear, ‘magical’, adventures of these phantasms enabled Rushdie to achieve autonomy- not in the complete sense of having a fully predictive model of his milieu inside his own head- but a feeling of familiarity, a sufficient sense of security to be able to follow the adventures of those phantasms in the knowledge that ultimately wisdom would be gained, everything explained. In other words by putting himself in the hand of his anima Rushdie would gain a mystic type of wisdom.
If it is the case that left brain logic operates in a binary manner- good/bad, boy/girl/ etc- whereas the spandrels of the anima permit a more complex, multi dimensional ranking of judgements then it follows that Rushdie’s strong anima would give him superior tolerance, by making him less judgemental and further boost his powers of observation. In other words,he Rushdie gets a comparative advantage as actor or novelist.
However there is a price to being anima ridden. The anima rebels strongly changes in its milieu which cause the left hand side to impose a new ‘Universal Law’ to regulate cognition and therefore behaviour. The anima’s night time rebellion forces the individual into a manic protestation of ego-unassailability, a manic protest against the abrupt and abject reversion to infantile heteronomy,which takes the shape of attitudinising, posturing, in other words turning into a prancing ninny. Now elite coteries have a soft spot for the prancing ninnies- they consider it a hallmark of authenticity,a ticket to the inner circle . Indeed the Cambridge Apostles cult of Nous rapidly degenerated (or, if you went to Cambridge) achieved apotheosis as the cult of the prancing ninny.
Now the psychology of migration is actually (for most people) about a strenghtening of left brain autonomy- i.e. the emergence from the thymotic to the legalistic and contractual. Thus, though elite sub-cultures may encourage their ethnic college chums to represent the migrant as prancing ninny and ludicrously celebrate this as a reclaiming of authenticity, no actual migrant (i.e. a guy who moved for a better life) does this. Rather you see migrants focusing on legal and institutional matters. Nostalgia is another thing. Now/ clearly,not of such stuff are prancing ninnies made.
If Rushdie was to achieve ego-integration he would have needed to compartmentalise his life- the enlightenment part of himself working with others in a rational Weberian organisation, the prancing ninny- who at any moment (by the clemency of the anima) might turn into a real mime- like that Memphis who could communicate the whole of the Pythagorean philosophy with a twitch of his butt cheeks- the prancing ninny part of Rushdie could have been employed in experimental theatre or giving talks for Amnesty and so on- while the anima ridden part of Rushdie could have had a career as a fantasy novelist. In other words Rushdie could have followed his phantasms wherever they led and thus furnished the world with a topography of a lost continent of our own uncounsciousness.
Rushdie, who I believe had a Jungian theory of himself coz that was the zeitgeist of the time, refused however to compartmentalise himself. That was the way the pre-independence provincials had played things, greatly to the benefit of their vernaculars, but Rushdie was different. He owed it to the spirit of the times to use all three parts of himself in his next book- his big gamble. He almost pulled it of. He actually had all three qualities needed. All the information was available to him. Yet he failed. Why? His anima rebelled. It wouldn’t work to order. So powerful were the villains he conjured up his power to make balanced judgements deserted him. He reverted to prancing ninny. & Thus made his name, sealed his fate. Ultimately he was the prancing ninny chased of the stage by the pantomime horrors he had himself cut out of garish coloured cardboard. Rushdie’s life became more fantastic than his books.
But was this inevitable? Not at all. Let us look at the concept for his Midnight’s children. It is based on Attar’s parliament of the birds. Now Attar shows how Spirituality and Social Reconstruction on the basis of equality of outcome are mirror images, tow sides to the same coin. Thus, the book Rushdie is really writing is exactly paralles to the Gandhian novels of Social Reconstruction of the ’30’s or the Marxist novels of the succeeding generation. Rushdie could be doing something similar except in a New Age idiom which would provide a template for individual metanoia going hand in hand with mutuality and Social Reconstruction. Rushdie’s left brain was on the side of the angels. Yet his anima subverted the project, brought the roof down on him and condemned a whole generation to prancing ninnydom. Why? He had tried to force her and she will not be forced.Rushdie, as prancing ninny has to depict authority figures as Pantomime villains. That strain of vulgarity in Rushdie we would like to mistake for the joi de vivre of Mumbaikar untraumatised, unashamed of his ‘post-colonial’status is actually nothing of the sort is the uttering of obscenities by a priggish child who is so terrified of the bogey man under his bed he is trying to prove to the grown ups that he is actually a tough little street-urchin.
Now Rushdie as prancing ninny becoming the Solzhenitsyn of Islam is exactly what the doctor ordered as far as his Cambridge is concerned. How does it help us Indians? Prancing ninnies from Cambridge fucked up the economy, the polity, the legal system- and were richly rewarded for their pains. Even where their own Frankensteins rose up to strike them down- think Bhutto, Bandarnaike, Indira- it was only so they could become immortal and fuck us up for all eternity. In this context, why people like you call Rushdie a great author is totally beyond me. In every book he attempts something intersting and then totally fucks it up for the apotheosis of the prancing ninny. If Rushdie were serving himself (his real self, the object of his literary metanoia) fine. Praise him. A guy who is doing well for himsef should be celebrated so that there is a template for others to follow. But if he’s fucking himself up- what’s the point? The only answer is in terms of the crudest sort of Girardian mimetic desire. But we’re better than that. Well we want to be better than that. At least we’ve got to pretend to want to be better than that. Or was there like a memo that I missed?

]]> by: irfan dilawer http://amitavakumar.blogsome.com/2006/09/22/salman-rushdie/#comment-727 Tue, 19 Jun 2007 04:04:15 +0100 http://amitavakumar.blogsome.com/2006/09/22/salman-rushdie/#comment-727 The act of giving award to one for his work has compulsion of agreement and appriciation with work in its meaning.Giving award to rushdi clears western thoughts against Islam that they intend to insult Islam and appriciate one's who do so.No doubt it is bigger level of insult than of rushdi's stanic thoughts. The act of giving award to one for his work has compulsion of agreement and appriciation with work in its meaning.Giving award to rushdi clears western thoughts against Islam that they intend to insult Islam and appriciate one’s who do so.No doubt it is bigger level of insult than of rushdi’s stanic thoughts.

]]> by: Annerose http://amitavakumar.blogsome.com/2006/09/22/salman-rushdie/#comment-717 Sun, 03 Jun 2007 09:16:59 +0100 http://amitavakumar.blogsome.com/2006/09/22/salman-rushdie/#comment-717 These comments have been invaluable to me as is this whole site. I thank you for your comment. These comments have been invaluable to me as is this whole site. I thank you for your comment.

]]> by: Teju http://amitavakumar.blogsome.com/2006/09/22/salman-rushdie/#comment-449 Sun, 01 Oct 2006 12:47:36 +0100 http://amitavakumar.blogsome.com/2006/09/22/salman-rushdie/#comment-449 Salman Rushdie in today's Guardian. "I don't subscribe to the very predominantly English admiration of Updike. If you take away Rabbit is Rich and Rabbit at Rest, and some of the short stories, there's a lot of ... slightly ... garbage...The new one [Terrorist] is beyond awful. He should stay in his parochial neighbourhood and write about wife-swapping, because it's what he can do." Pot, kettle, etc. http://books.guardian.co.uk/reviews/generalfiction/0,,1884027,00.html Salman Rushdie in today’s Guardian.

“I don’t subscribe to the very predominantly English admiration of Updike. If you take away Rabbit is Rich and Rabbit at Rest, and some of the short stories, there’s a lot of … slightly … garbage…The new one [Terrorist] is beyond awful. He should stay in his parochial neighbourhood and write about wife-swapping, because it’s what he can do.”

Pot, kettle, etc.

http://books.guardian.co.uk/reviews/generalfiction/0,,1884027,00.html

]]> by: ABDULLAH kHAN http://amitavakumar.blogsome.com/2006/09/22/salman-rushdie/#comment-444 Sat, 30 Sep 2006 11:31:20 +0100 http://amitavakumar.blogsome.com/2006/09/22/salman-rushdie/#comment-444 Dear Salman Bhai, I have great respect for you as an outstanding author of author. But your refusal to share a dias with Amitava Kumar was not appreciated by any of your fans. You may agree or not but it is true that some authoors or artistes really become larger than life and no body cares to find fault with their writings or creative efforts . And if some dares to do so , he finds himself standing alone . Once While I was doing a review of your book FURY , the editor reject it because I had criticised your descriptions of Neela Mahindra as exeggeration for which a lesser mortal would have been killed by the critics. Dear Salman Bhai,
I have great respect for you as an outstanding author of author. But your refusal to share a dias with Amitava Kumar
was not appreciated by any of your fans. You may agree or not but it is true that some authoors or artistes really become larger than life and no body cares to find fault with their writings or creative efforts . And if some dares to do so , he finds himself standing alone . Once While I was doing a review of your book FURY , the editor reject it because I had criticised your descriptions of Neela Mahindra as exeggeration for which a lesser mortal would have been killed by the critics.

]]> by: Teju http://amitavakumar.blogsome.com/2006/09/22/salman-rushdie/#comment-440 Tue, 26 Sep 2006 16:31:45 +0100 http://amitavakumar.blogsome.com/2006/09/22/salman-rushdie/#comment-440 No, this is Calisthenics for Expectant Mothers. Booker Fantasy League is two doors down on your right, just past the water cooler. No, this is Calisthenics for Expectant Mothers. Booker Fantasy League is two doors down on your right, just past the water cooler.

]]> by: DJ Fadereu http://amitavakumar.blogsome.com/2006/09/22/salman-rushdie/#comment-439 Tue, 26 Sep 2006 07:30:01 +0100 http://amitavakumar.blogsome.com/2006/09/22/salman-rushdie/#comment-439 Er, excuse me..is this the Man Booker Fantasy League Room? Er, excuse me..is this the Man Booker Fantasy League Room?

]]> by: laika http://amitavakumar.blogsome.com/2006/09/22/salman-rushdie/#comment-437 Mon, 25 Sep 2006 21:06:56 +0100 http://amitavakumar.blogsome.com/2006/09/22/salman-rushdie/#comment-437 And excuse me, OM But WTF are you trying to say? And excuse me, OM

But WTF are you trying to say?

]]> by: laika http://amitavakumar.blogsome.com/2006/09/22/salman-rushdie/#comment-436 Mon, 25 Sep 2006 19:12:17 +0100 http://amitavakumar.blogsome.com/2006/09/22/salman-rushdie/#comment-436 If that postcolonial lit theory student that someone rightly called TOSH were not so lacking in writing skills, it would be fun to speculate that it was Rushdie in disguise. As it is, someone tell TOSH that he needs to get over himself. If that postcolonial lit theory student that someone rightly called TOSH were not so lacking in writing skills, it would be fun to speculate that it was Rushdie in disguise. As it is, someone tell TOSH that he needs to get over himself.

]]> by: OM http://amitavakumar.blogsome.com/2006/09/22/salman-rushdie/#comment-435 Mon, 25 Sep 2006 15:13:43 +0100 http://amitavakumar.blogsome.com/2006/09/22/salman-rushdie/#comment-435 I think super sized egos prevents celebrities on sharing any space with someone who may take away attention from them, they look down from their self created throne and think I am best. I used to be apart of the ‘fan’ group whose initiator was the author himself. He ‘retells’ indian tales and on the group - God forbid anyone puts in a word against his retelling/ views - that person is expelled.I remember some poor guy wrote a controversial review on Amazon on this author's book and he was asked to leave the group. This Author wants freedom of speech but no one else should have this. This is their birthright only. I think super sized egos prevents celebrities on sharing any space with someone who may take away attention from them, they look down from their self created throne and think I am best. I used to be apart of the ‘fan’ group whose initiator was the author himself. He ‘retells’ indian tales and on the group - God forbid anyone puts in a word against his retelling/ views - that person is expelled.I remember some poor guy wrote a controversial review on Amazon on this author’s book and he was asked to leave the group. This Author wants freedom of speech but no one else should have this. This is their birthright only.

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