Exploring Magic Realism in Salman Rushdie’s Fiction 9780203134139, 0203134133

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ROUTLEDGE STUDIES IN TWENTIETH-CENTURY LITERATURE

Exploring Magic Realism in Salman Rushdie’s Fiction Ursula Kluwick

Exploring Magic Realism in Salman Rushdie’s Fiction

Routledge Studies in Twentieth-Century Literature 1 Testimony from the Nazi Camps French Women’s Voices Margaret-Anne Hutton

11 Travel and Drugs in Twentieth-Century Literature Lindsey Michael Banco

2 Modern Confessional Writing New Critical Essays Edited by Jo Gill

12 Diary Poetics Form and Style in Writers’ Diaries, 1915–1962 Anna Jackson

3 Cold War Literature Writing the Global Conflict Andrew Hammond 4 Modernism and the Crisis of Sovereignty Andrew John Miller 5 Cartographic Strategies of Postmodernity The Figure of the Map in Contemporary Theory and Fiction Peta Mitchell 6 Food, Poetry, and the Aesthetics of Consumption Eating the Avant-Garde Michel Delville 7 Latin American Writers and the Rise of Hollywood Cinema Jason Borge 8 Gay Male Fiction Since Stonewall Ideology, Conflict, and Aesthetics Les Brookes 9 Anglophone Jewish Literature Axel Stähler 10 Before Auschwitz Irène Némirovsky and the Cultural Landscape of Inter-war France Angela Kershaw

13 Gender, Ireland and Cultural Change Race, Sex and Nation Gerardine Meaney 14 Jewishness and Masculinity from the Modern to the Postmodern Neil R. Davison 15 Travel and Modernist Literature Sacred and Ethical Journeys Alexandra Peat 16 Primo Levi’s Narratives of Embodiment Containing the Human Charlotte Ross 17 Italo Calvino’s Architecture of Lightness The Utopian Imagination in an Age of Urban Crisis Letizia Modena 18 Aesthetic Pleasure in Twentieth-Century Women’s Food Writing The Innovative Appetites of M.F.K. Fisher, Alice B. Toklas, and Elizabeth David Alice L. McLean

19 Making Space in the Works of James Joyce Edited by Valérie Bénéjam and John Bishop 20 Critical Approaches to American Working-Class Literature Edited by Michelle M. Tokarczyk 21 Salman Rushdie and Visual Culture Celebrating Impurity, Disrupting Borders Edited by Ana Cristina Mendes 22 Global Cold War Literature Western, Eastern and Postcolonial Perspectives Edited by Andrew Hammond 23 Exploring Magic Realism in Salman Rushdie’s Fiction Ursula Kluwick

Exploring Magic Realism in Salman Rushdie’s Fiction Ursula Kluwick

NEW YORK

LONDON

First published 2011 by Routledge 711 Third Avenue, New York, NY 10017 Simultaneously published in the UK by Routledge 2 Park Square, Milton Park, Abingdon, Oxon OX14 4RN Routledge is an imprint of the Taylor & Francis Group, an informa business © 2011 Taylor & Francis The right of Ursula Kluwick to be identified as author of this work has been asserted by her in accordance with sections 77 and 78 of the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act 1988. Typeset in Sabon by IBT Global. Printed and bound in the United States of America on acid-free paper by IBT Global. All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reprinted or reproduced or utilised in any form or by any electronic, mechanical, or other means, now known or hereafter invented, including photocopying and recording, or in any information storage or retrieval system, without permission in writing from the publishers. Trademark Notice: Product or corporate names may be trademarks or registered trademarks, and are used only for identification and explanation without intent to infringe. Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data Kluwick, Ursula, 1977– Exploring magic realism in Salman Rushdie’s fiction / Ursula Kluwick. p. cm. — (Routledge studies in twentieth-century literature ; 23) Includes bibliographical references and index. 1. Rushdie, Salman—Criticism and interpretation. 2. Magic realism (Literature) I. Title. PR6068.U757Z726 2012 823'.914—dc23 2011032796

ISBN13: 978-0-415-89778-5 (hbk) ISBN13: 978-0-203-13413-9 (ebk)

Contents

List of Figures Acknowledgements

ix xi

Introduction

1

1

Defining Magic Realism: Historical and Theoretical Foundations

7

2

Making Magic Realistic: The Realist Code

34

3

Making Realism Magic: The Supernatural Code

59

4

Verbal Magic: The Poetics of Ambivalence

77

5

Of Beasts and Houris: Rushdie’s Magic Realist Characters

106

6

Juicy Mangos, Sexy Spices: Magic Realism and the Strategies of Exoticist Discourse

130

7

Magic Realism and the Politics of Ambivalence

168

8

Conclusion: A New Trend?

189

Notes Works Cited Index

207 221 227

Figures

6.1 6.2 6.3 6.4 6.5 6.6 6.7 6.8 6.9 6.10 6.11

Grimus. London: Vintage, 1996. Midnight’s Children. London: Vintage, 1995. Shame. London: Vintage, 1995. The Satanic Verses. London: Vintage, 1998. The Moor’s Last Sigh. London: Vintage, 1996 (fi rst British edition; Jonathan Cape, 1995). The Ground Beneath Her Feet. London: Vintage, 2000. The Ground Beneath Her Feet. London: Jonathan Cape, 1999 (fi rst British edition). Midnight’s Children. London: Jonathan Cape, 1981 (fi rst British edition). Shalimar the Clown. London: Jonathan Cape, 2005 (fi rst British edition). Shalimar the Clown. London: Vintage, 2006. The Enchantress of Florence. London: Jonathan Cape, 2008 (fi rst British edition).

147 148 149 150 151 152 155 157 160 161 163

Acknowledgements

I know convention dictates that family should come last here. But they don’t, and so I would fi rst of all like to thank my parents, whose support during the writing of this book has been beyond expression. A big thank you also to Helli Pöcherstorfer, to my sister Veronika, and to Hermann, Anna, Maria, and Christina, for being there in times of crisis, as well as at all other times. For their stimulating input and intellectual guidance at an early stage of this long project, great thanks are due to my Ph.D. supervisors, Margarete Rubik and Monika Seidl. Apart from the joys of reading and thinking which my work on this book has entailed, it has also allowed me to meet and exchange ideas with a great number of people whom I would like to thank for their company over the past few years. Monika Fludernik has been extremely generous in her support ever since reading an early version of my manuscript in 2005, and she has become a real mentor. I am very grateful to her, both for her insightful comments on my work and for her practical guidance, as well as for the privilege of knowing her. In the field of postcolonial studies, Tobias Döring, though never my teacher in any institutional sense, has taught me more than anyone, and his academic elegance never ceases to amaze me. He is a great role model, and I am grateful for his friendship, and for his support. I also particularly wish to thank Maggie Ann Bowers for highly stimulating discussions about magic(al) realism, and Paula Moya and Ramón Saldívar for their insightful feedback on my main arguments and concepts at a genre colloquium organised by Barbara Buchenau at the University of Bern in June 2010. I am also grateful to Florian Stadtler for telling me about the cover of the fi rst British edition of Midnight’s Children. Among my former colleagues at the University of Vienna, Susanne Reichl merits my biggest thanks, since without her, this study would have developed in an entirely different direction. It was she who fi rst introduced me to postcolonial studies, and to the Association for the Study of New English Literatures, which has provided an incredibly fruitful environment for the development and exchange of ideas ever since. Thank you also to Dieter Fuchs, Kerstin Lux, Elke Mettinger-Schartmann, and Ludwig Schnauder.

xii

Acknowledgements

At my current academic home, the University of Bern, I have profited from the expertise of wonderful colleagues. Virginia Richter is always ready with help and advice. Watching her think is an extremely stimulating experience, and her critical questions have made a great difference to this book. Irmtraud Huber has read various parts of this manuscript, and her comments have never failed to alternately open up new routes of investigation or to make me feel more secure in my argument. Sharing an office with such a fellow magic realist is a true pleasure. In a similar vein, my very dear colleague Barbara Buchenau has been invaluable in making me see and subsequently helping me phrase what it is that I actually wanted to say. I also wish to thank Annie Cottier, Kellie Gonçalves, Melanie Mettler, Nicole Nyffenegger, and Julia Straub for their helpful comments on an early draft of Chapter 7 in 2009. Beatrix Busse, of course, has made all the difference. My anonymous reviewers have provided exceedingly valuable observations and suggestions, and I would like to thank them for devoting so much time and care to reading my proposal and sample chapters. I would also like to thank Elizabeth J. Levine, my editor at Routledge, for her interest in my project, for seeing my book through the proposal and reviewing stages, and for her ready and immensely friendly help over the past few months. Catherine Tung, editorial assistant at Routledge, has been equally reliable and helpful. Many people have contributed to the final preparation of my manuscript. I wish to thank Eleanor Chan, the production manager for my book at IBT Global, for her great efforts in helping the book meet its publication date, David Schönthal, who has been a wonder of efficiency, Ettore Trento, for conjuring up an index for this book, Samira Lütscher, Melanie Martin, Charif Shanahan, and Barbara Gafner; also Jonathan Sharp for his reliable proofreading. Applying for permission to quote from Salman Rushdie was an unexpectedly long and complicated process. For helping me with my requests, I would like to thank Kara Bristow at Random House Canada, Sam Moore at the Penguin Group (USA), Mimi Ross at Henry Holt, Jessica Calagione at The Wylie Agency U.S., Cassie Brown at The Wylie Agency UK, and Sarah McMahon at Random House UK, to whom I am also very grateful for providing the cover illustrations included in Chapter 6. Finally, I would like to thank my friends who have supported me and my book in all kinds of different ways. My many research visits to the British Library and to the Cambridge University Library would not have been possible without the hospitality and friendship of Susanne, Faraz, Leila, and Jakob Kermani. And the last stage of this would have been unbearable without Marc, and his lovely aura of calmness. Thank you. I gratefully acknowledge use of the following illustrations: From Grimus by Salman Rushdie, published by Vintage Books. Used by permission of The Random House Group Ltd. From Midnight’s Children by Salman Rushdie, published by Jonathan Cape. Used by permission of The Random House Group Ltd.

Acknowledgements xiii From Midnight’s Children by Salman Rushdie, published by Vintage Books. Used by permission of The Random House Group Ltd. From Shame by Salman Rushdie, published by Vintage Books. Used by permission of The Random House Group Ltd. From The Satanic Verses by Salman Rushdie, published by Vintage Books. Used by permission of The Random House Group Ltd. From The Moor’s Last Sigh by Salman Rushdie, published by Jonathan Cape. Used by permission of The Random House Group Ltd. From The Ground Beneath Her Feet by Salman Rushdie, published by Jonathan Cape. Used by permission of The Random House Group Ltd. From The Ground Beneath Her Feet by Salman Rushdie, published by Vintage Books. Used by permission of The Random House Group Ltd. From Shalimar the Clown by Salman Rushdie, published by Jonathan Cape. Used by permission of The Random House Group Ltd. From Shalimar the Clown by Salman Rushdie, published by Vintage Books. Used by permission of The Random House Group Ltd. From The Enchantress of Florence by Salman Rushdie, published by Jonathan Cape. Used by permission of The Random House Group Ltd.

I gratefully acknowledge permissions to quote from the following material: From Carpentier, Alejo. “On the Marvelous Real in America.” In Magical Realism, Lois Parkinson Zamora, Wendy B. Faris, Eds., pp. 75–88. Copyright, 1995, Duke University Press. All rights reserved. Reprinted by permission of the publisher. From Carpentier, Alejo. “The Baroque and the Marvelous Real.” In Magical Realism, Lois Parkinson Zamora, Wendy B. Faris, Eds., pp. 89–108. Copyright, 1995, Duke University Press. All rights reserved. Reprinted by permission of the publisher. From Erickson, John. “Metokoi and Magical Realism in the Maghrebian Narratives of Tahar ben Jelloun and Abdelkebir Khatibi.” In Magical Realism, Lois Parkinson Zamora, Wendy B. Faris, Eds., pp. 427–50. Copyright, 1995, Duke University Press. All rights reserved. Reprinted by permission of the publisher. From Faris, Wendy B. “Scheherazade’s Children: Magical Realism and Postmodern Fiction.” In Magical Realism, Lois Parkinson Zamora, Wendy B. Faris, Eds., pp. 163–90. Copyright, 1995, Duke University Press. All rights reserved. Reprinted by permission of the publisher. From Flores, Angel. “Magical Realism in Spanish American Fiction.” In Magical Realism, Lois Parkinson Zamora, Wendy B. Faris, Eds., pp. 109–17. Copyright, 1995, Duke University Press. All rights reserved. Reprinted by permission of the publisher. From Leal, Luis. “Magical Realism in Spanish American Literature.” In Magical Realism, Lois Parkinson Zamora, Wendy B. Faris, Eds., pp. 119–24. Copyright, 1995, Duke University Press. All rights reserved. Reprinted by permission of the publisher. From Roh, Franz. “Magic Realism: Post-Expressionism.” In Magical Realism, Lois Parkinson Zamora, Wendy B. Faris, Eds., pp. 15–31. Copyright, 1995, Duke University Press. All rights reserved. Reprinted by permission of the publisher. From Slemon, Stephen. “Magic Realism as Postcolonial Discourse.” In Magical Realism, Lois Parkinson Zamora, Wendy B. Faris, Eds., pp. 407–26. Copyright, 1995, Duke University Press. All rights reserved. Reprinted by permission of the publisher.

xiv

Acknowledgements

From Stewart, Melissa. “Roads of ‘Exquisite Mysterious Muck’: The Magical Journey through the City in William Kennedy’s Ironweed, John Cheever’s ‘The Enormous Radio,’ and Donald Barthelme’s ‘City Life.’” In Magical Realism, Lois Parkinson Zamora, Wendy B. Faris, Eds., pp. 477–95. Copyright, 1995, Duke University Press. All rights reserved. Reprinted by permission of the publisher. From Zamora, Lois Parkinson and Wendy B. Faris. “Introduction: Daiquiri Birds and Flaubertian Parrot(ie)s.” In Magical Realism, Lois Parkinson Zamora, Wendy B. Faris, Eds., pp. 1–11. Copyright, 1995, Duke University Press. All rights reserved. Reprinted by permission of the publisher. from MIDNIGHT’S CHILDREN by Salman Rushdie, published by Jonathan Cape and Vintage Books. Reprinted by permission of The Random House Group Ltd. from SHAME by Salman Rushdie, published by Jonathan Cape and Vintage Books. Reprinted by permission of The Random House Group Ltd. from THE SATANIC VERSES by Salman Rushdie, published by Jonathan Cape and Vintage Books. Reprinted by permission of The Random House Group Ltd. from THE MOOR’S LAST SIGH by Salman Rushdie, published by Jonathan Cape and Vintage Books. Reprinted by permission of The Random House Group Ltd. from THE GROUND BENEATH HER FEET by Salman Rushdie, published by Jonathan Cape and Vintage Books. Reprinted by permission of The Random House Group Ltd. from SHALIMAR THE CLOWN by Salman Rushdie, published by Jonathan Cape and Vintage Books. Reprinted by permission of The Random House Group Ltd. from THE ENCHANTRESS OF FLORENCE by Salman Rushdie, published by Jonathan Cape and Vintage Books. Reprinted by permission of The Random House Group Ltd. Excerpted from Midnight’s Children by Salman Rushdie. Copyright © 1981 Salman Rushdie. Reprinted by permission of Knopf Canada. Excerpted from Shame by Salman Rushdie. Copyright © 1983 Salman Rushdie. Reprinted by permission of Knopf Canada. Excerpted from The Satanic Verses by Salman Rushdie. Copyright © 1988 Salman Rushdie. Reprinted by permission of Knopf Canada. Excerpted from The Moor’s Last Sigh by Salman Rushdie. Copyright © 1995 Salman Rushdie. Reprinted by permission of Knopf Canada. Excerpted from The Ground Beneath Her Feet by Salman Rushdie. Copyright © 1999 Salman Rushdie. Reprinted by permission of Knopf Canada. Excerpted from Shalimar the Clown by Salman Rushdie. Copyright © 2005 Salman Rushdie. Reprinted by permission of Knopf Canada. Excerpted from The Enchantress of Florence by Salman Rushdie. Copyright © 2008 Salman Rushdie. Reprinted by permission of Knopf Canada. From MIDNIGHT’S CHILDREN by Salman Rushdie, copyright © 1981, 2006 by Salman Rushdie. Used by permission of Random House Trade Paperbacks, a division of Random House, Inc. From SHAME by Salman Rushdie, copyright © 1983 by Salman Rushdie. Used by permission of Random House Trade Paperbacks, a division of Random House, Inc. From THE SATANIC VERSES by Salman Rushdie, copyright © 1988 by Salman Rushdie. Used by permission of Viking Penguin, a division of Penguin Group (USA) Inc. From THE MOOR’S LAST SIGH by Salman Rushdie, copyright © 1995 by Salman Rushdie. Used by permission of Pantheon Books, a division of Random House, Inc.

Acknowledgements xv Various quotes from throughout the book The Ground Beneath Her Feet by Salman Rushdie. Copyright © 1999 by Salman Rushdie. Reprinted by permission of Henry Holt and Company, LLC. From SHALIMAR THE CLOWN: A NOVEL by Salman Rushdie, copyright © 2005 by Salman Rushdie. Used by permission of Random House, Inc. From THE ENCHANTRESS OF FLORENCE by Salman Rushdie, copyright © 2008 by Salman Rushdie. Used by permission of Random House, Inc.

For English language electronic book rights within the UK and Commonwealth (excluding Canada) Midnight’s Children: Copyright © Salman Rushdie, 1981. All rights reserved. Shame: Copyright © Salman Rushdie, 1983. All rights reserved. The Satanic Verses: Copyright © Salman Rushdie, 1988. All rights reserved. The Moor’s Last Sigh: Copyright © Salman Rushdie, 1995. All rights reserved. The Ground Beneath Her Feet: Copyright © Salman Rushdie, 1999. All rights reserved. Excerpts from The Ground Beneath Her Feet by Salman Rushdie. Copyright © 1999 by Salman Rushdie, reprinted electronically with permission of The Wylie Agency LLC.

Introduction

Over the past few decades, magic realism1 has developed into a truly international literary phenomenon, and recent publications show that this widened scope is reflected in the critical output. 2 Surprisingly, however, the diversification accompanying this proliferation is seldom acknowledged, and definitions of magic realism continue to be implicitly derived from the Latin American variant of the mode, ignoring both the thematic and the formal specificities of other varieties.3 John McLeod’s description of Salman Rushdie’s style of writing as “drawing upon Latin American magic realism” (147) and John Thieme’s statement that Rushdie’s novel Midnight’s Children combines “Latin American MAGIC REALISM” (s.v. Rushdie) with other non-mimetic traditions are both indicative of this trend. But Rushdie is by no means the only writer of magic realism inadequately represented by such defi nitions. Not only has the critical focus on Latin American magic realism limited the recognition of the richness of the magic realist mode; as demonstrated by Brenda Cooper, it has led writers to actively reject the magic realist label, which for them “implies the slavish imitation” of Latin American models (37). Clearly, it is high time the cultural, local, and individual diversity of magic realism were acknowledged more broadly, and it is to this process that this book aims to contribute. Various critics have drawn attention to the significance of the geographical and cultural contexts of magic realism.4 Cooper, for instance, insists that “local context is of central importance in magic realist writing,” and she demonstrates how the West African texts she discusses “are moulded and constructed out of West African cultural and religious heritages” (37). Mostly, however, acknowledgment of geographical and cultural specificities has been restricted to thematic concerns. Magic realism appears mainly as an expression of specifically non-Western world views, and in studies of Rushdie is analysed mostly in relation to his rewriting of history. Not only is Rushdie one of the most distinguished postcolonial writers; he is also generally recognised as one of the most important representatives of magic realism outside Latin America. It is at least surprising, therefore, that the characteristics of his particular brand of magic realism have, so far, been ignored. This is precisely what the present book intends to

2

Exploring Magic Realism in Salman Rushdie’s Fiction

remedy. It examines the narrative structure of Rushdie’s magic realism, and exposes the discrepancies between Rushdie’s form of writing and the most widely accepted defi nition of magic realism. It concludes that in order to fully appreciate Rushdie’s engagement with the postcolonial, as well as the more general ideological implications of his writing, one needs to redefine the magic realism on which it rests. As Kumkum Sangari asserts, Rushdie’s novels “can neither be bracketed with Márquez nor seen as continuous with Western postmodernism, and need to be ‘contextualized’ separately” (176). Exploring Magic Realism in Salman Rushdie’s Fiction sets out to do just that. In order to identify the peculiarities of Rushdie’s magic realism, it combines a structural, stylistic, and aesthetic analysis of the mode with ethical and ideological considerations, keeping both production and reception processes fi rmly in mind. This multi-faceted approach highlights crossfertilisations among the particular structural idiosyncrasies of Rushdie’s magic realism, his character presentation, exoticism, issues of commodification and marketing, the role of the reader, and Rushdie’s socio-political agenda. Although books on Rushdie’s fiction tend to treat magic realism as one aspect among many, this study demonstrates how both formal and ideological issues are intimately linked with the fundamental ambivalence at the core of Rushdie’s magic realism. Ambivalence is a postmodern keyword, and indeed I see Rushdie’s magic realism as poised between the postmodern5 and the postcolonial. In the following, I suggest that Rushdie’s magic realism can best be understood as the site of a clash between two representational codes. If one brings this clash into dialogue with Rushdie’s socio-political objectives, it becomes apparent how fruitfully the postmodern and the postcolonial can be combined. Since the ambivalence at the heart of Rushdie’s magic realist fiction ultimately precludes any possibility of interpretative closure, readers are confronted with irresolvable riddles, riddles which, as I argue in Chapter 7, activate a particular reading strategy which can be conceptualised as a “reading back.” As readers strive, fruitlessly, to disentangle the contradictions between the various magic realist representational codes, the representation itself becomes increasingly fragile, and different realities begin to oscillate. In accordance with current defi nitions, magic realism has been appreciated by postcolonial practitioners mainly in its capacity to juxtapose Eurocentric with other views of reality. The present book shows that as “Rushdie’s narratives play provocatively with disparate ways of seeing” (Sangari 176), they challenge, and encourage readers to reconsider, reality discourses and representation as such. Ultimately, Rushdie’s magic realist novels foster readings which remain open and which welcome difference. Chapter 1 provides the background to my analysis of Rushdie’s magic realism, and is mostly theoretical in outlook. A brief overview of various historical and contemporary defi nitions of the mode elucidates the predominant strands in magic realist criticism and shows that the majority of them are based on Latin American magic realism. As a result, they

Introduction 3 tend to promote magic realism as a harmonious fusion of the natural and the supernatural. In contrast to such views, the most prominent of which is constituted by Amaryll Chanady’s seminal analysis of magic realism, I focus on the irresolvable opposition between two incompatible codes (the realist and the supernatural) in Rushdie’s novels, whose coexistence unhinges the magic realist text. In this, I develop further an idea fi rst voiced in Stephen Slemon’s “Magic Realism as Postcolonial Discourse,” which has crucially influenced critical appreciation of magic realism as a postcolonial narrative form but whose defi nition of the mode seems to have gone virtually unmarked. By focusing on the prominence of disharmony in Rushdie’s fiction, I draw attention to the plethora of irreconcilable paradoxes at the heart of Rushdie’s novels, paradoxes that have hitherto been largely ignored. Thus Chapter 1 posits Rushdie as a representative of a form of magic realism which differs decisively from mainstream magic realism, but in ways which have not yet been acknowledged. The next two chapters form a unity since they are devoted to analyses of the realist and the supernatural codes, respectively. Chapter 2 focuses on the realist component of Rushdie’s magic realism. This side of magic realism is frequently neglected in descriptions of the mode, which tend to focus on its magic aspect. Since this study focuses on the oscillation between the realist and the supernatural in Rushdie’s novels, however, an analysis of the realist aspect of magic realism is indispensable. In Chapter 2 I argue that a basis in realism is crucial for Rushdie’s project, which pitches realist and non-realist perceptions of reality against each other in order to cast doubt on representation itself. In doing so, magic realism highlights the internal contradictions of reality discourses. At the same time, the naturalising tendencies of realism are subverted by the supernatural context with which it has to grapple in Rushdie’s novels. Realism, Chapter 2 suggests, is prevented from becoming normative in Rushdie because it is constantly juxtaposed with its opposite, the supernatural. Chapter 3 shifts its attention to the magic component of magic realism, and it introduces the concept of the unreality effect (by analogy with Roland Barthes’s reality effect). It argues that the plethora of objects, words, phrases, and formulae associated with magic and the fairy tale to be found in Rushdie’s fiction play a decisive role in activating the supernatural code. A magic atmosphere is created which appeals to a schema of non-realist interpretation, and which is just as compelling as the realist paradigm. Hence realism is subtly undermined by the inclusion of textual elements which conjure up magic associations in the reader’s mind and hence ease the acceptance of the supernatural. In many cases, magic realism relies heavily on verbal effects, and its magic arises out of wordplay. This aspect of magic realism forms the focus of Chapter 4. It identifies various devices which blur the boundaries between categories traditionally held distinct (such as animate/ inanimate, metaphorical/literal, etc.), and demonstrates how they invert the

4

Exploring Magic Realism in Salman Rushdie’s Fiction

parameters we live within. The resulting oscillation between the realist and the supernatural is further strengthened by the presence of “ambivalent magic” in the texts—events which cannot be conclusively categorised as either realist or supernatural. As a consequence, Rushdie’s texts emerge as sites of ontological struggles which ask for perpetual re-adjustments of the reader’s position, and for a continuous re-evaluation of confl icting versions of reality. Chapters 5, 6, and 7 shift the focus to more contextual and ideological questions. Chapter 5 concerns itself with Rushdie’s magic realist characters. It argues that the many freaks which populate Rushdie’s fiction reflect the postmodern/postcolonial condition insofar as they experience the effects of concepts such as fragmentation and hybridity on their very bodies when they disintegrate, transform, or become hybrids of humans, animals, and machines. My analysis suggests that Rushdie’s characters are rendered grotesque by surroundings which continuously thwart, marginalise, and alienate them, and I consider the various strategies with which the characters meet the hostile world and deal with their grotesque condition, productively or not. In this chapter, I also focus on the interaction of magic realism and gender, and consider the role of women in Rushdie’s fiction. I draw attention to the manner in which the techniques of character representation which Rushdie employs in his portrayal of male characters tend to fall short of their subversive potential in his representation of women because of his reliance on a variety of stereotypes which forestall a more liberating engagement with the role of women. Chapter 6 explores the role of exoticism in Rushdie’s fiction. By applying Graham Huggan’s concept of “strategic exoticism” to his novels I highlight the ways in which Rushdie’s texts simultaneously profit from, perpetuate, and subvert exoticist discourse. Particular emphasis is put on the manner in which Rushdie’s novels are marketed, and I include an analysis of the paratextual features of Rushdie’s books, especially their cover illustrations. Most of these show the influence of exoticism very clearly, and can hence be regarded as strengthening the supernatural code already at the pre-reading stage by appealing to a sense of mystery. In the fi nal analysis, Chapter 6 argues that Rushdie’s texts not only subvert exoticist discourse in the manner Huggan suggests, but that by self-confidently flaunting their association with the exotic, they reclaim for a postcolonial aesthetics the cultural markers which the West terms “exotic.” The problem with exoticism, this chapter contends, is not necessarily only how writers write but also how readers read, and it problematises in particular the tendency to conflate cultural markers with exoticisation. Chapter 7 deals with Rushdie’s ideological motivation and argues in favour of the socio-political subversiveness of his fiction, which it regards as inextricably linked with his specific brand of magic realism. Rushdie’s sociopolitical strategy can be described as a politics of ambivalence, based on the particular mode of reading which his novels encourage, and which thrives

Introduction 5 on the accommodation of difference. In Chapter 7, therefore, I develop the concept of reading back as a form of oppositional reading which entails the construction of counter-discursive modes of interpretation out of the very gaps created by the clashes between the two magic realist codes. Chapter 8, fi nally, extends the discussion to other magic realist writers, and shows that their novels exhibit ambivalences similar to those we fi nd in Rushdie’s fiction. Analyses of texts by Tomson Highway, Jeanette Winterson, Angela Carter, and Toni Morrison highlight their structural analogies with Rushdie’s novels, and suggest that the ambivalence between representational codes is used by these writers towards ends in tune with Rushdie’s socio-political objectives. Hence my fi nal chapter demonstrates that the phenomenon this book uncovers is not restricted to Salman Rushdie’s oeuvre, but is an important, if neglected, trend in magic realist writing. Exploring Magic Realism discusses the complete corpus of Rushdie’s magic realist fiction. Hence it excludes Grimus (1975), Haroun and the Sea of Stories (1990), and Luka and the Fire of Life (2010) as too far removed from realism to qualify as magic realist. Fury (2001), by contrast, is omitted for the opposite reason: it does not contain enough magic to suit the category of magic realism. The novels that remain, therefore, are Midnight’s Children (1981), which tells the story of Saleem Sinai, a magically gifted child born at the precise moment of Indian independence whose life is intricately connected with the history of the Indian nation; Shame (1983), which is set in Pakistan and deals with the political and humanitarian atrocities committed by the families of Raza Hyder and Iskander Harappa, the fictional stand-ins for Zia ul-Haq and Zulfi kar Ali Bhutto; The Satanic Verses (1988), which focuses on the South Asian immigrant population of London and traces the developments of Saladin Chamcha and Gibreel Farishta, two Indian survivors of a plane crash, whose physical and mental transformations in the wake of the explosion motivate the inclusion of various dream sequences which deal with Islam past and present; The Moor’s Last Sigh (1995),6 which recounts the life story of Moraes—“Moor”—Zogoiby, son of the painter Aurora and the merchant Abraham, and which highlights the Indian renunciation of the ideals of hybridity and tolerance in favour of religious fanaticism and purity; The Ground Beneath her Feet (1999), Rushdie’s pop and globalisation novel, which traces the development of Vina and Ormus, two emergent pop stars, and of their friend Rai, a photographer who tells their life story; Shalimar the Clown (2005), which addresses the Kashmir confl ict and global terrorism through a narrative of sexual and political betrayal; and The Enchantress of Florence (2008), which is set in Moghul India and Renaissance Italy, and hence turns to an entirely new historical period. The purpose of this study is not to deny the validity of existing definitions of magic realism. Rather, I aim to show that the most widely accepted conception of the mode, although entirely appropriate to many strands of magic realist writing, does not cover the whole picture. I want

6

Exploring Magic Realism in Salman Rushdie’s Fiction

to suggest that magic realism is much more varied than is widely acknowledged and that this variety enhances rather than diminishes the impact of magic realism as a powerful mode of writing. Even more importantly, the particular form of magic realism described in this book allows writers to couch their critique of reality discourses in different ways. In order to corroborate this claim and to contextualise my own theory of magic realism, I now turn to a brief overview of historical and contemporary approaches to magic realist literature.

1

Defining Magic Realism Historical and Theoretical Foundations

At the root of magic realism lies the wonder of reality. Magic as we think of it today played no role in the inception of the term, and although “magic realism” is nowadays regarded as an oxymoron, this was not always so. The term was coined by the German Romantic poet Novalis “at the end of the eighteenth century” (Guenther 34), but its later proliferation and success are associated with the German art critic Franz Roh, mostly held to be the fi rst to have used the expression “magic realism.” Roh introduced the term in 1923 to describe a new style of painting which highlighted the mundane magic of being.1 In his 1925 essay “Nachexpressionismus. Magischer Realismus. Probleme der neuesten europäischen Malerei” Roh explained his choice of the epithet magic for what was, for him, essentially a new form of realism, with recourse to the natural wonder of reality: “With the word ‘magic,’ as opposed to ‘mystic,’ I wish to indicate that the magic does not descend to the represented world, but rather hides and palpitates behind it” (16). Explicitly contrasting magic realism with the “fantastic” quality of expressionism, Roh praised magic realism for its ability to render visible the magic of being (17). A similar perception of reality informs Massimo Bontempelli’s use of the mode. 2 Bontempelli, who seems to have coined the term “magic realism” simultaneously with Roh, was the fi rst to apply it to literary texts as part of his new aesthetic programme for European literature. Like Roh, Bontempelli saw magic realism anchored in the realm of the prosaic and the everyday, and claimed that magic realism made visible the magic behind everyday objects. As these defi nitions suggest, the “fathers” of magic realism were motivated by the desire to promote techniques for stressing the intrinsically wonderful aspect of reality. It is only logical, then, that the supernatural—so vital in contemporary theories of the mode—played no part in early definitions of magic realism: preoccupied with highlighting the magic of the natural, the founders of the mode had no time for, and in fact actively ignored, the supernatural, whose function they regarded as incompatible with magic realism. Hence one of the issues which have become central to modern defi nitions of magic realism and to attempts to distinguish it from other modes of writing, that is, the question of whether the realist and the

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non-realist are combined harmoniously or disharmoniously, is completely absent here. Where magic is understood to be an attitude towards reality, this distinction plainly does not apply. The fi rst step towards contemporary conceptions of magic realism was taken by the Flemish film critic and writer Johan Daisne, who adopted the term from Bontempelli and was the fi rst to alter the parameters for the defi nition of magic realism (Scheffel 22). In tune with Roh and Bontempelli, Daisne saw in magic realism a possibility of rendering visible the magic of mundane reality; however, his defi nition of the term differs from theirs with respect to his concept of reality, as discernible in his insistence on the ability of magic realism to portray a “complete” reality, inclusive of the world of dreams (Scheffel 23–24). For Daisne, magic realist writing was characterised by the intermingling of everyday reality with dreams, and he put less emphasis on the exactness of description which had been essential in Roh and Bontempelli’s defi nitions of magic realism as a vehicle for unveiling the magic within reality.3 The gradual development away from the original meaning of the term and towards contemporary theories of the mode continued in the work of Daisne’s student Hubert Lampo, who distinguished “magisch-realisme” from “psychologisch-realisme” as an interpretation of the world incorporating the irrational and empirically inexplicable (Scheffel 25–27). As such, Lampo’s view of magic realist literature is indicative of an enormous conceptual shift in the understanding of the magic aspect of the mode: with Daisne and Lampo, the magic element of magic realism lies no longer in everyday reality itself, but in its combination with the dreamlike and irrational. Although this particular combination is the trademark of contemporary magic realist writing, it would be erroneous to trace modern magic realism directly to Daisne and Lampo. In between the conceptual shift magic realism underwent in the Netherlands and magic realist writing as an international phenomenon today lies the long story of magic realism in Latin America, a story that has been shaped by diametrically opposed interpretations and applications of the term “magic realism,” as well as by the wholly unforeseen international success of the mode. It is in Latin America that magic realism was finally “put on the map” of literary history; and it is to Latin America and its critics that we owe not only a vast plethora of magic realist writing, but also an entire range of definitions that have proved highly influential in the formulation of contemporary conceptions of the mode. If “magic realism” entered Latin America as a term mainly used to describe art, it returned as a popular label for literature. It is, moreover, also in its Latin American transformation that distinctions among various combinations of the natural and the supernatural began to become relevant. The Latin American reception of the term started with the translation of Roh’s essay into Spanish, which was published in Ortega y Gasset’s Revista de Occidente as early as 1927. Although the expression “magic realism” seems to have had an immediate impact among the intellectuals of Buenos

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Aires (Scheffel 41), it was not until 1948 that the term was fi rst used in relation to Latin American literature by the Venezuelan author Arturo UslarPietri in his book Letras y hombres de Venezuela.4 Ironically, however, when the concept which is nowadays mainly associated with Latin American magic realism fi nally made its appearance in the preface to Alejo Carpentier’s novel El reino de este mundo a year later, it was under a different name—that of “lo real maravilloso (americano).” Carpentier’s coinage of the term “the marvellous real” was motivated by his desire to distinguish Latin American literature from European literary movements such as surrealism and to stress its independent character, as well as the “unique aspects of Latin America” (Bowers, Magic(al) 15) per se. Arguing that the marvellous real formed “the heritage of all of America” (Carpentier, “America” 87), he sought to defi ne it as an indigenously (Latin) American phenomenon specific to Latin American reality because it “presuppose[d] faith” (86) in the marvellous, which he claimed the Europeans did not possess: Therefore, it seems that the marvelous invoked in disbelief—the case of the Surrealists for so many years—was never anything more than a literary ruse, just as boring in the end as the literature that is oneiric ‘by arrangement’ or those praises of folly that are now back in style. . . . All they do is substitute the tricks of the magician for the worn-out phrases of academics or the eschatological glee of certain existentialists. (86) The dichotomies with which Carpentier plays in this passage have become decisive for contemporary magic realist criticism—on the one hand, the notion that Europe and its literature are old and tired and that rejuvenation needs to come from without, and on the other hand, the idea that belief systems differ fundamentally between Europe and its (former) colonies. These two assumptions inform modern defi nitions of magic realism: the fi rst is implicit in attempts to defend it against the charge of escapism by positing it as a case of reversed influence between centre and margin, or between Europe and its former colonies. The second notion lies behind Carpentier’s insistence on the naturalness and pervasiveness of the marvellous real in Latin America: “the marvelous real that I defend and that is our own marvelous real is encountered in its raw state, latent and omnipresent, in all that is Latin American. Here the strange is commonplace, and always was commonplace” (Carpentier, “Baroque” 104). As we can see, Carpentier here essentially works with the harmony-disharmony distinction, linking it to the question of faith and clearly privileging the former. Warnes shows how in formulating his concept of the marvellous real, Carpentier seeks to break up the dichotomy between the rational and the irrational: Carpentier uses the romantic accounts of European explorers against the rationality of modern Europe . . . in order to ‘identify’ a Latin

10

Exploring Magic Realism in Salman Rushdie’s Fiction America that exists outside of the possibility of rational understanding, one that he elsewhere asserts can only be understood through faith. For Carpentier, the fact that early explorers could only understand the New World through the language of romance was a cause of celebration because it supports his own attempts at establishing a founding myth for Latin America. Romance thus comes to support the early Carpentier’s project in terms of both its objects of fascination—the exotic, the mysterious, the strange—and in terms of its modes of perception in which the antinomies of reason and unreason that characterise rational thought are undone. (37)

The assumption that “the strange is commonplace” in the former colonies has become characteristic of defi nitions of magic realism which see the coexistence of the supernatural and the natural as related to the different ontologies typical of Western and Eastern countries. Since magic, such readings suggest, is an integral part of reality in the colonies, it should not be surprising that in their literatures magic and realism can coexist without ontological contradiction. The harmonious integration of the natural and the supernatural was originally responsible for much of the appeal of magic realist literature, and this partly explains its particular tenacity also as far as the critical perception of magic realism is concerned. The above already indicates the tremendous impact of Carpentier’s formulations of the marvellous real, and it is one of the ironies in the history of magic realism that a critic as hostile to magic realism as Carpentier was to shape the defi nition and development of the mode which came to be known so decisively under precisely this name. The reason for this lies in a conflation of terms: although Carpentier explicitly juxtaposed his concept of the marvellous real with magic realism, which he considered to convey “an unrealistic image, impossible but fi xed there nonetheless” (Carpentier, “Baroque” 103), later critics, despite continuing to use the term magic realism, adopted significant elements of Carpentier’s defi nition of the marvellous real in their descriptions of the mode. Other Latin American critics also sought to defi ne what they called magic realism as the new trend in Latin American fiction, and some of their propositions have indeed left their traces in contemporary theories of the mode. Angel Flores’s essay “Magical Realism in Spanish American Fiction” (1954), 5 for instance, presents magic realism as an “amalgamation of realism and fantasy” (Flores 112), and this is a view on which the majority of contemporary magic realist criticism is based. Indeed, the fact that magic realism combines realist with fantastic elements appears to be one of the only aspects of the mode upon which all critics agree. Interestingly, we face a paradox here, since the common notion discussed above, namely that magic realism is informed by non-Western concepts of reality with a tolerance of magic much higher than Western understandings of reality, should be expected to preclude readings of magic realism as an “amalgamation of

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realism and fantasy.”6 After all, once magic is regarded as a normal aspect of reality, the epistemological difference between the two vanishes, and the opposition between magic and realism ceases to make sense. Nevertheless, the two views happily coexist within magic realist criticism, and can often be detected within one and the same theory. In contrast to Carpentier, who vigorously emphasised the inherently Latin American nature of the marvellous real, Flores highlighted the European origins of magic realism, which he traced back to the writings of Cervantes and Kafka (Flores 110–11). Both of these views are acknowledged by contemporary defi nitions. Yet although the European roots of the term are indisputable, and although critics also recognise the existence of European precursors of magic realism, the fact that the magic realist boom started in Latin America has helped invest its Latin American variant with a fair degree of prominence whereby magic realism is frequently regarded as a predominantly Latin American genre. Hence the privileged position of the Latin American version on the magic realist literary map, which has caused critics to model their defi nitions of the mode on Latin American literature as its main representative. The consequences are easy to discern: whereas Latin American magic realism might be adequately defi ned, other regional or individual variants of the mode tend to receive little separate attention, causing their idiosyncrasies to remain obscure. Another Latin American critic who shaped the direction of magic realist studies is Luis Leal, who followed Carpentier in viewing the marvellous real as a genuinely Latin American phenomenon, and who seems to have been the fi rst to link the marvellous real with magic realism: In the stories of Borges himself, as in those by other writers of fantastic literature, the principal trait is the creation of infi nite hierarchies. Neither of those two tendencies permeates works of magical realism, where the principal thing is not the creation of imaginary beings or worlds but the discovery of the mysterious relationship between man and his circumstances. The existence of the marvelous real is what started magical realist literature, which some critics claim is the truly American literature. (Leal 121–22) This passage already indicates another of Leal’s legacies: wishing to prove magic realism authentically Latin American, he was concerned with establishing a clear distinction between magic realism and recent European trends of writing, such as surrealism, the fantastic, science fiction, psychological, and modernist literature. Once again, we fi nd that the notion of harmony is implicitly used in order to distinguish magic realism from other forms of literature: Unlike superrealism, magical realism does not use dream motifs; neither does it distort reality or create imagined worlds, as writers of

12

Exploring Magic Realism in Salman Rushdie’s Fiction fantastic literature or science fiction do; nor does it emphasize psychological analysis of characters, since it doesn’t try to fi nd reasons for their actions or their inability to express themselves. Magical realism is not an aesthetic movement either, as was modernism, which was interested in creating works dominated by a refi ned style; neither is it interested in the creation of complex structures per se. 7 (Leal 121)

The differences between magic realism and related genres such as the fantastic, fantasy literature, and science fiction have become a major concern in contemporary magic realist criticism, and efforts to define magic realism in opposition to these genres continue today. Of special importance here is the relation between magic realism and the fantastic, an issue which already attracted Leal’s special attention, presumably since it allowed him to stress the natural quality of the “magic” in magic realism, and thus to implicitly link it with the marvellous real once again, despite citing Roh in the process: Let us keep in mind that in these magical realist works the author does not need to justify the mystery of events, as the fantastic writer has to. In fantastic literature the supernatural invades a world ruled by reason. In magical realism, ‘the mystery does not descend to the represented world, but rather hides and palpitates behind it.’ (Leal 123) Leal’s attempt to discriminate between the fantastic and magic realism has proven highly influential. The defi nition of magic realism which has most decisively shaped magic realist criticism in the past decades is based on a comparative analysis with the fantastic and derives its description of magic realism from their distinction: Amaryll Chanady’s Magical Realism and the Fantastic: Resolved versus Unresolved Antinomy, which shall presently serve as the starting point of our discussion of contemporary magic realist criticism. And as we shall see, the notion of harmony (as opposed to disharmony) takes centre stage here as well.

MAGIC REALISM AS A MODE OF HARMONY The emphasis on the relation between magic realism and the fantastic is connected with the contemporary critical interest in the interaction between natural and supernatural elements in magic realist texts which I have already referred to. Indeed, this interaction seems to be the decisive factor for many definitions of the mode—my own attempt to define Rushdie’s magic realism is no exception here. Melissa Stewart sums up the three main current explanations of the relationship between the natural and the supernatural: In order to defi ne magical realism, it seems necessary to identify the nature of the relationship between the magical and the rational, and

Defining Magic Realism

13

indeed, several descriptions of this relationship have been offered. Some of these descriptions evoke an “antagonistic struggle”: the magical “collides” with the rational, as David Young and Keith Hollaman state, or “another world [intrudes] into this one,” according to Brian McHale (borrowing a phrase from Thomas Pynchon’s The Crying of Lot 49). Other descriptions suggest a more harmonious combination: the “two realms” of the magical and the rational “merge” or “intersect.” A third group proposes that the magical is part of the rational or, as Robert Gibb states, “in magical realism, the real isn’t abandoned; it is extended.” Similarly, George McMurray believes that magical realism presents “an expanded sense of reality,” and Wendy B. Faris speaks of magic that “grows almost imperceptibly out of the real.” The validity of all these descriptions indicates, I believe, that the potency of magical realism lies in its capacity to explore the protean relationship between what we consider rational (what is knowable, predictable, and controllable) and irrational (what is beyond our complete understanding and control). (477) These are the different evaluations of the relationship between the rational and the irrational on which magic realist criticism is based to varying degrees. By far the most popular view is that natural and supernatural elements coexist in harmony, and this proposition has, in fact, become the standard explanation of the interaction of the realist and the non-realist in magic realist literature.8 Indeed, there are many texts to which this explanation applies. What I object to, however, is the tendency of some critics to read all magic realist literature in terms of a harmonious cohabitation of the natural and the supernatural. That there are so many contradictory evaluations of the coexistence of the two only reflects the fact that their relationship is flexible rather than fi xed, and it seems to me highly doubtful whether attempts to defi ne magic realism universally through the manner of interaction between its ontologically opposed elements can be successful; the diversity which Stewart demonstrates above suggests that they cannot, since what magic realism might really do is highlight and probe the indeterminate relationship between the natural and the supernatural. Hence my rejection of harmony as a universal feature of magic realism and my decision to confine myself to an analysis of Salman Rushdie’s specific brand of magic realism in this study. Amaryll Chanady is probably the most prominent representative of the theory which presents the interaction of the natural and the supernatural codes of magic realism as harmonious, a conclusion at which she arrives through a comparative analysis of magic realism and the fantastic. Chanady’s defi nition of magic realism has been tremendously influential, and it is in opposition to her that I would like to propose my own defi nition of Rushdie’s magic realism. A few words about the fantastic, however, are necessary before I embark on my discussion of Chanady’s concept.

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Exploring Magic Realism in Salman Rushdie’s Fiction

The foundations of scholarly study of the fantastic were laid by Roger Caillois in 1966, when he defi ned the fantastic as a genre and suggested that it should be viewed as a combination of two representational systems (Teißl 63–64). This idea was partially adopted and expanded by Tzvetan Todorov in his Introduction à la littérature fantastique (1970), which has dominated the analysis of fantastic literature since its publication. Todorov’s main contribution lay in the prominent position he assigned to the reader, whose specific reaction to the coexistence of two representational systems he regarded as decisive in the classification of literature as fantastic. For Todorov, the fantastic is characterised by the intrusion of elements incompatible with the basically realist code of the text, unsettling occurrences which cause readers to doubt the applicability of realist explanations. The otherwise undisturbed reign of realism confronts readers with a dilemma: should they search for a realist resolution of mysterious events or resign themselves to the presence of the supernatural? Either of these options is problematic: opting for a realist interpretation of events forces the reader to ignore all signals in the text which point towards a supernatural explanation, whereas a reading which favours the supernatural has to disregard signs of realism. Todorov describes this dilemma in the following manner: The ambiguity is sustained to the very end of the adventure: reality or dream? truth or illusion? Which brings us to the very heart of the fantastic. In a world which is indeed our world, the one we know, a world without devils, sylphides, or vampires, there occurs an event which cannot be explained by the laws of this same familiar world. The person who experiences the event must opt for one of two possible solutions: either he is the victim of an illusion of the senses, of a product of the imagination—and laws of the world then remain what they are; or else the event has indeed taken place, it is an integral part of reality—but then this reality is controlled by laws unknown to us. Either the devil is an illusion, an imaginary being; or else he really exists, precisely like other living beings—with this reservation, that we encounter him infrequently. The fantastic occupies the duration of this uncertainty. Once we choose one answer or the other, we leave the fantastic for a neighboring genre, the uncanny or the marvelous. The fantastic is the hesitation experienced by a person who knows only the laws of nature, confronting an apparently supernatural event. (25) By privileging the reader in this manner, Todorov, in fact, only follows Caillois half-way: his theory of the fantastic is characterised by the illusion of the coexistence of two representational schemes in a single text rather than their actual combination. Thus, readers are confused less because

Defining Magic Realism

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two contradictory codes really are present, but rather because they cannot decide which code is the correct one for the interpretation of the text; the hesitation which for Todorov determines fantastic literature is an effect of the reader’s attempts to solve this riddle. Hence also Todorov’s conviction that the fantastic is easily destroyed and remains intact in only a very limited number of texts.9 That Todorov’s definition of the fantastic hinges on the illusion of the simultaneous presence of two codes is one of the points which distinguish his theory from my own defi nition of magic realism, which, like most others, insists on the actual and literal coexistence of two ontologically different systems in magic realist texts. This is also a point in which Chanady’s defi nition of the fantastic differs from Todorov’s since she also posits the combination of two oppositional codes as crucial for both the fantastic and magic realism. The feature which she chooses to distinguish between the two is the type of interaction between the natural and the supernatural, which she defi nes as harmonious for magic realism and disharmonious for the fantastic. Chanady follows Todorov in stressing the importance of ambiguity for the fantastic, but she rejects his concept of hesitation as too narrow, criticising it for the overarching responsibility it transfers to the reader and arguing that Todorov misrepresents the genre by turning it into a mere matter of readerly reaction and (non-)acceptance: we believe that it is not a question of accepting the supernatural or not. In the fantastic, there are two codes of reality, neither of which can be ignored. The implied author deliberately creates a realistic world, while at the same time giving us indications of the supernatural. The narrative is interpreted according to two codes of perception, between which the reader does not hesitate. Moreover, in many fantastic stories an occurrence is unambiguously supernatural, and a rational explanation would be an unwarranted extrapolation of the text or a direct misreading. Do we then leave the domain of the fantastic because there is no justification to hesitate between a logical and an irrational explanation? Todorov’s criterion of hesitation is too restrictive in that it disqualifies all but a very limited number of works from the fantastic. (11–12) Instead, Chanady suggests the term antinomy, which presupposes the presence of two contradictory representational systems: A far more satisfactory term than hesitation, which is a reaction on the part of the reader to textual indications, is antinomy, or the simultaneous presence of two confl icting codes in the text. Since neither can be accepted in the presence of the other, the apparently supernatural phenomenon remains inexplicable. Contrary to the marvellous, where every event can be integrated in a certain code of reality (or irreality),

16

Exploring Magic Realism in Salman Rushdie’s Fiction or the uncanny, where unusual occurrences can be understood within a realistic framework, the fantastic creates a world which cannot be explained by any coherent mode. (12)

Magic realism, Chanady suggests, presents the reader with a similar situation: the fictional world is characterised by the presence of two diametrically opposed codes which are developed to equal extents. Just as in the fantastic, their coexistence is not clarified; where magic realism differs from the fantastic, however, is in both the cause and effect of this: whereas the fantastic fictional world “cannot be explained,” in magic realism the fictional world need not be explained. Since, as Chanady argues, the magic realist narrator does not present the supernatural as problematic, the reader does not perceive irrational occurrences as unsettling and accepts the coexistence of contradictory codes without questioning their (in)compatibility. Paradoxically, then, the same technique yields entirely different results. Whereas in the fantastic, characters and readers recognise the irreconcilable conflict within the world of the text but are frustrated in their attempts to resolve the antinomy by the narrator’s refusal to comment, in magic realism “authorial reticence” (Chanady 16) allows the reader to ignore the coexistence of two contradictory representational systems. Chanady suggests the terms resolved (magic realism) and unresolved (the fantastic) antinomy in order to describe this situation, and argues that the harmonious coexistence of two representational systems in magic realism presents an alternative to received Western notions of reality (30–31).

MAGIC REALISM AS A MODE OF DISHARMONY Although the notion of a harmonious coexistence of the natural and the supernatural in magic realism has influenced most magic realist criticism over the past few decades, some critics also contest this predominant view and seek to describe the combination of the two codes in a rather different manner. Among them is Stephen Slemon, who in his groundbreaking article on “Magic Realism as Postcolonial Discourse” defi nes magic realist texts as sites of structural opposition: In the language of narration in a magic realist text, a battle between two oppositional systems takes place, each working toward the creation of a different kind of fictional world from the other. Since the ground rules of these two worlds are incompatible, neither one can fully come into being, and each remains suspended, locked in a continuous dialectic with the ‘other,’ a situation which creates disjunction within each of the separate discursive systems, rending them with gaps, absences, and silences. (409)

Defining Magic Realism

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Slemon argues that the antagonistic relationship of the two codes precludes any harmonious resolution since neither of the two codes can establish its supremacy in the presence of the other, opposed code, which prevents it from dominating the fictional world. Slemon suggests that this situation thwarts the possibility of conclusive interpretation: Although most works of fiction are generically mixed in mode, the characteristic maneuver of magic realist fiction is that its two separate narrative modes never manage to arrange themselves into any kind of hierarchy. . . . In magic realism this battle is represented in the language of narration by the foregrounding of two opposing discursive systems, with neither managing to subordinate or contain the other. This sustained opposition forestalls the possibility of interpretive closure through any act of naturalizing the text to an established system of representation. (410) In magic realist literature, a form of generic hybridity which refuses to be resolved into any kind of balance dominates the text, destabilising it and provoking a complete disorientation of the reader. Confronted with the simultaneous instalment of two incompatible narrative codes, the reader is at a loss to decide which interpretative scheme to choose: since the two codes demand conflicting reading positions, the reader falls victim to an irresolvable pattern of opposed pulls; as soon as an implied reading position has been established by one code, it is deconstructed by its opposite, rendering “interpretive closure” impossible. In fact, in magic realist texts, the very basis for any defi nitive interpretation is destroyed, as John Erickson suggests in his defi nition of the term: Chanady cites Irène Bessière who, in speaking of Jacques Cazotte’s The Devil in Love (Le Diable amoureux)—a text that challenges conventional narrative—says, ‘the text seeks to present from the outset the natural order and the supernatural order . . . so as to deconstruct them simultaneously and call into question all signs, before reconstructing in fi ne the complementary existence of these orders.’ I examine a similar process of magical realism occurring in the postcolonialist narratives of two Moroccan writers: Love in Two Languages (Amour bilingue, 1983), by Abdelkebir Khatibi, and The Sand Child (L’Enfant de sable, 1985) by Tahar ben Jelloun. In these narratives, the coexistence of mutually incompatible predicates (natural/supernatural) results in a deconstructive movement that throws doubt on the certainty of the representation itself (the ‘sign’). Such postcolonialist discourse introduces a process that puts into play a set of antiprogrammatic imperatives challenging authoritarian discourses of power by rejecting binary either/ or reasoning, whether Western or indigenous. It affirms that which is and is not, that is not either/or but both and neither. (429; ellipsis in original)

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Magic realist readers are constantly forced to re-adapt their interpretation of the text to the code enforced at any one moment. Thus magic realism is not a matter of choice: the reader cannot choose which code to follow and which interpretation of events (realistic or supernatural) to accept. The magic realist situation is more extreme than that; the reader is faced with an irresolvable paradox in which the natural and the supernatural do not apply “either/or but both and neither.” Contrary to Slemon, I would argue that this absurd state of affairs develops precisely because both codes “fully come into being.” The supernatural and the realist codes are locked in an impossible embrace in which confl icting explanations for outrageous events stand side by side, mutually exclusive but simultaneously valid nevertheless. The continuous play of assertion and suspension characteristic of magic realism eventually results in the erasure of any reliable interpretative basis. The illusion of “interpretive closure” vanishes further with any new adjustment the reader has to make, and hence the text can no longer lay claim to unity of meaning. Naturally, this is not an exclusive property of magic realism, but it appears to be a defi ning one, if only for some strands of the mode. Moreover, the erosion of interpretative ground can also be fruitfully related to the literary representations of textual disintegration which frequently appear in magic realist fiction, and which reflect its structural disjunction.10 The defi nition of magic realism which I propose here might at fi rst seem almost identical with Chanady’s concept of the fantastic, and indeed, there are a number of conceptual and terminological parallels between the two. Despite such obvious similarities, however, a number of crucial divergences between Chanady’s description of the fantastic and my own conception of magic realism need to be highlighted, the most fundamental of which concerns Chanady’s view of the fantastic textual world. Chanady’s fantastic presupposes a world of reason in which the supernatural constitutes an intrusion, and in which “the code of the natural is progressively destroyed” (Chanady 13). Hence Chanady’s theory is based on an implicit hierarchy between the two codes, in which realism serves as the accepted and rational norm whereas the supernatural forms a dangerous disruption that is explicitly linked to insanity, or seen as a threat to sanity. Contrary to Chanady, I do not posit the existence of a realist world which is disrupted by the occurrence of supernatural events. Indeed, as I will show below, Rushdie’s magic realism does not allow for such a hierarchy between the two codes, but rather complicates any stable conception of their relationship. Instead, and in rejecting a hierarchical framework for the combination of the two magic realist codes, my defi nition of magic realism draws attention to the construction of highly unstable textual universes. These, I suggest, complicate the relationship between the natural and the supernatural, the realist and the non-realist; instead of envisaging a typically oppositional but hierarchical relationship between the two codes and hence reinstalling the

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epistemological status quo, magic realist disharmony de-privileges either of the two ontological schemes. As I show in Chapter 7, in activating a particular reading strategy, magic realism includes the reader in the construction of a more fluid fictional world, hence surpassing our habitual postmodern expectations. The particular strand of magic realism discussed in this book owes much of its postcolonial effectiveness to this structural disunity. Magic realism does not, as is sometimes suggested, simply substitute indigenous paradigms of reality for Western empiricist ones. Instead, it juxtaposes various reality discourses not in order to place them in a binary opposition but to explode the very idea of the binary by showing that it cannot possibly express the nature of reality: no matter how contradictory the two codes seem and no matter how many serious conceptual problems their conjunction causes, here they are, side by side. Warnes refers to this type of magic realism as “discursive magical realism” (14), acknowledging with this term the discursive orientation of a strand of magic realism that “elevates the non-real to the status of the real in order to cast the epistemological status of both into doubt” (14). Thus magic realism rejects and effectively deconstructs any authoritative world view by confronting it with its opposite and refusing to resolve the ensuing paradox. I will relate this strategy to what I propose to call Rushdie’s politics of ambivalence in Chapter 7.

RUSHDIE’S MAGIC REALISM The above already indicates my own preferences regarding the classification of Rushdie’s magic realism and my inclination to follow defi nitions of the mode which depict the natural and the supernatural on a perpetual collision course. But let us consult a few passages from Rushdie’s fiction in order to determine the spectrum of possible combinations of the natural and the supernatural, or the realist and the magical, presented in his fiction. Among the most decidedly magic sequences in Rushdie’s fiction is the Sundarbans section from Midnight’s Children, which depicts Saleem’s sojourn in the jungle during the 1971 war over the secession of Bangladesh. Eager to flee the atrocities of the war, Saleem leads his three fellow soldiers deep into the heart of the jungle, but once the “dream-forest” (363) has closed behind them, the soldiers find themselves in a magic realm no less dangerous than the fiercely fought world outside. Thrown into a separate and magic universe that is impenetrable and “entirely other” (360), the soldiers soon realise that the rationality of the exterior world has ceased to function, leaving them at the mercy of “the logic of the jungle” (361), the logic of dreams. The jungle seems bizarrely alive and, what is more, determined to torture the intruders in the manner of an evil and revengeful spirit: they are bombarded by its fruits; almost drowned by the extraordinary force of the monsoon it unleashes on their heads; have their blood

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sucked by the jungle’s creatures; are tortured by apparitions and phantoms of the past, as well as lulled and assailed by nostalgia; plagued by the voices of their victims and deafened by the mud with which they seek to block their ears against these lamentations; seduced in the temple of Kali by ghosts which feed on their dreams; and, once the jungle is done with them, literally washed out of the forest on a huge tidal wave. The manner of narration as well as the bizarre causal links between these disturbing events are entirely matter-of-fact, and this is in tune with Chanady’s theory of magic realism: abandoning his habit of commenting on his tale, Saleem practices a high degree of authorial reticence, merely stating what happened and resisting his usual urge to intrude. This sudden change in Saleem’s narration is achieved by a trick: claiming to have been “brained” (37) in the Indo-Pakistani war six years earlier and to have, subsequently, lost his memory as well as his identity, Saleem refuses to identify with himself—and, of course, with his own actions—during the period of his loss of memory. He refers to himself as “the Buddha” (349), about whom he talks in the third person, thus managing to recede from his accounts of both war atrocities and magic events and preserving a level of emotional distance typical of authorial narrators: “‘I am glad,’ my Padma says, ‘I am happy you ran away.’ But I insist: not I. He. He, the buddha. Who, until the snake, would remain not-Saleem” (360). Retreating behind the persona of “not-Saleem,” Saleem refrains from highlighting the shockingly unusual nature of the events of the Sundarbans episode, and this technique, together with the significant absence of ever-inquisitive Padma from this passage, forestalls the reader’s doubt and turns this episode into one of the most straightforwardly magic sections of the novel. The Sundarbans chapter constitutes a part of the novel in which the natural and the supernatural intermingle harmoniously, yet the peaceful coexistence of the two codes in Midnight’s Children tends to be confined to such short episodes. Indeed, in the case of the Sundarbans, Saleem explicitly emphasises the jungle’s autonomous existence and its lack of connection with the world—and reality—outside. The forest is “so thick that history has hardly ever found the way in” (359), and when the soldiers enter the Sundarbans, they are “swallowed” (360) by the jungle, thus entering another world: The jungle closed behind them like a tomb, and after hours of increasingly weary but also frenzied rowing through incomprehensibly labyrinthine salt-water channels overtowered by the cathedral-arching trees, Ayooba Shaheed Farooq were hopelessly lost; . . . it seems as if the possibility of ever leaving this place receded before them like the lantern of a ghost. (360) Whereas the Sundarbans are depicted as a separate magic space in which supernatural phenomena fail to surprise, in the rest of the novel realism

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exercises a stronger hold, and realist objections to fantastic occurrences are more difficult to overcome. “Please believe that I am falling apart” (37). Thus commences the third chapter of Midnight’s Children, a novel bursting with appeals to its readers’ trust. And thus Saleem continues: I am not speaking metaphorically; nor is this the opening gambit of some melodramatic, riddling, grubby appeal for pity. I mean quite simply that I have begun to crack all over like an old jug—that my poor body, singular, unlovely, buffeted by too much history, subjected to drainage above and drainage below, mutilated by doors, brained by spittoons, has started coming apart at the seams. In short, I am literally disintegrating, slowly for the moment, although there are signs of acceleration. I ask you only to accept (as I have accepted) that I shall eventually crumble into (approximately) six hundred and thirty million particles of anonymous, and necessarily oblivious dust. (37) The urgency and insistent repetitiveness of this passage are symptomatic of Saleem’s attempts to convince his audience of his point of view and persuade them of the veracity of the magic events he describes. Yet the very effort he devotes to this highlights the extraordinariness of magic in his world: it is clearly not as natural as Chanady would suggest. Padma, Saleem’s addressee and to some extent the fictional stand-in for his real audience, serves as a gauge of the unusualness of his tale, since even she—endowed with a good deal of superstition and firmly at home in the spiritual life of Indian mythology—rejects much of Saleem’s extravagant tale as mere fantasy. Thus the very centre of Saleem’s narrative, his claim of the birth of 1001 magic children in the first hour of India’s independence, provokes Padma’s profound disbelief: “There; now I’ve said it,” exclaims Saleem (200), deeply conscious of the improbability of his tale, which is, indeed, made explicit in Padma’s reaction: “Padma is looking as if her mother had died—her face, with its openingshutting mouth, is the face of a beached pomfret. ‘O baba!’ she says at last. ‘O baba! You are sick; what have you said?’” (200). Undaunted, Saleem insists on the truthfulness of his account, yet although he eventually regains Padma’s confidence, his endeavours highlight the contradictory nature of the fictional world, indicating that the coexistence of the two codes is anything but harmonious. Saleem comments on this underlying conflict when he concludes that “a little uncertainty is no bad thing” (212) and, indeed, it is not, for “a little uncertainty”—and at times more than just “a little”—is essentially what Rushdie’s magic realism is based on.11 Chanady excludes ambiguity from her definition of magic realism, since it leads to the very problematisation of the combination of the two codes which threatens their harmonious coexistence and which she, accordingly, rejects. As we shall see in the following, however, ambivalence is a crucial aspect of Rushdie’s fiction; indeed, I would propose to regard it as one of

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the defi ning aspects of his novels, the logical consequence of the “battle between two oppositional systems” (Slemon 409) which I consider characteristic of his specific brand of magic realism. The magic of Rushdie’s magic realism is not normally natural, harmonious, or “ordinary” (Zamora and Faris 3). A naturalising view of magic is already thwarted by the fact that the sheer implausibility of their stories seems to disconcert Rushdie’s narrators themselves, inciting them to question their truth value, freely admit their lack of veracity, openly ponder how far their readers’ belief will stretch, and try to convince them(selves) that everything they claim is true nevertheless. Thus Saleem throws doubt on his sister’s ability to talk to animals—previously presented by him as pure and absolute fact12—when he suddenly asks himself “[u]nanswerable questions: was it true that my sister had acquired the languages of cats as well as birds? Was it her fondness for feline life which pushed her over the brink?” (225); thus the narrator of The Satanic Verses explicitly concedes the utter impossibility of the events depicted in the opening scene of the novel, while insisting on the truthfulness of his account in the very same sentence;13 and thus Saleem, addressing the reader, unashamedly wonders “how much you’re prepared to swallow” (179). Such narratorial reservations are indicative of the ongoing struggle between two codes to which Rushdie’s magic realist texts bear witness. What will concern us in the following, however, are instances in which this battle breaks through the surface of the texts, fierce and fully-fledged. Rushdie’s most consistently ambivalent novel is The Satanic Verses, a novel which contains a true plethora of simultaneous assertions and denials of the supernatural and in which straightforward explanations of extraordinary events are forever held at bay. One of its most decidedly ambivalent aspects concerns the question of whether or not Gibreel possesses supernatural—angelic—powers, and this is an issue I will discuss at some length, since it lends itself perfectly to an illustration of the simultaneous implementation of the two magic realist codes. Throughout The Satanic Verses we fi nd contradictory signals which suggest, on the one hand, that Gibreel is insane and, on the other, that he is a supernatural being. Thus we are presented with two conflicting and mutually exclusive interpretative options: either Gibreel is mad and suffers from hallucinations during which he believes himself to be the archangel Gabriel; or else he is indeed the archangel and, far from insane, endowed with supernatural powers. An essential iconographic archangelic requisite is the halo, and indeed, Gibreel’s journey through England is accompanied by various “halo sightings,” which lend credibility to Gibreel’s archangelic status. Significantly, in all of these instances the people who see Gibreel’s halo are appalled and confused, fully aware of the improbability of what they are seeing but nevertheless insistent on the trustworthiness of their accounts. Consider the following passage, which comes from one of Gibreel’s odysseys through London, and which records the amazement felt by the shop assistants who sell Gibreel his trumpet:

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Then the stranger held the trumpet up over his head and shouted I name this trumpet Azraeel, the Last Trump, the Exterminator of Men!—and we just stood there, I tell you, turned to stone, because all around the fucking insane, certifi able bastard’s head there was this bright glow, you know?, streaming out, like, from a point behind his head. A halo. Say what you like, the three shop-attendants afterwards repeated to anyone who would listen, say what you like, but we saw what we saw. (448) Evidently, the shop assistants are shocked by the appearance of Gibreel’s halo. This is no harmonious intermingling of the supernatural and the natural; instead, the supernatural here is perceived as a disruption of the rational, an insult to common sense. That its existence has to be conceded despite all rational reservations only serves to strengthen the reader’s acceptance of the irrational, however, since it suggests that the extraordinary presence of the halo is irreducibly magic. Faris posits the existence of the “‘irreducible element’ of magic” (Enchantments 7) as a prerequisite of magic realism, and describes it as an element which surpasses the realm of Western logic: “The ‘irreducible element’ is something we cannot explain according to the laws of the universe as they have been formulated in Western empirically based discourse, that is, according to ‘logic, familiar knowledge, or received belief,’ as David Young and Keith Hollaman describe it” (Enchantments 7). Gibreel’s halo is an example of precisely this: even though its appearance cannot be explained, the reader is persuaded to believe in it, the more so since this is by no means the only time it is seen. Its first sighting conveniently puts an end to Gibreel’s interrogation by the immigration police before it has even quite started: Hisser Moaner Popeye turned eagerly towards Gibreel. ‘And who might this be?’ inquired Inspector Lime. ‘Another sky-diver?’ But the words died on his lips, because at that moment the floodlights were switched off, the order to do so having been given when Chamcha was handcuffed and taken in charge, and in the aftermath of the seven suns it became clear to everyone there that a pale, golden light was emanating from the direction of the man in the smoking jacket, was in fact streaming softly outwards from a point immediately behind his head. Inspector Lime never referred to that light again, and if he had been asked about it would have denied ever having seen such a thing, a halo, in the late twentieth century, pull the other one. (141–42) The strategy which Rushdie employs in this quotation corresponds exactly to the passage quoted above: the notion that Gibreel possesses a halo is ridiculed and presented as wholly improbable but it is asserted nevertheless, not least through the fact that here, as in the other quotation, the halo is given its proper name to ensure that its true nature is

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grasped by the reader. The narrator highlights the fact that “everyone” sees the halo and that “everyone” recognises it for what it is, thus tempting the reader to accept Gibreel’s supernatural character. And yet, it appears that the narrator’s generalisation is rash, for Saladin Chamcha, less lucky than his partner-in-fl ight, has a different story to tell: “When Chamcha reached the Black Maria, he saw the traitor, Gibreel Farishta, looking down at him from the little balcony outside Rosa’s bedroom, and there wasn’t any light shining around the bastard’s head” (142). Saladin’s failure to see any supernatural light streaming from Gibreel’s head turns this scene into a clear instance of the simultaneous implementation of both codes: two diametrically opposed perceptions are asserted at the very same time. Gibreel does and does not have a halo—the text supports both confl icting interpretations, and so readers are faced with an irresolvable dilemma. In fact, this applies to the entire issue of Gibreel’s archangelic nature. The text constantly offers contradictory clues which render it impossible for the reader to determine whether or not Gibreel is the archangel. On the one hand, the bizarre events which tend to happen in Gibreel’s vicinity induce the reader to believe that Gibreel represents the archangel Gabriel. People feel an unprecedented and inexplicable urge to confess near Gibreel,14 and the businessman Maslama, upon meeting him, even feels he has received a calling from God (193–94). Yet medical opinion as well as the accidents that befall Gibreel on his archangelic missions contradict readings of Gibreel’s actions as heavenly inspired. He is diagnosed with “paranoid schizophrenia” (429), and the text asserts this diagnosis just as avidly as it seems to prove his divine nature, providing ample proof of Gibreel’s insanity, such as when he steps right into the middle of London rush hour traffic on the Embankment while convinced of his own supernatural powers: Yes, he was losing the last traces of his humanity, the gift of fl ight was being restored to him, as he became ethereal, woven of illumined air.—He could simply step, this minute, off this blackened parapet and soar away above the old grey river;—or leap from any of its bridges and never touch land again. So: it was time to show the city a great sight, for when it perceived the Archangel Gibreel standing in all his majesty upon the western horizon, bathed in the rays of the rising sun, then surely its people would be sore afraid and repent them of their sins. He began to enlarge his person. How astonishing, then, that of all the drivers streaming along the Embankment—it was, after all, rush-hour—not one should so much as look into his direction, or acknowledge him! This was in truth a people who had forgotten how to see. . . . ‘I am Gibreel,’ he shouted in a voice that shook every building on the riverbank: nobody noticed. Not one person came running out of those quaking edifices to escape the earthquake. Blind, deaf and asleep.

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He decided to force the issue. The stream of traffic flowed past him. He took a mighty breath, lifted one gigantic foot, and stepped out to face the cars. (336–37) Although initially veiled by the reader’s confi nement to Gibreel’s perspective, this scene’s depiction of a strongly hallucinatory Gibreel rapidly becomes obvious, not least in the near-fatal result of his decision “to force the issue”: Gibreel Farishta was returned to Allie’s doorstep, badly bruised, with many grazes on his arms and face, and jolted into sanity, by a tiny shining gentleman with an advanced stammer who introduced himself with some difficulty as the film producer S.S. Sisodia . . . It was Sisodia’s rented limo that hit Gibreel, a slow-motion accident luckily, owing to traffic congestion. . . . ‘No bobobones broken,’ Sisodia told Allie. ‘A mimi miracle. He ista ista istepped right in fafa front of the weewee wehicle.’ (337) That Gibreel is almost killed as a result of his delusion is rather a drastic assertion of his insanity. This assertion, however, contrasts strongly with the passages quoted above which support the supernatural code and prove Gibreel’s angelic nature. Thus we are faced with an alarming clash between the two codes in which an outrageous event is claimed by both, rendering its ontological status irresolvable. The conflict between the two codes is most disturbingly evident in the episode surrounding Gibreel’s decision to change the English weather. Convinced of his own archangelic wisdom and moral superiority, Gibreel feels called upon to transform England and its inhabitants, and since his attempts to make himself heard on the streets of London have failed, he decides to tackle the problem of the English at what he perceives as its roots: But where should he begin?—Well, then, the trouble with the English was their: Their: In a word, Gibreel solemnly pronounced, their weather. Gibreel Farishta floating on his cloud formed the opinion that the moral fuzziness of the English was meteorologically induced. ‘When the day is not warmer than the night,’ he reasoned, ‘when the light is not brighter than the dark, when the land is not drier than the sea, then clearly a people will lose the power to make distinctions, and commence to see everything—from political parties to sexual partners to religious beliefs—as much-the-same, nothing-to-choose, give-ortake. . . . City,’ he cried, and his voice rolled over the metropolis like thunder, ‘I am going to tropicalize you.’ . . . Standing upon the horizon, spreading his arms to fill the sky, Gibreel cried: ‘Let it be.’

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Exploring Magic Realism in Salman Rushdie’s Fiction Three things happened, fast. The fi rst thing was that, as the unimaginably colossal, elemental forces of the transformational process rushed out of his body (for was he not their embodiment?), he was temporarily overcome by a warm, spinning heaviness, a soporific churning (not at all unpleasant) that made him close, just for an instant, his eyes. The second was that the moment his eyes were shut the horned and goaty features of Mr Saladin Chamcha appeared, on the screen of his mind, as sharp and well-defi ned as could be; accompanied, as if it were sub-titled there, by the adversary’s name. And the third thing was that Gibreel Farishta opened his eyes to fi nd himself collapsed, once again, on Alleluia Cone’s doorstep, begging her forgiveness, weeping O God, it happened, it really happened again. (354–56)

A plethora of signals suggest that Gibreel is suffering from hallucinations. He reawakens in front of Allie’s flat, obviously just recovered from one of his bouts of illness and devastated because he fi nds that, far from having been on an archangelic mission, he has merely been delusional. Also, there is the utter absurdity of his plan and of the bizarre link he perceives between the “moral fuzziness of the English” and their weather, as ridiculed in the list of advantages Gibreel expects from a change of climate: Gibreel enumerated the benefits of the proposed metamorphosis of London into a tropical city: increased moral defi nition, institution of a national siesta, development of vivid and expansive patterns of behaviour among the populace, higher-quality popular music, new birds in the trees (macaws, peacocks, cockatoos), new trees under the birds (coco-palms, tamarind, banyans with hanging beards). . . . A new mass market for domestic air-conditioning units, ceiling fans, anti-mosquito coils and sprays. . . . Emergence of new social values: friends to commence dropping in on one another without making appointments, closure of old folks’ homes, emphasis on the extended family. Spicier food; the use of water as well as paper in English toilets; the joy of running fully dressed through the fi rst rains of the monsoons. (354–55) The alleged “benefits” of Gibreel’s plan clearly satirise stereotypes about the East, and his list is comic in its abitrary and unabashed mixture of divergent areas of life—“A new mass market for domestic air-conditioning units. . . . Emergence of new social values”—as well as in its humorous wording: “new birds in the trees . . . new trees under the birds.” Gibreel’s reasons for tropicalising London depart significantly from the behaviour expected from archangels, and together with their nonsensicality this incompatibility discredits his claim to divine origins. Furthermore, the pathos of Gibreel’s role as a powerful supernatural being is ridiculed by the description of his

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vision of Saladin Chamcha. The grand notion that the archangel Gibreel has to fight his satanic adversary in a divine battle is deconstructed through the pronounced bathos of the passage—the fact that Saladin’s face appears “subtitled” with his name “on the screen of [Gibreel’s] mind,” as if straight out of a news report, is a source of humour rather than awe. Thus the text seeks to debunk Gibreel’s supernatural powers, and apart from the fact that the appearance of the halo cannot be explained away, it seems that the reader is fairly justified in solving the riddle of Gibreel’s nature by opting for his insanity. All the magic events that occur around Gibreel, either through his direct actions or merely in his presence, appear as pure products of his hallucinations and can be assigned to the realm of his imagination. As a result, the realist code is firmly installed. Or so it seems for a short while, because less than half a page later, everything is turned upside down when Allie’s mother praises the changed weather: “Listen, isn’t this weather something? They say it could last months: ‘blocked pattern’, I heard on television, rain over Moscow, while here it’s a tropical heatwave. I called Boniek at Stanford and told him: now we have weather in London, too” (356). That this comment follows so closely after Gibreel’s decision to transform the English weather is significant, as is the use of the word “tropical” to describe the heatwave, since both allow the reader to link the description of the extraordinary meteorological change to Gibreel’s attempt to tropicalise London. To emphasise this connection, the tropical temperatures that continue to characterise the London weather for a long time are explicitly mentioned a number of times, and in terms which recall Gibreel’s tropicalisation of London.15 In this manner, the reader is alerted to the fact that this is no freakish accident; the link between Gibreel’s intended action and the now very real tropicalisation of the English climate refuses to be ignored. The only possible conclusion seems to be that Gibreel has indeed transformed the English weather, and it follows that he must possess supernatural powers. Hence the implementation of the supernatural code, which faces Rushdie’s readers with a severe dilemma: although they know that Gibreel is mad, has hallucinations, and keeps collapsing on Allie’s doorstep at the end of his delusional archangelic adventures, evidence from the text simultaneously forces them to accept Gibreel’s successful and emphatically supernatural tropicalisation of London. The ensuing and disturbing paradox of the text— how Gibreel can be insane and non-archangelic and powerfully archangelic at the same time—refuses to be resolved. The two diametrically opposed codes clash with a force that unhinges any conclusive interpretative stance. The outrageous event is, impossibly, absurdly, both imagined and real, and “interpretive closure” can never be attained.16 It is my contention that this situation is symptomatic of the manner in which Rushdie’s magic realism functions. The simultaneous implementation of two diametrically opposed and, at least to minds trained in Western empiricism and logic, mutually exclusive codes destabilises the magic realist text since it results in a constant struggle between two interpretative systems

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which cannot accept each other’s presence. Hence the conflict between the two codes results in an irresolvable paradox which faces us with “that which is and is not, that is not either/or but both and neither” (Erickson 429). Or, as Rushdie, employing an Arabic fairy-tale formula, has it: “it was and it was not so . . . it happened and it never did” (Verses 35). Although the conflict between the two codes determines all of Rushdie’s magic realist fiction, the continuous oscillation between the supernatural and the realist that characterises The Satanic Verses is unsurpassed, and not all of his novels display as fierce and open a struggle as this one. Instead, we find that the conflict between the two codes breaks out with various degrees of intensity at different moments in different novels, and that sometimes, one of the two codes dominates in particular scenes. When Pamela Chamcha’s hair turns white overnight in The Satanic Verses, for instance, she claims to have been bewitched, thus activating the supernatural code. The realist code underlies her partner Jumpy Joshi’s refusal even to consider this possibility, as well as his insistence on seeing the change in his lover as the delayed result of the shock induced by Saladin’s alleged death and subsequent transformation. Yet such realist arguments are undermined by Pamela’s question: “‘In that case,’ she triumphed, ‘why did it also happen to the dog?’” (281). The realist code cannot accommodate this fact, and so the question remains unanswered. The possibility that Pamela and her dog have been bewitched is undeniable, the more so since the narrator later suggests that her and Jumpy’s eventual deaths may well be linked to their investigations into the practise of witchcraft among the London Metropolitan Police, allegations which are neither disproved nor asserted (465). As the realist code in this passage is activated mainly through Jumpy’s scepticism but not clearly asserted, the supernatural code is allowed to dominate this scene, and readers are likely to opt for a supernatural interpretation of the sudden change in Pamela’s appearance. In other cases, it is less easy to determine whether one of the two codes predominates, and if so, which. At the centre of The Moor’s Last Sigh, for instance, lies an irresolvable riddle, which is particularly noteworthy since this novel contains comparatively few truly magic events; its magic realism seems to be confi ned primarily to the creation of a magic realist atmosphere. Rather unexpectedly then, the origin of one of its main plot elements, its protagonist’s illness which forces him to live life at double-speed, is obscured by the struggle between the two codes: each of them offers an explanation of Moor’s mysterious condition, but neither can install itself exclusively, and so the narrative veers between assertions of both codes. This is, of course, also related to a further complication we have to contend with, namely the fact that since this passage occurs in a part of the novel in which Moor has not yet been born, his testimony is of highly suspect reliability. Simultaneously, however, we have to acknowledge that in narrating his family’s story before his own birth, Moor resorts to something like a qualified omniscience: narrating from an extradiegetic perspective, Moor

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affects universal knowledge of all characters and employs high authorial reticence, only qualifying this stance when it suits him to throw doubt on his own account. The episode in question concerns the day of Moor’s conception and the riddle of whether his highly accelerated ageing is supernatural or medically explicable. The circumstances in which Moor is conceived suggest that his illness is fantastic in origin, for it appears that when his father collapses during a hillside outing, Aurora has a supernatural encounter: Aurora caught him before he fell. An old mushroom-selling crone had appeared beside them and helped Aurora sit Abraham down with his back against the rock, his straw hat falling forward over his brow and cold sweat pouring down his neck. . . . ‘You see the problems of being an old father,’ fi fty-three-year-old Abraham muttered to Aurora before their daughters came into earshot. ‘See how fast they are growing, and how fast I am cracking up, too. If I had my wish all this growing—up and old, both—would stop for ever right now.’ Aurora made herself speak lightly as the worried children arrived. ‘You-tho will be around for ever,’ she told Abraham. ‘I’ve got no worries about you. And as for these savage creatures, they can’t growofy fast enough for me. God! How long this childhood business draggoes on! Why couldn’t I have kids—why not even one child—who grew up really fast.’ A voice behind her said a few words, almost inaudibly. Obeah, jadoo, fo, fum. Aurora whirled around. ‘Who said that?’ There were only the children. . . . ‘Where’s that woman?’ Aurora asked her children. ‘The mushroom woman who helped me. Where has she disappeared?’ ‘We didn’t see anybody,’ Ina answered. ‘It was just the two of you.’ (141) The bizarre words whispered when Aurora makes her wish, the classical fairytale set-up, and the sudden appearance and disappearance of the mushroom seller awaken not merely Aurora’s but also the reader’s suspicions. These are strengthened by the particular words uttered behind Aurora’s back, which are associated with Abraham’s deceased mother Flory, who, as a girl, used to jeer at the neighbourhood boys in the following manner: She would taunt them with nonsensical, terrifying incantations, ‘making like a witch’: Obeah, jadoo, fo, fum, chicken entrails, kingdom come. Ju-ju, voodoo, fee, fi, piddle cocktails, time to die. (73)

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Hence the immediate connection that the reader perceives between the hillside incident and Flory, who, already compared to a witch in her childhood, is a slightly sinister and mysterious figure not only because she bribes her own son into giving her his fi rst male child in Rumpelstiltskin-like manner (111), but also because she is already connected with a prophecy come true. Originally taken as the fi nal proof of her madness and, as such, the cause of her transferral to the lunatic asylum in which she is assaulted and dies the day after her arrival, Flory’s prediction that giant mushrooms will soon devour an Asian country becomes metaphorically true in August 1945: As for Flory Zogoiby: she was still alive, but had grown a little strange of late. Then, one day near the end of July, she was found crawling around the Mattancherri synagogue floor on her hands and knees, claiming that she could see the future in the blue Chinese tiles, and prophesying that very soon a country not far from China would be eaten up by giant, cannibal mushrooms. Old Moshe Cohen had the sad duty of relieving her of her duties. . . . A few days later a giant mushroom cloud ate the Japanese city of Hiroshima, and on hearing the news Moshe Cohen the chandler burst into hot, bitter tears. (118–19) This passage illustrates what readers fi nd themselves faced with in magic realism. Both codes are installed: the realist code is the one that readers mainly familiar with literary realism tend to presuppose, and so any realist signs in the text, such as the Jewish community’s reluctance to accept Flory’s claims of clairvoyance, are readily inscribed in a realist scheme of interpretation. Yet the reader also has to accept outrageous events which refuse to be accommodated by realism, and is forced to acknowledge the additional validity of a supernatural scheme of interpretation. This results in a situation where both codes can vie for the reader’s attention and where the reader has to remain actively tuned in to all clues about the nature of particular events. That Flory has already been linked to an unambiguously supernatural event eases her association with another possibly fantastic occurrence and enhances the reader’s inclination to read the hillside incident in terms of the supernatural.17 To strengthen matters further, when Aurora inquires after the mushroom seller at the hotel, she learns that mushrooms have never grown or been sold in the vicinity, and Moor reveals that the old woman was never seen again, inserting the second verse of Flory’s rhyme and thus clearly promoting the idea that his illness has a supernatural source: “I’m something else as well: call it a wish come true. Call it a dead woman’s curse” (143). Just when the supernatural code has been asserted and Moor has fi nally convinced the reader of the supernatural circumstances of his conception, however, he changes track and suddenly rejects all but a fi rmly realist

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explanation of his condition: “No need for supernatural explanations; some cock-up in the DNA will do. Some premature-ageing disorder in the core programme, leading to the production of too many short-life cells” (145). Hence the supremacy of the supernatural code is upset and the realist code enters the scene. Yet the supernatural code cannot be so easily dismissed: there is still Aurora’s extraordinarily short four-and-ahalf-month pregnancy to be accounted for, which even Moor’s insistence on a severe “cock-up of the DNA” fails to do. A solution is suggested later, when Moor insinuates that he might not have been conceived on the day on the hillside after all, but “[n]ine months to the day” (177) before his birth, on a night in which Aurora’s whereabouts were open to speculation and which she might have spent with Jawaharlal Nehru. Yet Moor quickly revokes the claim that he might be Nehru’s son as too boastful and reconfi rms his original presentation of his conception, begging the reader to believe that “this is not some sort of cover-up” (177). And so the ultimate choice lies indeed with the reader. Both codes are present and explicitly evoked by Moor, and both are implemented to an extent which justifies the reader’s decision to opt for either a supernatural or a realist reading of the circumstances of Moor’s conception. The fact, however, that both these readings depend on Moor’s questionable trustworthiness renders neither code forceful enough to occasion a fully-fledged battle between them. Whichever code the reader decides to follow, its opposite will refuse to be ignored, but although it cannot be explained away, it will not manage to fully unhinge the other code; both are too precariously based on Moor’s unreliable narration. This example demonstrates one of the intricacies of much magic realism: a significant part of its effect tends to depend on the individual profi les of its readers since factors such as their cultural backgrounds, reading histories, and epistemological schemes can crucially determine the manner in which the two codes are read. Bowers addresses this issue in her discussion of Ben Okri’s novel The Famished Road, where she implicitly concedes the validity of non-magic realist readings of novels which she interprets as magic realist: The question of whether the mythological aspect is considered to be real or magical depends strongly on the cultural perspective of the reader. If the reader lives within a cultural context where magical happenings of the type portrayed in the novel are considered to be a possible aspect of reality and not magical at all, then the reader may not recognize the magical realist element of the narrative. (Magic(al) 56–57) Since different readers approach literature with different epistemological frameworks (which might or might not be culturally determined), reactions to the two opposed codes might vary greatly, to the extent that their coexistence might not be fully acknowledged. When magic and realism

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are not regarded as contradictory, clashes between the two cannot be perceived.18 Hence interpretations of both particular episodes and entire texts as magic realist partly depend on readers’ appreciation of the basic ontological contradiction which lies at the hearts of these texts, a circumstance which has prompted Bowers to proclaim magic realism “an intimate affair between the reader/viewer and the text/fi lm” (Magic(al) 128). In a slightly different vein, Warnes also sees this as related to a key element of the magic realist effect: “the signifiers, natural and supernatural, real and fantastic, depend for their meanings on a stable point of comparison—a shared notion of reality—that is undermined by the relativising effects of magical realism” (7). To return fi nally to the particular question of the integration of the magic and realist codes in Rushdie’s fiction, the relation between the two is negotiated differently in individual episodes and cannot be defi nitely pinned down to any of the three descriptions Stewart offers. The two codes are variously arranged in stark opposition or in virtual harmony, and even though representation itself in Rushdie’s novels seems too contradictory and precarious ever to allow for an unproblematic coexistence of realism and the supernatural, their relationship moves on a fi nely tuned scale between the two poles of harmony and mutual exclusion. Rushdie’s magic realism can hence be seen to be centrally concerned with the relationship between “what we consider rational . . . and irrational” (Stewart 477), and it operates on the border between the two, exploring where they fade into each other but also, and perhaps more crucially, where incompatible contradictions explode our conceptions of reality. The “gaps, absences and silences” which Slemon locates in magic realism are certainly key elements of Rushdie’s fiction, since his novels refuse to install an alternative to the reality discourses they dismantle. Although Slemon confi nes himself to describing how the “two oppositional systems” (409) are pitched against each other and how this situation prevents closure, it seems to me that an equally vital feature of Rushdie’s magic realism is the manner in which his texts engage with the contradictions they create. Readers’ doubt and hesitation, and their inability to achieve “interpretive closure” (Slemon 410) are self-consciously dramatised, and hence the opposition between the two incompatible codes is not only a part of the structural make-up, but becomes a crucial aspect of the narrative discourse of Rushdie’s novels. Thus not only the battle between the two representational systems but also the confusion this very battle creates, as well as readers’ attempts—and necessary failures—to contain the ensuing contradictions are integral to Rushdie’s magic realism. As we have seen, Rushdie’s narrators playfully anticipate and openly discuss the various strategies their readers might employ in order to make sense of their disparate narratives, and they openly address the impossibility of reconciling the contradictions to which their narrations give rise. Indeed, at times the narrators almost seem to taunt readers for their foreseeable but

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futile efforts to reintegrate the magic realist incompatibilities into familiar representational systems. In Rushdie’s magic realism, therefore, established systems of representation do not just fail, but their failure is self-consciously performed by his texts and becomes one of the main themes with which the novels engage as they flaunt their ambivalence. This gesture, of course, is precisely what distinguishes Rushdie’s magic realism both from Chanady’s fantastic, as well as from other strands of magic realism. Due to the immense international success of Latin American magic realism, the harmonious combination of the natural and the supernatural has lost its surprise effect. But in a manner which might indeed characterise him as a later magic realist, Rushdie’s fiction goes beyond the substitution of one world view for another. As Warnes notes, Rushdie’s “goal is not the inscription of new ontological realities, but the destabilisation of those already present in order to posit a different basis for the assertion of new cultural identities” (119). Rather than endorsing another—even though reversed—hierarchical relationship between two representational systems, Rushdie’s novels not only continuously challenge and hence ultimately deprivilege either of the two epistemological codes, they celebrate their common failure. To some extent, therefore, Rushdie’s magic realist fictions are always also metafictional discourses on the mode of magic realism itself. Nowhere is this as glaringly obvious as in Rushdie’s latest novel, The Enchantress of Florence, a Chinese box of interwoven stories in which the impossible task of distinguishing between levels of reality, truth, dream, and fiction forms the central occupation of both characters and readers. The two codes in this novel are as incompatible as they are inseparable, and in a metafictionally significant move, various creators of stories and of characters in the novel themselves lose the power to distinguish between what is natural and what is supernatural, remaining, however, keenly aware of the abyss that opens in front of them as their capacity for neat categorisation leaves them. Given this strong metafictional emphasis on the relation of realism and the supernatural in Rushdie’s novels, it is rather surprising that his fiction has, until now, been subsumed under defi nitions of magic realism as a harmonious intermingling of two codes. Such defi nitions, I believe, run the risk of not doing justice to the role magic realism plays for Rushdie’s political agenda, which seems to be vitally connected both with the ambivalence created by the incompatibility of the two representational codes, and with the metafictional engagement with these contradictions. I will return to this point in Chapter 7; for now, I want to turn my attention to the structural oppositions of Rushdie’s magic realism. So far, I have merely presupposed the existence of two diametrically opposed codes in his magic realist texts. The following two chapters corroborate this claim and illustrate the ways in which the two codes are implemented in Rushdie’s fiction. I will start by mapping the realist terrain of Rushdie’s magic realism.

2

Making Magic Realistic The Realist Code

It is, perhaps, not surprising that the two points on which studies of magic realism have focused are the “magic” element of the mode and the manner in which the two codes interact. After all, it is these aspects that set magic realism apart from mainstream realism, although the realist component of magic realist literature may seem rather mundane and not overtly different from “normal” realist writing. In order to appreciate fully the oscillation between the two magic realist codes, however, an analysis of the realist aspect of magic realism is just as indispensible as an analysis of the magic aspect. Focusing on the frequently neglected realist component of Rushdie’s fiction, furthermore, allows one not merely to highlight the extent to which his writing is grounded in the realist tradition, but also to demonstrate how the naturalising tendencies of realism are subverted by the magic context in which it is placed in Rushdie’s novels. Realism, this chapter suggests, is prevented from becoming normative in Rushdie because it is constantly confronted with the presence of its non-realist other: magic realism challenges Western realism “from within” (Faris, Enchantments 1). Hence the realist element is crucial for Rushdie’s project, which pitches realist and non-realist perceptions of reality and modes of writing against each other in order to cast doubt on representation itself. The fi rst part of this chapter will focus on various techniques which implement the realist code in Rushdie’s fiction, and it will suggest how the context in which realism unfolds tends to throw subtle suspicion on its normativity. The second part will discuss how a few of his novels challenge realism on a broader level.

CONSTRUCTING REALISM: L’EFFET DE RÉEL & EXTRA-TEXTUAL REFERENTS A useful concept for the description of aspects of realism in magic realist texts is offered by Roland Barthes’s notion of the effet de réel, the “reality effect” (Barthes 148). In realism, Barthes locates what he calls “irreducible residues of functional analysis” (146), that is, “concrete detail[s]” (147) to

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which structural analysis cannot assign any function, and which from a structural perspective can hence be regarded as “futile” (141). For Barthes, such details even defy any “indirect” functional reincorporation by failing to “constitute some index of character or atmosphere” (141), and they are therefore truly superfluous. To illustrate his point, Barthes cites Flaubert’s description of Mme Aubain’s room in “A Simple Heart,” where “an old piano supported, under a barometer, a pyramidal heap of boxes and cartons” (qtd. in Barthes 141), as well as Michelet’s account of Charlotte Corday’s death, which describes how her sitting for a painter before her execution was interrupted: “after an hour and a half, there was a gentle knock at a little door behind her” (qtd. in Barthes 141). The “old piano” in Flaubert, Barthes concedes, can be interpreted as a signal of the social standing of Mme Aubain, whereas the “pyramidal heap of boxes and cartons” may be read as an allusion to the atmosphere of her home, just as the knock at the door and its sound are symbolically significant in Michelet; the mention of the “barometer,” however, as well as “the dimension and location of the door” seem structurally redundant (142). Barthes reclaims such seemingly meaningless “concrete detail[s]” (147) by imbuing them with the connotation of the real as such. Details like Flaubert’s barometer do not “denote” anything, but they “signify” the notion of “the real” itself (148). This is the semiotic idiosyncrasy of realism: Semiotically, the ‘concrete detail’ is constructed by the direct collusion of a referent and a signifier; the signified is expelled from the sign, and with it, of course, the possibility of developing a form of the signified, i.e., narrative structure itself. (Realistic literature is narrative, of course, but that is because its realism is only fragmentary, erratic, confi ned to ‘details,’ and because the most realistic narrative imaginable develops along unrealistic lines.) This is what we might call the referential illusion. The truth of this illusion is this: eliminated from the realist speech-act as a signified of denotation, the ‘real’ returns to it as a signified of connotation; for just when those details are reputed to denote the real directly, all they do—without saying so—is signify it; Flaubert’s barometer, Michelet’s little door fi nally say nothing but this: we are the real; it is the category of ‘the real’ (and not its contingent contents) which is then signified; in other words, the very absence of the signified, to the advantage of the referent alone, becomes the very signifier of realism: the reality effect is produced, the basis of that unavowed verisimilitude which forms the aesthetic of all the standard works of modernity. (Barthes 147–48) The reality effect, according to Barthes, lies in the very redundancy of “useless” details: precisely because they do not denote anything else, the presence of details that are without a plot-related function succeeds in conjuring up a realistic environment, thereby evoking the illusion of “the real”

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to the reader. The following example from The Moor’s Last Sigh demonstrates this: At the age of fi fty-five Aurora Zogoiby allowed Kekoo Mody to curate a large retrospective of her work at the Prince of Wales Museum—the fi rst time this institution had so honoured a living artist. Jade, china, sculpture, miniatures and antique textiles shuffled respectfully out of the way as Aurora’s pictures took their places. It was a considerable event in the life of the city. Banners advertising the show were everywhere. (Apollo Bunder, Colaba Causeway, Flora Fountain, Churchgate, Nariman Point, Civil Lines, Malabar Hill, Kemp’s Corner, Warden Road, Mahalaxmi, Hornby Vellard, Juhu, Sahar, Santa Cruz. O blessed mantra of my lost city! The places have slipped away from me for ever; all I possess of them is memory. Forgive, please, if I yield to the temptation to conjure them up, by the power of naming, before my absent eyes. Thacker’s Bookstore, Bombelli’s Cakes, Eros Cinema, Pedder Road. (260) The particular references to “[j]ade, china, sculpture, miniatures and antique textiles” produce the reality effect, evoking the realistic atmosphere of a typical museum. All these objects are recognisable to readers familiar with art or museums, but for the plot they are as superfluous as the careful specification of the various locations in which advertisements for Aurora’s show can be found. Instead, these details function as markers of realism; what Barthes calls the “referential illusion” (148) is the very phenomenon that Moor, very self-consciously, refers to when he remarks on how the mere act of listing various Bombay landmarks allows him “to conjure them up, by the power of naming.” Through the semiotic trick Barthes describes, the signified is expelled and the “real” Bombay appears, as the combined referent of all these place names, before Moor’s very eyes.1 What Moor makes explicit here is that realism is not an automatic effect of mimetic verisimilitude, but consciously achieved, and this idea is one that Rushdie constantly plays with, from Saleem Sinai’s retelling of the history of India in Midnight’s Children to Mogor dell’Amore’s imaginative fusion of Akbar’s Mughal Empire with Renaissance Italy in The Enchantress of Florence. Indeed, Barthes draws attention to this very fact, highlighting the constructed nature of reality in his analysis of how the reality effect is produced. However, a number of problems arise in relation with Barthes’s reality effect. The choice of the words “useless” and “futile” for the details which constitute “the real” for Barthes, although always in quotation marks, does not seem particularly felicitous. For, far from providing “[i]nsignificant notation” (Barthes 142), such details are highly significant in that they help construct a very particular cultural context which is then presented as reality. In the context of realist fiction, these seemingly superfluous details lose their arbitrariness and become representatives of

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a specific culture or social sphere which informs a certain vision of reality. How the world is described becomes normative because the contextual specificity of the elements which come to signify the real is silently glossed over, and the production of meaning is veiled as mere transparent presentation. It is hence precisely the apparent innocence of such “futile” details which is ideologically charged, allowing discursive constructions of reality to seem “proposition-free—natural and spontaneous affi rmations about ‘reality’” (Hall 74). Discussing film and television, but in terms which apply equally well to written texts, Stuart Hall hence defi nes the representation of reality in discourse “not as naturalistic but as naturalized: not grounded in nature but producing nature as a sort of guarantee of its truth” (75); for him, the manner in which the performative is represented as constative in the production of reality renders the reality effect synonymous with ideology (Reckwitz 610). In practice, structurally superfluous elements are rare, but it seems that complete functional redundancy is not as much of a prerequisite for the production of the reality effect as Barthes contends. Since most aspects of a literary text fulfil more than merely one function, why should this not also be the case with Barthes’s “concrete detail[s]”? Indeed, we have just seen how the very superfluity with which Barthes credits them is ideologically significant and needs to be put into perspective. Nevertheless, the reality effect works best when its mechanism is veiled, and when the construction of meaning is not brought to the forefront of the reader’s attention. This is something which Rushdie repeatedly challenges when he explores the constructed nature of reality and the power of language in the production of meaning in his experiments with the boundaries of realism. One manner in which the reality effect is jeopardised in Rushdie is the obliteration of functional insignificance through the weight of symbolic content. Consider, for example, the description of the sheet which hides Saleem’s sister Jamila Singer when she performs: it was Major (Retired) Latif who devised her famous, all-concealing, white silk chadar, the curtain or veil, heavily embroidered in gold brocade-work and religious calligraphy, behind which she sat demurely whenever she performed in public. The chadar of Jamila Singer was held up by two tireless, muscular figures, also (but more simply) veiled from head to foot . . . and at its very centre, the Major had cut a hole. Diameter: three inches. Circumference: embroidered in fi nest gold thread. (Children 313) It is difficult to determine to what extent—if at all—the reality effect is produced here. The symbolic impact of the particulars of the chadar is so overwhelming that all other functions are eclipsed. White is, of course, the colour of purity, and in Pakistan—the “‘Land of the Pure’” (307)—Jamila Singer has indeed been transformed into an advocate of purity. White is

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also associated with innocence and modesty, both of which are stressed by the mere fact that Jamila is hidden from the public by her chadar, fully conforming to the ideal of a chaste Muslim girl. Gold and silk signify wealth, thus pointing to Jamila’s assumption of the role of a fairy-tale princess in the eyes of the people of Pakistan. The religious calligraphy on her chadar echoes both the status of religion in the country and Jamila’s own growing religious fanaticism. Finally, the chadar is nothing but another “perforated sheet” (Children 9, and throughout), and hence a member of one of the most important groups of recurrent objects with quasi-symbolic functions in Midnight’s Children, which I will consider more closely in Chapter 4. Under the symbolic weight of these details, this description of Jamila acquires a significance that exceeds the merely realistic. In the context of magic realism, the reality effect has a twofold effect. On the one hand, it helps maintain the connection between the text and the realist tradition, and by introducing some realism to even the most fantastic episodes it grounds the text in a recognisable reality. On the other hand, through the supernatural context, the reality effect exposes the cultural specificity of the reality which is being constructed, and the absurdity of the realist claim to normativity and universality. Consider, for example, Saladin Chamcha and Gibreel Farishta’s fall from the exploding aircraft at the beginning of The Satanic Verses. This fall from a height of “twenty-nine thousand and two feet” (3), which the two protagonists of the novel survive only because Saladin commands Gibreel to fly and sing, is fantastic in the extreme. Nevertheless, realism is not completely abandoned in this episode, because the reality effect is produced through the inclusion of minute and partly redundant details in the portrayal of the, in itself completely unbelievable, event. The excessively detailed list of objects from the plane accompanying Saladin and Gibreel’s fall is a case in point: “Above, behind, below them in the void there hung reclining seats, stereophonic headsets, drinks trolleys, motion discomfort receptacles, disembarkation cards, duty-free video games, braided caps, paper cups, blankets, oxygen masks” (4). To anybody who has ever been on board a plane the objects described here are readily familiar, and their recognisability creates an authenticating effect, evoking the illusion that the world described is indeed the world the reader shares, though it is suddenly turned topsyturvy by the intrusion of the supernatural. The position of this enumeration as part of a fantastic scene demonstrates the simultaneous implementation of both codes: although the list itself is realistic, its context is not, and the coexistence of realist and supernatural elements leads to a conceptual clash. Although the realist elements of the scene subtly enhance the plausibility of the supernatural event, the combination of the two codes simultaneously renders the debris from the plane strange and the list bizarre. A similar process can be observed in the following passage from Midnight’s Children, in which Sundari, the girl whose beauty blinds both her mother and the women assisting at her birth, is mutilated in order to enable

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her to lead a normal life: “For some time after that Sundari was obliged to have a rag placed over her face; until an old and ruthless great-aunt took her into her bony arms and slashed her face nine times with a kitchen knife” (197). Short as it may be, this quotation contains a number of redundant details in Barthes’s original sense. All that is important for the reader to know here is that Sundari’s face needed to be and was “slashed” so that she could move about freely. That the great-aunt’s arms were “bony,” that she used a “kitchen knife” rather than just any knife, and that she cut Sundari “nine times”—all this is meaningless for the content of the story. Yet all of these details are relevant in that they introduce some mundaneness into what is otherwise a highly fantastic episode, hence rendering the supernatural event more believable. By specifying so many of the particulars of what is, after all, just one of the many little sub-tales in Midnight’s Children, Rushdie prevents his novel from flying off into fantasy, and realistic details are thus made to strengthen the supernatural as much as the realist code. The “bony” arms, the “kitchen knife,” and the number of slashes are all minute realistic elements whose familiarity allows readers to “fi x” the story in their minds; at the same time, however, the fantastic context of this scene undermines its realist impact, allowing the reader to observe the clash of the two codes as Sundari’s face, slashed not by any knife but by a “kitchen knife,” bearing not any arbitrary number of scars but exactly “nine,” becomes “the real,” a concrete point of reference in her own emphatically fantastic and gruesome story. Another technique which grounds Rushdie’s magic realist novels in realism is the inclusion of numerous references to actual places, well-known “real-life” people, historical events, and art, which create the illusion of reality. Barthes subsumes such references under the “cultural or referential code” (Morris 105–06). The excessively long list of Bombay landmarks in the passage from The Moor’s Last Sigh quoted above is a case in point. The list maps out the city, suggesting what we also encounter in Barthes: “we are the real” (Barthes 148). Readers familiar with Bombay will recognise such sites as Apollo Bunder and Juhu Beach, and others are still likely to accept their referential reliability because of the authority of the proper name. The street and place names sound credible and are referred to repeatedly, thus managing to produce the illusion of reality, no matter whether they relate to actually existing referents and denote real places or not. In the absence of any contrary proof, readers will believe that the places mentioned exist and accept their names at face value. Rushdie’s novels, and his descriptions of cities, are full of references to landmarks, and he refers to the same landmarks in most of his texts, whenever his narratives return to the same cities. This is particularly relevant for the depiction of Bombay, which is arguably the most important city in Rushdie’s oeuvre, even though his latest two novels, Shalimar the Clown and The Enchantress of Florence, as well as his early novel Shame, are set elsewhere. Through the repetition of landmarks and other recognisable

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urban indicators, the referential power of locations is solidified with each subsequent book, as regular readers of Rushdie’s fiction recognise the cities he depicts from his earlier novels, even if they are unfamiliar with the actual cities. Through this cumulative effect, Rushdie manages to create highly vivid urban spaces in his novels—for his readers, his cities are populated with his earlier stories. 2 As Bombay is the city which has featured in Rushdie’s fiction most extensively, its depiction reflects the ideological implications of the reality effect and the choice of extra-textual referents most clearly. Rushdie’s Bombay is largely a rich person’s city—his characters live in affluent areas, attend prestigious schools, and enjoy a vibrant, privileged side of the city; where we are given glimpses of a different, less privileged Bombay, the narratives acquire a nightmarish, surreal quality, and extra-textual referents tend to become elusive.3 The Bombay which we remember from Rushdie’s fiction, by contrast, is a desirable and hybrid city, gradually destroyed by communalism, and eliciting nostalgic yearning. The extra-textual referents which Rushdie’s novels include are intricately woven into the texts, functioning like very effective stage properties which “conjure . . . up” (Moor 260) the cities in which Rushdie’s novels are set as “real” spaces and realist environments, tangible and culturally contingent settings for Rushdie’s stories. Saleem’s journey through Bombay while spying on his mother in the boot of her car, for example, is practically littered with landmarks of Bombay: “We headed north, past Breach Candy Hospital and Mahalaxmi Temple, north along Hornby Vellard past Vallabhbhai Patel Stadium and Haji Ali’s island tomb, north off what had once been (before the dream of the fi rst William Methwold became a reality) the island of Bombay” (Children 214–15). These references to geographical sites counteract the fantastic quality of the fact that Saleem, hidden in the boot of the car, only knows where they are driving because, endowed with telepathic abilities, he can read his mother’s thoughts. The realistic power of geographical directions manages to efface the magic aspects of the event, and hence the realist illusion is used, ultimately, to confi rm the supernatural code. The strong impact which the presence of references to extra-textual reality has on the creation of a realist setting is, perhaps, most noticeable through their absence, as becomes clear in The Satanic Verses, which contains a relatively small number of references to geographical landmarks. On the one hand, the reason for this is thematic. In its Bombay sections, the novel displays a strong preference for internal settings, highlighting the fact—as claimed by Zeeny—that Saladin does not really know the city of his birth, but grew up in some kind of fairy-tale land (55); moreover, the parts of the novel that are set in Bombay are very private, concerned mainly with Saladin’s relationship to his father. On the other hand, London is mostly described in terms of a nightmarish vision, as a city partaking in the rites of metamorphosis which are so prominent in this novel. Gibreel’s wild journeys through the city, which would be ideal for the insertion of

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geographical markers, are undertaken during the most severe bouts of his illness—or, alternatively, of course, during the most empowered periods of his archangelic mission—and so the picture of London in these parts of the novel bears witness to the idiosyncrasies of a hallucinating—or enlightened—mind. Although there are enough references to specific locations to anchor the text in its spatial setting, the story retains an indeterminacy which allows the nightmarish character of Gibreel’s and Saladin’s urban odysseys to unfold fully. Other spheres which provide a plethora of extra-textual referents in Rushdie’s novels are art and popular culture. Allusions to various different fields of cultural production abound, among the most recurrent being the references to Bollywood films, cinematic devices such as the “indirect kiss” (Children 142), music, and, of course, literature. Film in general is a vital influence on Rushdie’s writing, and the many titles of fi lms popular in the periods in which his stories are set further solidify their realistic component by conjuring up the spirit of the age. There is extensive namedropping, both of stars associated with the music industry (most notably, of course, in The Ground Beneath Her Feet) and of others; when the producer Sisodia in The Satanic Verses enumerates the celebrities that have dined at his house, for instance, “Vanessa, Amitabh, Dustin, Sridevi, Christopher Reeve were all invoked” (341). This last list, however, also exposes these names as unstable signifiers. The identities of a few of the stars referred to here remain elusive—how are those not familiar with this type of in-speak supposed to know which Vanessa, which Dustin, and which Amitabh are alluded to here? Such referents are shown to be exclusive, and so is the reality they construct, which holds meaning only for the initiated. The most powerful connection with extra-textual reality in Rushdie’s novels is established through the inclusion of well-known historical details. History is crucial for all of Rushdie’s novels, but nowhere is it as prominent a factor as in Midnight’s Children, which is constructed almost entirely on the allegorical connection between its narrator-protagonist, Saleem, and the history of the Indian nation. Saleem interprets the development of the independent Indian nation as a reflection of his own life; from the moment his grandfather loses his faith, the fate of Saleem’s family and that of India are presented as intertwined, evolving on parallel lines. From the “Quit India” resolution (Children 46) to the declaration of independence (116), from the death of Gandhi (143) to the “landslide victory” of Indira Gandhi’s New Congress Party in 1971 (354), from India’s fi rst nuclear test (406) to the beginning of the Emergency (419), Saleem conjures up specific details from India’s recent past, thus re-creating its history for his audience. For the reader, this amounts to an invitation to approach the novel as realist; at the same time, however, the allegorical level of meaning complicates the reader’s classification of the novel and its two codes. For although the many historical references in the novel serve to anchor the text in a recognisable

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reality, the allegorical implication of the manner in which Saleem’s life is modelled on Indian history simultaneously undermines realism. If the events which link Saleem to Indian history are understood to establish an allegorical relation between the two, then their empirical weight is reduced, and this is true for both events that are represented as realist and as supernatural. In Bowers’s defi nition of allegory, an allegory has “at least two levels of meaning. On one level the narrative makes sense as a plot. On another level, there is an alternative meaning to the plot which is often more philosophically profound than the plot itself” (Magic(al) 27). Read allegorically, therefore, the relationship among Saleem’s life, magic events, and Indian history in Midnight’s Children becomes purely symbolical, and Saleem’s tale is hence severed from its claims to both realist and magic veracity. Allegory provides one possible reading strategy for many passages in Rushdie’s novels, and as Bowers asserts, “[m]any of Rushdie’s works . . . are acknowledged to contain allegorical representations of particular political significance” (Magic(al) 28); in addition to Midnight’s Children, the novels Shame, The Satanic Verses, and Shalimar the Clown come to mind most readily. However, too strong a reliance on allegory would prove reductive, and is not supported by the texts, which are too fluid and indeterminate to be captured by any one interpretation. Indeed, Coupe’s defi nition of allegory suggests that it can be ideologically disempowering: Allegorical tales are those which in effect announce, or are made to announce, their own intention: to say this in terms of that. Thus the ‘other’ is always subsumed under the ‘same’. The narrative is not allowed to exceed the argument, the medium is not allowed to exceed the message. Allegory is domesticated myth. (Coupe 106) In light of this defi nition, it seems appropriate that Rushdie’s novels play with but refuse to support allegorical meanings unequivocally. As Bowers makes clear, magic realism depends on “the extent to which the allegorical meaning overshadows the realism of the plot” (Magic(al) 28). In addition to the complication introduced by the allegorical level, it is important to note, however, that since historical information in Midnight’s Children is always also interspersed with exaggeration and magic, the implementation of the realist code is never exclusive. In this respect, the interaction of the two codes is further complicated by the fact that some factual historical details are incorrect, whereas others sound downright fantastic. Rushdie draws attention to and heightens the bizarre nature of history in order to throw suspicion on any clear separation between what is deemed realistically possible and what is not, hence exposing the absurd quality of “reality,” and challenging the representation of certain concepts of reality as normative.

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Nevertheless, the inclusion of historical facts endorses Saleem’s claims to trustworthiness, and he uses them well. In the midst of the highly fantastic account of his time in the Pakistani Army, for instance, where he is employed as a human dog in order to sniff out buried explosives due to the magic gifts of his nose, we encounter the following precise date: On March 25th, Yahya and Bhutto abruptly broke off their talks with Mujib and returned to the West Wing. Night fell; Brigadier Iskandar, followed by Najmuddin and Lala Moin, who was staggering under the weight of sixty-one uniforms and nineteen dog-collars, burst into the cutia barracks. . . . ‘That Mujib,’ he revealed, ‘We’ll give him what-for all right. We’ll make him jump for sure!’ (It was on March 25th, after the breakdown of the talks with Bhutto and Yahya, that Sheikh Mujib-ur-Rahman proclaimed the state of Bangladesh.) (Children 355) The insertion of the historically verifiable date places the events Saleem describes in a realist context. Although it is rather unlikely that a normal reader will check the day of the proclamation of Bangladesh in a lexicon, this is not at all necessary; the mere fact that a date is mentioned heightens the realism of Saleem’s tale, due to the fact that we have learned to trust such details implicitly. Midnight’s Children is most explicit in its use of historical information, but Rushdie’s other novels are also rich in allusions to history. All of his texts are set in distinct historical periods, and engage intensively with historical developments and events. From the colonial and post-independence Asian subcontinent in Midnight’s Children, Shame, The Moor’s Last Sigh, and Shalimar the Clown to Thatcherite Britain in The Satanic Verses, from London in the swinging sixties to the America of rock ’n’ roll (The Ground Beneath Her Feet), from Renaissance Italy to the Mughal empire under Akbar the Great (The Enchantress of Florence), and from the French Resistance (Shalimar the Clown) to turn-of-the-millennium New York (Fury), Rushdie’s characters interact with their historical contexts, both shaping it and becoming its victims. The thematic implications of Rushdie’s engagement with history have been discussed extensively by Rushdie criticism and do not need to be repeated here. What is important for us in the context of Rushdie’s realism is that all these historical data strengthen the realist code because they establish a link between the fictional and extra-textual reality. They suggest that the characters’ world and ours overlap or even coincide: the history of our world is also the characters’ past. Together with all the other elements discussed in this chapter, they ultimately ensure the implementation of the realist code in Rushdie’s novels. What happens when the connection between fictional and extra-textual worlds is consciously and ostentatiously disrupted forms the focus of the second part of this chapter.

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Exploring Magic Realism in Salman Rushdie’s Fiction

VARIATIONS ON REALISM: THE GROUND BENEATH HER FEET, SHAME, AND THE ENCHANTRESS OF FLORENCE

Realism Perturbed: The Ground Beneath Her Feet Due to its complicated relation to the world outside the text, the position of the realistic component in The Ground Beneath Her Feet is a curious one. The Ground Beneath Her Feet is a uchronian novel, a sub-genre of counterfactual literature, which creates textual universes that consciously divert from extra-textual facts, thus complicating the relationship between textual and extra-textual worlds. Uchronian fiction constructs a hypothetical course of past events4 that ostentatiously differs from actual history in order to explore alternative histories—“allohistory” has been suggested as another possible term for the same literary phenomenon (Rodiek 25). The term “uchronia” was coined in analogy to “utopia” by the French philosopher Charles Renouvier in Uchronie: Tableau historique apocryphe des Révolutions de l’Empire romain et de la fondation d’une fédération européenne (1857), in which he offered a hypothetical account of the historical developments between Nerva and Charles the Great (Rodiek 77). Renouvier described uchronia as an imaginative engagement with the “might-have-been”: “L’écrivain compose une uchronie, utopie des temps passés. Il écrit l’histoire, non telle qu’elle fut, mais telle qu’elle aurait pu être” (qtd. in Rodiek 78). 5 As this defi nition suggests, writers of uchronia are interested in exploring the potential of unrealised historical possibilities, striving to devise or expose alternatives that would have led to a diff erent course of events in the past, but which might also prevent history from repeating itself in the future. In short, uchronia seeks to transform the future through recourse to the past, and it is hence informed by an implicit utopian agenda. Although The Ground Beneath Her Feet deviates from our reality in a number of ways and quite conspicuously changes the outcomes of various historical events, its uchronian elements seem more indebted to postmodern playfulness than to attempts to envision a more positive future than that promised by the incessant earthquakes in the novel.6 Quite on the contrary, the uchronian variations of actual history in Rushdie’s text have no serious consequences for the general course of history, thus inviting the bleak conclusion that the general trajectory of history is impossible to change. Even though The Ground Beneath Her Feet changes canonised history, it is crucial to note that the process of differentiation between the textual and extra-textual worlds evolves very slowly. In fact, the entire effect of the novel relies on its gradual progression away from our reality. The way in which the novel begins in no way suggests that the diegetic world differs from our own more than is common in fiction. Like Rushdie’s other novels, the text relies on mythic resonances to a rather obvious extent and makes

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allusions to magic occurrences, but there is no reason to suspect that the world of the characters is not the fictional equivalent of our own. Realism is substantiated by instances of the reality effect, and there is an abundance of references to historical events, city landmarks, celebrities, and works of literature that suggest that the reality of the novel corresponds to that of the reader. Gradually, however, misconfigurations begin to arise, and as the novel progresses, its deviation from familiar reality becomes increasingly obvious. The actual point at which each individual reader becomes defi nitely aware of the discrepancies between the novel and the world as he or she knows it is impossible to determine. This is another idiosyncrasy of The Ground Beneath Her Feet: for its full uchronian effect, it depends on each reader’s general and at times quite specific world knowledge to a far greater extent than Rushdie’s other novels. This is an aspect of uchronian fiction that Rodiek stresses as well: Eine Uchronie setzt ja beim Rezipienten bestimmte Kenntnisse voraus. Sie funktioniert auf der Basis eines impliziten ,kulturellen Wissens‘, gegen das die kontrafaktischen Daten systematisch verstoßen. Insofern ist der uchronische Text einem bestimmten Rezipientenkreis zugeordnet. (Rodiek 113)7 The uchronian effect, then, is only accessible to—or, perhaps, can only be fully appreciated by—a limited number of readers who share precisely the cultural knowledge inscribed in the text (Rodiek 28). As such, the uchronian component of The Ground Beneath Her Feet highlights the necessity of shared experience between the reader and the world of the text, thus drawing attention to the extent to which realism is culturally determined. The Ground Beneath Her Feet engages with this restricted impact in the gradual revelation of uchronian elements. When historical misconfigurations begin to arise in the novel, the historical and cultural changes are still relatively slight and specific, and might, accordingly, be missed by many readers. The references to Jesse Garon Parker are a case in point. Jesse Garon Parker is described as the pop star of the late 1950s, as somebody that everybody has heard of. It is quite possible that fans of popular music will immediately see through this figure and identify Jesse Garon Parker as his real-life counterpart, but readers unfamiliar with pop music might merely be mildly surprised about never having heard of this apparent star. Gradually, however, the indications of Jesse Garon Parker’s true identity become less ambiguous. There are references to his manager Tom Presley (Ground 91) and to “Treat Me Tender, Jesse’s fi rst movie” (91). Also, Jesse Parker is called the “king of rock ’n’ roll” (91), and so it is probable (although by no means certain) that most readers vaguely familiar with Western twentieth century popular culture will eventually recognise the rock ’n’ roll icon Elvis Presley in Jesse Garon Parker. It is equally probable, however, that readers who are entirely unfamiliar with the history of popular music will never

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see through this fictional disguise.8 In reality, Jesse Garon was the stillborn twin brother of Elvis Aaron Presley, whose manager’s name was, in fact, Tom Parker. Elvis Presley’s fi rst film was called Love Me Tender rather than Treat Me Tender, which seems to be an amalgam of the original fi lm title and “Treat Me Nice,” one of Elvis Presley’s songs. The song “Heartbreak Hotel,” which Persis Kalamanja and Ormus Cama listen to in the novel, is really a 1956 Elvis Presley song, his fi rst number one hit (Elvis Presley). In this instance, the slow unravelling of Jesse Parker’s real-life identity lessens the surprise effect of the historical misconfigurations. Also, this change merely relates to the realm of popular music, so its consequences for the overall differentiation between story and history are only minor. Readers might not actually even acknowledge the substitution of Jesse Parker for Elvis Presley as an instance of historical re-vision, since it seems that what occurs here amounts to hardly more than a change of name, whereas the course of history remains unimpaired. The implication of the namechange, namely that Elvis Aaron would have been the twin that died and his brother Jesse Garon the one that survived, is only accessible to those with very specialised knowledge. And even then, since the life of the fictional Jesse Parker seems to mirror that of the real Elvis Presley precisely, history is basically allowed to run its normal course. Things are quite different when Rushdie’s historical misconfigurations concern an event that is likely to be inscribed in the common cultural memory of many more people, and, as such, recognisable to a large part of his readership. At such times, the impact is immediate and decisive, as in the following episode: The day after the President of the United States had that narrow escape in Dallas, Texas, and we were all becoming familiar with the names of the would-be assassins, Oswald, whose rifle jammed, and Steel, who was overpowered on some kind of grassy knoll by a genuine hero, a middle-aged amateur cameraman called Zarpruder, who saw the killer’s gun and hit him over the head with an 8 mm ciné camera . . . on that extraordinary day, Ormus Cama had a different name to conjure with . . . . (Ground 185; fi rst ellipsis in original) This passage contains an unambiguous diversion from historical fact. In reality, John F. Kennedy was, of course, killed in Dallas, and his assassin was, indeed, a man called Oswald. The other people mentioned in the passage also exist, but are linked to the murder of the president in rather different ways: “Robert Steel is a controversial writer who believes that Robert Kennedy was the assassin. Abraham Zapruder was the man who happened to catch the incident on fi lm” (Maxwell). As it becomes increasingly clear that the fictional reality is a variation on our world, the realist aspect of the novel is subjected to the contrary forces of familiarity and alienation. Familiarity arises out of the close resemblance

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of the characters’ world to ours; we recognise most of our political and cultural celebrities, geographical sites, and historical developments in the text. Yet alienation in The Ground Beneath Her Feet is as great a force as familiarity, as is evident in the minute details through which extra-textual reality is transformed: a few celebrities have different names, famous books are written by authors who really are fictional characters,9 parts of countries or even mythical locations are real and independent countries in the novel ( 439), and the course of historical events is sometimes completely changed. Even though the incident in Dallas takes place, the attempt fails, and John F. Kennedy is not killed there, but years later in Los Angeles, together with his brother Robert (225). In other instances of historical revisioning, Sanjay Gandhi survives a plane crash near his mother’s residence (248), whereas in reality, he died in such a plane crash in 1980, and he is eventually killed in a quadruple assassination together with his mother and brother and the fictional Piloo Doodhwala (406); the Vietnam war becomes the war in Indochina (108, and throughout) and is entered by the British (266); and the Watergate affair is the entirely fictional subject of a “fantasy-thriller” of the same title (280). An additional level of alienation is added in connection with one of the supernatural aspects of the novel, namely the “otherworld” (325, and throughout), a different version of the world which is on a collision course with the reality of the characters and which Ormus Cama alone is able to see. When Ormus tries to describe the “otherworld” to Vina, it gradually becomes apparent that this “otherworld” is, in fact, our world, or at least a version of it that resembles our reality to such an extent as to render them basically identical: What’s it like, she wants to know. The other world. I told you, he answers, feeling the onset of the weary blues. The same only different. John Kennedy got shot eight years ago. Don’t laugh, Nixon’s President. East Pakistan recently seceded from the union. Refugees, guerrillas, genocide, all of that. And the British aren’t in Indochina, imagine that; but the war’s there all right, even if the places have different names. I don’t know how many universes there are but probably that damn war’s in every one. And Dow Chemicals and napalm bombs. Two, four, six, eight, no more naphthene palmitate—they’ve got another name for that too, but it burns little girls’ skins the same way. Naptate. (350) Rodiek refers to this technique as “Binnenuchronie”10 (72) or “Spekulation in der Spekulation”11 (72), relating it to André Gide’s concept of the “mise en abyme” (118). According to him, this trick, whereby extra-textual reality is presented as a uchronia within the uchronian text, is one of the most common elements of uchronian fiction and employed by almost all authors of counterfactual literature (31). As a result, canonised history is explicitly

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rendered unreal and reduced to a mere speculation on the part of the characters (75–76). This effect can also be observed in The Ground Beneath Her Feet. In the world of the novel, it is our reality that is almost fictional and so improbable that characters cannot suppress reactions of disbelief because it seems so ridiculous: “Vina’s eyes have been growing wider, she’s been emitting suppressed little giggles of disbelief, she can’t help it” (351). This inversion, the realisation that our reality, even though it is represented in the novel, is not its basis but something that might well be a fantasy, is bound to lead to alienation. Made aware of the artificiality, that is, the fictionality of the story, readers necessarily distance themselves from the novel, as identification with its fictional reality becomes increasingly complicated. At the same time, the fact that the characters in the novel fi nd our world bizarre and ridiculous constitutes potent criticism of the version of reality with which readers are familiar. This effect is even emphasised by the fact that in the novel, the two versions of the world are on a collision course, the projected outcome of which is the destruction of one of these worlds in the clash of realities. Eventually, it is the otherworld—our world—that turns out to be the version that “isn’t strong enough” and dies (508). At once an obvious criticism of our world as well as a warning about the illusory durability of constructed realities, the complete symbolic exclusion of our world from the fictional reality of the novel also celebrates the power of the imagination over normative realism. There is, then, an additional level of ambivalence which decisively influences the realist component of this novel. As the markers of difference and the signals of the reality effect become both more frequent and insistent and also more intertwined, readers find themselves faced with a maze of levels of realities which is difficult to negotiate. As already mentioned, the novel contains many lists of real pop stars, writers, and politicians and also of historical events. However, there is an equal number of lists of entirely fictional celebrities and occurrences, which are just as prominent as the “real” lists. Gradually, then, it becomes more and more difficult for Rushdie’s readers to discern the differences between the two. How are they to know which lists are realistic and which are fictional? Readers not so well acquainted with literary history might accept the list of “famous American writers” (280) at face value, or, if already alert to the mixture of reliably realist and completely fictional “facts” to be encountered in this novel, they might be unable to decide whether to accept it or not. Similarly, readers poorly informed about pop music might be at a loss as to whether the music Ormus listens to on his arrival in the United States (367) actually exists or not.12 Also, only true film-celebrity fans will be able to determine whether the list of birth names of film stars that Ormus remembers when he considers taking a pseudonym is invented or real (291). Similarly, it is unlikely that many readers will be able to distinguish between the fictional and actual earthquakes recorded in the novel without some private background research.

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This is, in fact, another point where The Ground Beneath Her Feet differs from “pure” uchronian literature. The didactic element of “conventional” uchronian fiction necessitates a great explicitness as to where the diegetic world departs from canonised history. After all, the utopian agenda of uchronian fiction aims at exposing possible alternatives to historical developments which might be explored in similar situations in the future. For uchronian literature to have the desired impact it is, therefore, crucial that readers be aware of the historical misconfigurations in the fictional world. In The Ground Beneath Her Feet, by contrast, the counterfactual shifts seem to be motivated mainly by a desire to stress the contingency, but also the repetitiveness, of history. After all, despite the many historical changes Rushdie introduces in The Ground Beneath Her Feet, the world and the otherworld are ultimately interchangeable: they face exactly the same problems. The result of this intricate intermingling of fact and fiction in The Ground Beneath Her Feet is that the reader becomes confused. As the novel progresses, the reality import of the many obscure lists of real or fictional celebrities and other extra-textual (pseudo-)referents becomes doubtful. Unless they contain immediately recognisable material, such lists can no longer be trusted, because the reader cannot verify their content. In other novels, the reader tends to trust such lists implicitly, and thus the desire to verify their truth value does not arise in the fi rst place. In The Ground Beneath Her Feet, however, fact and fiction are too ostentatiously mixed for the reader to rely on any even remotely suspect information. Of course, readers have to accept the (pseudo-realist) fictional events as real on the diegetic level, but this does not prevent them from being simultaneously aware of the discrepancies between the fictional and factual political, cultural, and historical details, or from questioning how the fictional and the factual levels of reality interact. Noting a few minute changes from actual reality, readers might well start to wonder how many changes they might already have missed. Thus they are likely to become more suspicious of fictional “facts” than is usual in a fictional, and even in a magic realist, text, and this might develop to a stage where they doubt all the fictional factual information they are given. To some extent, this new level of ambivalence neutralises the reality effect, which is, after all, largely dependent on signals of factuality. Yet, it is important to stress that there are, until the very ending of the novel, markers of both the reality effect and extra-textual references that are likely to be recognisable to the majority of readers, so that the link with extratextual reality is never completely severed. The last scene of the novel, of course, emphasises its continuing connection with ordinary reality, as it ends with what in the cultural context of the characters constitutes one of the most mundane of acts, with Rai making breakfast: “I’m up early today, the coffee’s on and I’ve squeezed the oranges and the muffins are warming nicely” (573). Through the persistent recurrence of familiar actions such as

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this one, The Ground Beneath Her Feet is not only inscribed into a particular cultural setting, but also tied to some level of realism, preventing the novel from completely “lifting off the ground.”

Realism Denied: Shame In Shame, the only novel whose non/correspondence to extra-textual reality is openly addressed, the (lack of) realism of the story is primarily linked to its metafictional aspect: its highly self-conscious narrator categorically denies that the text is realistic, and this denial is repeated throughout the novel: If this were a realistic novel about Pakistan, I would not be writing about Bilquìs and the wind; I would be talking about my youngest sister. . . . But suppose this were a realistic novel! Just think what else I might have to put in. The business, for instance, of the illegal installation, by the richest inhabitants of ‘Defence’, of covert, subterranean water pumps that steal water from their neighbours’ mains . . . . (68–69) The rejection of realism is, of course, ironic and should by no means be taken at face value. This is emphasised soon after, when the narrator lists all the incidents he would have to include if Shame were a realistic novel, and by doing so, naturally, includes them anyway: How much real-life material might become compulsory!—About, for example, the longago Deputy Speaker who was killed in the National Assembly when the furniture was flung at him by elected representatives; . . . or about the issue of the Time magazine (or was it Newsweek?) which never got into the country because it carried an article about President Ayub Khan’s alleged Swiss bank account . . . . (69–70) The irony in these passages is impossible to miss, revealing that the rejection of realism is a mere mask and that Shame is, in fact, much more closely linked to reality than its narrator likes to concede. The classification of the novel as a “fairy-tale” is marked by an even higher degree of irony and sarcasm: Realism can break a writer’s heart. Fortunately, however, I am only telling a sort of modern fairy-tale, so that’s all right; nobody need get upset, or take anything I say too seriously. No drastic action need be taken, either. What a relief! (70) This exposes the denial of realism in Shame for what it really is: a sarcastic critique of the all too common necessity for writers to disguise political or other criticism as “fairy-tales.” The effect of this ostentatious and repeated rejection of realism, however, is the very opposite of its apparent aim:

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readers, of course, are called upon to look for correspondences between the events in the novel and the actual history of Pakistan and to make a connection between the two. Nevertheless, the narrator continues to refer to his text as a “fairy-tale,” and this claim is substantiated by various textual elements. Conventional fairy-tale formulae are employed; in fact, the novel even begins in this way: “In the remote border town of Q., which when seen from the air resembles nothing so much as an ill-proportioned dumb-bell, there once lived three lovely, and loving, sisters” (11). Even though this is not the most famous of all fairy-tale formulae, it is still unambiguous as an introduction to this mode. The fairy-tale atmosphere is, moreover, emphasised by the reference to “three . . . sisters,” a stock element of the fairy tale. Yet, as soon as it has been established, the fairy tale is already deconstructed. Consider the next sentences of the novel: Their names . . . but their real names were never used, like the best household china, which was locked away after the night of their joint tragedy in a cupboard whose location was eventually forgotten, so that the great thousand-piece service from the Gardner potteries in Tsarist Russia became a family myth in whose factuality they almost ceased to believe . . . the three sisters, I should state without further delay, bore the family name of Shakil, and were universally known (in descending order of age) as Chhunni, Munnee and Bunny. And one day their father died. (11; ellipses in original) Here, fairy-tale conventions are deconstructed in a number of ways. The narrator is a persona rather than a mere voice, which is unusual for the written fairy tale, and he interrupts the natural progression of the story, hence also distorting the chronology of the tale. The information about the china is completely superfluous at this point in the story, and this interferes with another convention of the fairy tale, whereby no irrelevant information unnecessary for the understanding of the story or the creation of a particular atmosphere should be given. What in another context might create the reality effect is, in this instance, disruptive. Finally, the reference to the death of the sisters’ father, although in itself a stock event of the fairy tale, seems too abrupt for a traditional fairy tale. Even at the beginning it is clear, then, that this will not be a “normal” fairy tale. Nevertheless, fairy-tale conventions are invoked frequently and persistently enough to solidify the influence of the fairy-tale mode on the narrative, such as in the persistent recurrence of the familiar “Once upon a time” (133, and throughout). Among other elements serving the same purpose are the narrator’s insistence on classifying his story as a fairy tale; frequent references to famous fairy tales, as in the comparison of the husbands who have to visit their wives in the dark at Raza’s family’s home to “the forty thieves” (73); and the excessive play with numbers which is

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characteristic of the novel, and which is also reminiscent of the number symbolism of fairy tales: the leaders of Pakistan perfect “one thousand and one ways” (78) of rhetorically transforming defeats into victories; Omar Khayyam reduces his sleeping time to forty minutes, “the famous forty winks” (22), during his adult life and spends “some four thousand days” (30) in Nishapur; and in order to repair army morale, Raza fights with and is beaten by “one hundred and eleven soldiers” (203). All these numbers are used in an unreferential and unrealistic manner. They either allude to fairy tales such as the Arabian Nights or to the proverbial use of language (“forty winks”), denote the mythical and excessiveness (“some four thousand days” instead of the more mundane “twelve years”), or are conspicuous through their striking symmetry (“one hundred and eleven”—111). Finally, Shame is also explicitly linked to the tradition of oral tales by its perpetuation of Raza’s family’s myths. The “family tales” (76) are essentially the “family horrors,” (76) defused by daily recital. After an initial period of alteration through being retold, they are cast into their fi nal narrative form, from which deviation is no longer acceptable. Bilquìs and Raza’s story is described as “the juiciest and goriest of all the juicygory sagas” (77), and it is said to have the following opening: “It was the day on which the only son of the future President Raza Hyder was going to be reincarnated” (77). Thus the status of Shame itself is at issue when we encounter the aforementioned opening sentence as an introduction to the birth of Sufiya Zinobia (88), giving rise to the question of whether Shame should itself be regarded as one of these “juicygory sagas.” However, there is a minute but significant change between the fi rst and second instances of this sentence: instead of “the future President Raza Hyder” (77), the second occurrence of this opening sentence refers to “the future General Raza Hyder” (88). From the description of the family sagas we know that they change before they are accepted as defi nite versions, increasingly deviating from fact with each transformation, and so it seems that the story of Raza and Bilquìs as we read it is still in the process of alteration, still caught in its metamorphosis between fact and elaborate fairy tale. The playful adoption of the mode of the fairy tale does not, of course, leave the realist aspect of Shame unimpaired. Even though the reader understands that Shame is not a fairy tale but an imaginative rendition of recent Pakistani political history, it is equally clear that the novel does not offer a realistic representation of events. This accords with the fact that the realist component, in the sense in which it has been discussed so far, appears to be largely excluded from the text. Indeed, it seems impossible to locate even a single adequate example of Barthes’s reality effect in the novel, and this is appropriate, as the reality effect is characteristic of exactly the type of connection with realism which Shame does not possess. Even though much of what happens in Shame is a fictionalised and exaggerated version of actual events, the fictional world is so obviously subject to the laws of anti-realism that any elements which

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suggest, with Barthes, “we are the real” (Barthes 148) would be misplaced in the text. For the same reason, the referential code is only activated in those parts of the novel which deal with the narrator. Shame is the only one among Rushdie’s novels in which the fi rst-person narrator is not part of the same diegetic level as his characters.13 Saleem, Rai, and the narrator of Shame all profess to be the authors of Midnight’s Children, The Ground Beneath Her Feet, and Shame, respectively, but whereas the former two tell their own life-stories, the latter poses as a writer of fiction. Claiming to be writing just a story that is directly related neither to him nor to any actual occurrences, the narrator is excluded from the story of the novel, but very prominent on its discourse level. The frame narrative contains a number of central metafictional passages in which the narrator muses on the story, stressing its fictionality, presenting his reasons for various choices between different possible narrative developments, commenting on the characters, and referring to the political and cultural situation in Pakistan or, more generally, “the East” (29, and throughout). The last point is significant insofar as it leads to the inclusion of precise extra-textual referents in these parts of the novel. The fi rst of these pseudo-authorial comments, at the beginning of Chapter 2 of the novel, immediately places the story in a defi nite historical and geographical context: A few weeks after Russian troops entered Afghanistan, I returned home, to visit my parents and sisters and to show off my fi rstborn son. My family lives in ‘Defence’, the Pakistan Defence Services Officers’ Co-Operative Housing Society, although it is not a military family. ‘Defence’ is a fashionable part of Karachi . . . . (26) Whereas the Russian invasion of Afghanistan provides the precise temporal and political setting of the narrator’s flashback, the spatial setting is defined in particular detail. Recognisable references to extra-textual reality leave no doubt about when and where this episode takes place, hence activating the realist code. The narrator’s intercessions also provide the historical background for the rest of the novel. Apart from the Russian invasion of Afghanistan, there are, for instance, references to the execution of Zulfi kar Ali Bhutto (27) and to the Western support of “the dictatorship of President Zia ul-Haq” (29). These supply information which might be necessary for readers to decipher the much more obscure allusions to historical facts and hence to translate Rushdie’s fairy-tale-like fiction back into recognisable historical events in the rest of the novel, where both the temporal and the spatial setting tend to be indeterminate. This is already apparent at the very beginning of the novel, where the location is merely described as “the remote border town of Q.” (11). This reference will probably be entirely opaque for readers who approach the

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text without any knowledge of its content, and they will only be able to identify “Q.” as the fictional stand-in for Quetta much later. Even though other spatial references are more explicit, they are never defi nite, stressing both the universal appeal and fairy-tale-like indeterminacy of the text. The city in which Bilquìs lives before her marriage seems to be Delhi, but this is never actually acknowledged in the novel in any straightforward way: “It’s a fact, strange-but-true, that the city of idolaters in which this scene took place—call it Indraprashtra, Puranaqila, even Delhi—had often been ruled by men who believed (like Mahmoud) in Al-Lah, The God” (60). The same technique of simultaneous un/veiling is employed when the “new capital” (200) is called “Islamabad (you might say)” (200). In the narrator’s explanation of this device, the fictionality of the story is again stressed: The country in this story is not Pakistan, or not quite. There are two countries, real and fictional, occupying the same space, or almost the same space. My story, my fictional country exist, like myself, at a slight angle to reality. I have found this off-centering to be necessary; but its value is, of course, open to debate. My view is that I am not writing only about Pakistan. I have not given the country a name. And Q. is not really Quetta at all. But I don’t want to be precious about this: when I arrive at the big city, I shall call it Karachi. And it will contain a ‘Defence’. (29) Once more, the narrator consciously breaks the illusion of realism. Characters, settings, and events in a work of fiction can, of course, never be equated with their real-life counterparts. The mere fact that the fictional world exists “at a slight angle to reality” would, accordingly, not be unusual in the slightest degree. Yet in a realist novel, although it is understood that this is the case, this circumstance is not explicitly brought to readers’ attention, for the risk of impairing their suspension of disbelief. In Shame, however, the fictionality of the story is self-consciously prominent, stressing its lack of realism. The temporal setting of the novel is equally ambiguous, since the narrator plays with conventions of time: All this happened in the fourteenth century. I’m using the Hegiran calendar, naturally: don’t imagine that stories of this type always take place longlong ago. Time cannot be homogenized as easily as milk, and in those parts, until quite recently, the thirteen-hundreds were still in full swing. (13) In such passages, the narrator deconstructs established notions of time. Western readers will immediately associate the fourteenth century with the

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Middle Ages, and the Middle Ages in turn with ideas of barbarity. In the Hegiran calendar, however, the fourteenth century refers to modern times. The temporal setting of the novel, then, is modern and medieval at the same time, and the narrator exploits this associative oscillation when he dwells on the gruesome aspects of his tale. The same indeterminacy applies to most of those historical facts which are mentioned outside the narrator’s comments. When the war between India and Pakistan begins, the two countries are not named but merely termed “the two newly-partitioned nations” (77). Similarly, when Raza attempts to flee to Iran, this country is not given its proper name either, but paraphrased as “that neighbouring country of priest-kings, godly men who would surely give refuge to a fallen leader with a bruise upon his brow” (267–68). Hence the considerable reduction of the realist impact of such disguised historical information. All these elements show that the position of realism in Shame is, at least structurally speaking, extremely weak. Thematically, many of the events in the novel are undoubtedly linked to historical occurrences, but the mode in which Shame is written defies realism. Accordingly, it is also open to discussion whether Shame should be included in a monograph on magic realism. Although it might be a borderline case, and its realist element hardly strong enough to compete with its supernatural counterpart, the novel is nevertheless characterised by the conceptual clash between the two incompatible codes so central to Rushdie’s magic realism. Even in the fairytale atmosphere of Shame, magic is not harmonious but poses a threat to the laws of the fictional world, rendering the presence of the supernatural ambivalent even within the non-realist universe of the novel.

Realism Challenged: The Enchantress of Florence The Enchantress of Florence is centrally concerned with the act of storytelling and the construction of realities. From the fi rst sentences onwards, it draws attention to its own position as a literary artefact and as a text that creates its own reality: In the day’s last light the glowing lake below the palace-city looked like a sea of molten gold. A traveller coming this way at sunset—this traveller, coming this way, now, along the lakeshore road—might believe himself to be approaching the throne of a monarch so fabulously wealthy that he could allow a portion of his treasure to be poured into a giant hollow in the earth to dazzle and awe his guests. And as big as the lake of gold was, it must be only a drop drawn from the sea of the larger fortune—the traveller’s imagination could not begin to grasp the size of that motherocean! Nor were there guards at the golden water’s edge; was the king so generous, then, that he allowed all his subjects, and perhaps even strangers and visitors like the traveller himself, without hindrance to draw up

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Exploring Magic Realism in Salman Rushdie’s Fiction liquid bounty from the lake? . . . But then the sun fell below the horizon, the gold sank beneath the water’s surface, and was lost. Mermaids and serpents would guard it until the return of daylight. (5)

The text here performs the power of language to conjure up realities. What is merely a hypothetical traveller, a figment of the narrator’s imagination, at the moment of enunciation becomes “this traveller . . . now”— the character who will emerge as one of the protagonists of the story is plucked from the universe of words before the reader’s very eyes. Similarly, the golden lake is brought into being through the power of the imagination, and even though it is clear that the gold in the lake is not really a treasure, but merely an illusion created by the dying sunlight, the narrative voice presents the gold as real—“the gold sank beneath the water’s surface . . . Mermaids and serpents would guard it.” From the beginning, The Enchantress of Florence plays with the reader’s readiness to suspend disbelief and with the creative energy of words, exploring their impact on constructions of reality.14 Structurally, The Enchantress of Florence is a Chinese box of stories, and so most of its narrative reality is related twice—or even thrice—removed. Within the frame narrative of Akbar the Great’s court at Fatehpur Sikri, Mogor dell’Amore, alias Niccolò Vespucci, tells the story of the lost Mughal princess Qara Köz and her odyssey across Asia and Europe to, eventually, the New World in search of love and home. Within this story, other stories emerge—the story of Antonio Argalia as related by the memory palace, the story which Argalia himself tells, the story of Simonetta Vespucci, tales about the new world—stories which reflect, repeat, and contradict each other as well as the original story within the story and the frame narrative. Hence the artificiality of the story is foregrounded at every step, and even though Mogor dell’Amore’s tale is intended to earn him the emperor’s trust and persuade the emperor to accept him as his relative, realism is constantly challenged by the many instances of mise en abyme that surface between the various diegetic levels of the novel. The power of the imagination is demonstrated through its influence on reality. When Akbar commands his royal painter to portray his invented wife Jodhabai, for instance, the painter’s art does not remain descriptive, but acquires creative force: “after this visionary work by the master of the emperor’s atelier had been exhibited, the whole court knew Jodha to be real. . . . Akbar and Jodhabai! Ah, ah! It was the love story of the age” (28). By painting the queen who “has the misfortune not to exist” (45) and who is a mere creature of Akbar’s invention, the painter complements the emperor’s imaginative feat and turns the imaginary queen into a real— although still not actually existing—persona for the rest of the court. Similarly, when Akbar’s fantasies are captivated by the vision of Qara Köz and he loses interest in Jodha, the shift in his imagination has profound results in the reality of the frame narrative. Jodha vanishes forever, and Qara Köz,

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created or resurrected through Akbar’s desire for her, takes the imaginary queen’s place as the emperor’s favourite companion (323). Words, of course, are just as potent as the imagination, and the narrative repeatedly highlights their power to construct reality. A particularly revealing example is Mogor dell’Amore’s introduction to Akbar’s court. He arrives equipped with a letter from Queen Elizabeth I of England (stolen from the queen’s real ambassador, Lord Hauksbank), which he reads and translates for the Mughal king, causing Akbar to fall in love with the queen whom he recognises as his female counterpart under the spell of the foreigner’s words. Years later, when Mogor dell’Amore has long disappeared and the king wants to listen to the letter again, he finds the original much changed: When it was brought to him and translated by a different interpreter much of the original text had disappeared. The surviving document was found to contain no reference to his own infallibility or the Pope’s; nor did it ask for an alliance against common foes. It was in fact no more than a plain request for good trading terms for English merchants, accompanied by some routine expressions of respect. When the emperor learned the truth he understood all over again how daring a sorcerer he had encountered on that long-ago morning after the dream of the crow. By then, however, the knowledge was of no use to him, except to remind him of what he should never have forgotten, that witchcraft requires no potions, familiar spirits or magic wands. Language upon a silvered tongue affords enchantment enough. (75) By changing a few words in the English queen’s letter, Mogor dell’Amore has conjured up an entirely different version of reality, a version of peculiar endurance, as the emperor persists in sending love letters to Elizabeth I for “a year and a day” (74), failing to discover the foreigner’s fraud until almost the end of his reign. The novel provides a meta-textual comment on Mogor dell’Amore’s verbal sorcery, but it silently glosses over a similar transformation of the real through words. When Akbar remembers “that long-ago morning after the dream of the crow,” we as readers are aware of the fact that Akbar did not merely dream of a crow but that he was, in fact, disturbed in his sleep by a real crow: In the middle of the night a disoriented crow had somehow entered Queen Jodha’s bedchamber and the royal couple had been awoken by its terrified cawing, which the sleep-heavy emperor heard as an intimation of the end of the world. For one terrifying instant a black wing brushed his cheek. (70) In Akbar’s memory of events, however, the incident with the crow becomes a mere “dream,” and the narrative endorses this subtle change, thus demonstrating how reality can be transformed through the choice of words. The same

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technique makes it impossible for the reader to determine whether Qara Köz’s father died because “the ground gave way beneath his feet” while he was visiting a pigeoncote (122), or because of his fondness of drugs: “In a majun haze he had chased a pigeon too close to the edge of the cliff and then down he went” (123). The narrative offers both contradictory options without the slightest reference to their incompatibility, and it is only the intertextual allusion to the title of Rushdie’s earlier novel The Ground Beneath Her Feet that renders the first version of Umar Sheikh Mirza’s death slightly more suspicious than the second. The meta-textual component of The Enchantress of Florence, together with its intricate web of stories, challenges realism and complicates the implementation of the realist code. The references to story-telling are too pervasive to allow the realist illusion to take hold. Yet although realism is challenged by the self-conscious nature of this novel, this does not mean that the realist code is absent. Examples of the reality effect are rare, but references to extra-textual reality, such as place names and the names of famous emperors, politicians, explorers, and intellectuals, anchor the various parts of the novel in a realist setting. Whether the Italian episodes or the Mughal sections appear more realistic will probably depend on the cultural context and knowledge of specific readers and on which details in the stories they experience as more familiar. In principle, however, and although the realist code is considerably weaker than in other novels, The Enchantress of Florence contains enough recognisable information in order to prevent it from being classified as pure fabulation.

3

Making Realism Magic The Supernatural Code

Although the magic component is what has received most attention in studies of magic realism so far, scholarly interest in this area has largely restricted itself to discussions and classifications of specific magic events and occurrences, focusing, for instance, on the appearance and symbolic significance of ghosts and talking animals.1 Because of this concentration on rather concrete magic phenomena, another, quite different, aspect of the magic component of magic realist texts seems to have been almost completely neglected: what I propose to call—by analogy to Barthes’s reality effect—the “unreality effect.” The unreality effect might be described as a specific atmosphere in magic realist literature, an atmosphere that facilitates the implementation of magic in the stories. From the fi rst few pages onwards, a magic “feel” pervades such literary texts. Whereas the reality effect arises out of the connotation of “the real,” the unreality effect relies on signals of magic which are woven into the text and which prepare the ground for a departure from ordinary realism. Evoking associations of witchcraft, ghosts, and other elements of magic, the unreality effect is for the supernatural code what the reality effect is for its realist counterpart: it provides subtle substantiation of a particular vision and version of reality. The combination of reality and unreality effects, both of which contribute to the implementation of diametrically opposed codes, is hence also intricately linked with the development of ambivalence in magic realist narratives. The various techniques employed in the creation of a magic atmosphere in magic realist texts will form the focus of this chapter, which demonstrates how the supernatural code is developed on a stylistic level. Concrete supernatural occurrences, and the ways in which they are subjected to ambivalence, will be analysed in the next chapter. The devices which can be subsumed under the term unreality effect are manifold. Among the most casual but nevertheless most effective techniques which produce an undercurrent of magic is the proliferation of words associated with sorcery and witchcraft, or other aspects of the supernatural. Such linguistic signals are, indeed, mostly introduced with the utmost casualness, so much so that a reader might actually miss them. Often, they also seem

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so natural and common that they become completely unobtrusive. 2 When Saladin ponders Zeeny’s rather violent sexual appetites and refers to her as “Zeeny, the beautiful vampire” (52), he resorts to a method of description that is so stereotypical and conventional that its supernatural associations are lost if regarded in isolation. Indeed, it is their accumulation that renders words with magic connotations noteworthy. That Rushdie’s novels display a true plethora of such words is indicative of the degree to which his texts are interpenetrated by signals of the supernatural. When discussing the origins of the novel Shame, for example, the narrator couches his explanation in supernatural terms: “All stories are haunted by the ghosts of the stories they might have been. Anna Muhammad haunts this book; I’ll never write about her now. And other phantoms are here as well, earlier and now ectoplasmic images connecting shame and violence” (116–17). These few lines show how tightly the web of magic tends to be knit in Rushdie’s novels: “haunted,” “ghosts,” and “phantoms”—all of these are associated with the supernatural, activating the fantastic scheme in the reader’s mind. This is done very subtly, of course, and such casual references alone will certainly not make readers read Rushdie’s novels as magic realist texts. The real significance of words with magic connotations is that they ensure the persistent presence of the supernatural code, if only on a minimal level, contributing to its accessibility when it is asserted by magic events. Not very surprisingly, The Satanic Verses, Rushdie’s masterpiece in ambivalence, is also the novel that seems to contain the greatest number of words with magic connotations. Already in the very beginning, Gibreel and Saladin do not fall out of merely air, but “[o]ut of thin air” (3), and their dramatic entrance—just like Gibreel’s disappearance from Bombay “poof!, like a trick, into thin air” (11)—is hence immediately associated with magic, or with a conjurer’s trick. When Gibreel falls dramatically ill and starts haemorrhaging all over his body, his illness is likewise described in terms of the supernatural. It is “the Phantom Bug,” “the Ghostly Germ, the Mystery Malaise” (11), and the way in which he “miraculously” (11) recovers is nothing short of “mysterious” (29). Much less inconspicuous is the following quotation from Gibreel’s fi rst odyssey through London, which belongs to the passages in the novel in which the connotations of the supernatural cannot possibly be overlooked: More than once he emerged, suffocating, from that subterranean world in which the laws of space and time had ceased to operate, and tried to hail a taxi; not one was willing to stop, however, so he was obliged to plunge back into that hellish maze, that labyrinth without a solution, and continue his epic flight. At last, exhausted beyond hope, he surrendered to the fatal logic of his insanity and got out arbitrarily at what he conceded must be the last, meaningless station of his prolonged and futile journey in search of the chimera of renewal. He came out into the heartbreaking indifference of a litter-blown street by a lorry-infested

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roundabout. Darkness had already fallen as he walked unsteadily, using the last reserves of his optimism, into an unknown park made spectral by the ectoplasmic quality of the tungsten lamps. (201) This passage is an example of how the use of words with fantastic connotations serves to reinforce the supernatural in scenes which are already removed from pure realism. Gibreel’s journey through the London Underground system is certainly not realistic, as he is haunted (or possibly only imagines himself to be haunted) by Rekha Merchant’s ghost, who chases him around and prevents him from reaching his destination. To make matters worse, Gibreel is convinced that the city of London keeps changing while he is travelling on the Underground, and his state of mind leads to a depiction of the city which can hardly be termed realist. The proliferation of nouns and adjectives connoting various elements of the supernatural accordingly stresses the general atmosphere of unreality that pervades this scene, producing an effect of fantastic displacement. Irrespective of whether Gibreel’s perception of London as “that most protean and chameleon of cities” (201) is apt or just the result of hallucinations, the supernatural code is reinforced through the unreality effect, and together with Gibreel, the reader experiences the city as fantastic. In The Moor’s Last Sigh, it is in the Benengeli section of the novel that signifiers of magic abound in an ostentatious manner, with the atmosphere of unreality increasing from the moment Moor leaves Bombay. The Larios sisters, who eventually lead him to the fortress of Vasco Miranda in Benengeli, for instance, are introduced in a way which suggests the supernatural: “Two handsome, fortyish Spanish women wearing white aprons over black dresses had somehow appeared at my elbow” (394). Although their looks and clothes can be read in terms of the reality effect, characterising them as fairly mundane and ordinary, their mysterious appearance links them to the air of mysticism pervading the village, a connection which is reinforced by Helsing’s reaction to their sudden appearance: “‘Hellcats! Vampires!’ shouted Helsing, in sudden fury. ‘Stakes should be driven through both your hearts!’” (394). The Larios sisters are deeply ambivalent from their very fi rst entrance. If Benengeli is already characterised by a general atmosphere of unreality and ambivalence, this effect increases significantly once Moor fi nally arrives at his destination and enters Vasco’s fortress. As soon as Moor has understood that he has been fooled and trapped by Vasco and the Larios sisters, the narrative becomes exceedingly explicit in its supernatural resonances. Consider the following scene, in which Moor is forced up the stairs as Vasco’s prisoner: A ghostly light filtered into the spiral stairwell through narrow, slit-like windows. The walls were at least a metre thick, ensuring that the temperature in the tower was cool, even chilly. Perspiration was drying on

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Exploring Magic Realism in Salman Rushdie’s Fiction my spine and I gave a little shiver. Vasco floated up behind me, puffing and blowing, a bulbous spectre with a gun. Here in Castle Miranda these two displaced spirits, the last of the Zogoibys and his maddened foe, would enact the fi nal steps of their ghost-dance. Everyone was dead, everything was lost, and in the twilight there was time for no more than this last phantom tale. Were there silver bullets in Vasco Miranda’s gun? They say that silver bullets are what you need to kill a supernatural being. So if I, too, had become spectral, then they would do for me. (414–15)

The metaphors in this passage come exclusively from the realm of ghosts, discrediting the straightforwardness of the bare facts of the story, which are that Moor has been arrested by Vasco, whose behaviour proves him mad. The supernatural code is appealed to, suggesting that with the fortress we have entered a sphere in which the supernatural always lurks just beneath the surface. As a result, it becomes possible to read Vasco Miranda as not merely a human madman but an evil spirit, something altogether more fantastic. This does not resolve the ambivalence of the story, because what actually happens in Benengeli is—with the possible exception of Vasco’s death—not magical at all. The air of unreality results solely from the use of words associated with the supernatural, and, as we have seen, this last part of the novel is infiltrated with such words to an extent which deeply affects the atmosphere of the text. In The Ground Beneath Her Feet, references to magic and myths serve a twofold purpose, at once evoking the unreality effect as well as stressing the pseudo-realist status of the novel. There are a few rather casual allusions to magic, such as the name of the shop “The Witch Flies High” (224), but most supernatural references are foregrounded quite conspicuously, as in the names of fictive European countries: “Illyria, Arcadia, Midgard, Gramarye” (439). These names, of course, are not arbitrary. Despite pointing to the pseudo-realism of the novel, they are also steeped in mythic and literary connotations. Illyria is the country in which Shakespeare’s Twelfth Night is set, Arcadia is the mythic home of Orpheus, Midgard is the fortress the gods built for humans according to Old Nordic mythology, and Gramarye is an extinct word for magic. In other passages, magic is referred to still more explicitly. When Rai’s search for “Doodhwala’s ‘ghoasts’” (234), that is, his non-existent goats, takes him into rural India, he is disconcerted by the impression that he is plunging into the unknown: After travelling for two days I came to a river, a trickle down the centre of a dry, rocky bed. There was a peasant passing, as there always is, with a stick over one shoulder and a water pot hanging from each end of the stick. I asked him the river’s name, and when he answered “Wainganga,” I had the odd feeling of having taken a wrong turning out of the real world, of having slipped somehow into fiction. As if I

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had accidentally crossed the border of Maharashtra not into Madhya Pradesh but into a parallel, magic land. In contemporary India those hills ahead of me, a low range with jungled ravines, would have been the Seoni range, but in the magic sphere I had entered they were still called, in the old fashion, Seeonee. In their jungles I might chance upon legendary beasts, talking animals who never were, created by a writer who put them in this faraway wilderness without ever seeing it with his own eyes: a panther and a bear and a tiger and a jackal and an elephant and monkeys and a snake. And on the hills’ high ridges I might at any moment glimpse the mythic figure of a human boy, a Non-Existent Boy, a figment, a man-cub dancing with wolves. (237–38) Rai is quite open about the fact that the atmosphere he experiences originates in his own unfamiliarity with rural India. His is a “contemporary India,” and rural India is for him “a magic sphere.” The idea of duality, the possibility of the existence of two worlds and their mutual incompatibility, perpetuates the theme of various realities which is so prominent in The Ground Beneath Her Feet and which is, essentially, also a textualisation of the presence of two opposed codes in the novel. It is apt, therefore, that Rai expresses his sense of alienation through a penchant for magic connotations. The world of rural India is not merely strange to him, it is “mythic,” and through the linguistic means which Rai chooses in order to convey this impression, the feeling of unreality he experiences is transferred to the reader. Like The Ground Beneath Her Feet, The Enchantress of Florence is concerned with the idea of duality and with the existence of various versions of reality. Whereas the earlier novel focuses on ontological questions concerning the possibility of the coexistence of two or more worlds, the later novel is more interested in the combination of ontological and epistemological problems, and in the difficulties surrounding the separation of the imagination and reality. Both novels address the indeterminate nature of reality on the discourse level, however, and the manner in which they self-consciously highlight and perform the unreal is hence rather similar. In The Enchantress of Florence, therefore, references to magic and the supernatural are as conspicuously foregrounded as in The Ground Beneath Her Feet. There are a few casual allusions to the supernatural, such as the description of the pastes and perfumes the prostitute Mohini prepares for Mogor dell’Amore as “olfactory enchantments” (68), and her attempt to explain her sudden and unexpected feelings for him as the result of a “spell” (63). As a rule, however, references to magic in The Enchantress of Florence are more conspicuous, since they always also seek to complicate the representation of reality and to throw suspicion on neat and unambiguous differentiations between the natural and the supernatural. The following description of Sikri, for instance, starts with a casual reference to the supernatural, but issues concerning the nature of reality quickly take precedence:

64

Exploring Magic Realism in Salman Rushdie’s Fiction At dawn the haunting sandstone palaces of the new ‘victory city’ of Akbar the Great looked as if they were made of red smoke. Most cities start giving the impression of being eternal almost as soon as they are born, but Sikri would always look like a mirage. As the sun rose to its zenith, the great bludgeon of the day’s heat pounded the flagstones, deafening human ears to all sounds, making the air quiver like a frightened blackbuck, and weakening the border between sanity and delirium, between what was fanciful and what was real. (27)

Akbar’s city is introduced to us as a place in which reality is present in different manifestations, and in which the miraculous and the real intersect, rendering attempts to separate one from the other precarious. Indeed, the novel is largely concerned with negotiating the boundary between “the fanciful” and “the real,” and the many signals of magic are central to creating an atmosphere in which the two can coexist. Quite another device which produces the unreality effect is what I propose to call pseudo-supernatural incidents. These occur at moments when the narrator holds back valuable information from the reader in order to create the (misleading) impression that a particular occurrence is supernatural. The technique employed in this device is similar to cliff hangers which produce suspense and urge the reader to read on immediately. Often, the characters in the story react to such incidents with shock, and this feeling is also conveyed to the reader through the delay of the perfectly normal and “natural” solution for a further few lines or paragraphs. As a result, readers experience a few moments of serious doubt and might, indeed, be persuaded that an event is truly supernatural. The narrative seems to assert the supernatural code, thus provoking its implementation, only to discredit it once the riddle is solved and the reader is revealed to have been fooled by the narrator’s trick. Pseudo-supernatural incidents indicate how the narrator plays with readers’ expectations, raising both their willingness to accept supernatural phenomena and their distrust of the narrator, ultimately strengthening the overall ambivalence of the text. A few examples should clarify the exact nature of such pseudo-supernatural events. In Shalimar the Clown, the Seventh Sarkar who joins the villagers of Shirmal and Pachigam on the night of the grand Dassehra festival banquet ordered by the maharaja announces that his sorcery will make the entire Shalimar garden in which the feast is supposed to take place disappear. While the villagers smile at the little self-proclaimed sorcerer banging his drum, the narrative at fi rst seems to corroborate the Sakar’s extraordinary claim: He banged the drum, one, two, three, four, five, six times. On the seventh boom, just as he had foretold, the whole Shalimar Bagh vanished from sight. Pitch blackness descended. People began to scream.

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For the rest of his life the Seventh Sarkar would curse history for cheating him of the credit for the unprecedented feat of “hiding from view” an entire Mughal garden, but most people in the garden that night thought he’d pulled it off , because on the seventh beat of his drum the power station at Mohra was blown to bits by the Pakistani irregular forces and the whole city and region of Srinagar was plunged into complete darkness. In the night-cloaked Shalimar Bagh the earthly version of the tooba tree of heaven remained secret, unrevealed. Abdullah Noman experienced the bizarre sensation of living through a metaphor made real. The world he knew was disappearing; this blind, inky night was the incontestable sign of the times. (88) Whereas the fi rst paragraph implements the supernatural code by suggesting that the Seventh Sakar has indeed managed to pull off his magic feat, the ensuing paragraph re-installs the realist code by providing the matterof-fact explanation of this pseudo-supernatural event. The supernatural code is temporarily discredited once it becomes clear that the disappearance of the Shalimar garden is a visual illusion due to the explosion of a power station rather than witchcraft. If in the Shalimar garden incident the vivid depiction of the characters’ experience of the pseudo-supernatural as a sudden shift in atmosphere and as a symbol of the changing political situation manages to salvage something of the potential extraordinariness of the event, other instances of the pseudo-supernatural are more mundane. In The Enchantress of Florence, for instance, we meet the pseudo-supernatural early on, but here it is related to nothing but a cheap—and fi rmly realistic—trick. Before Uccello di Firenze (alias Mogor dell’Amore or Niccolò Vespucci) agrees to divulge the secret of his true identity to Lord Hauksbank, the queen’s ambassador from whom he is planning to steal the queen’s letter, he warns him that his story is cursed and will bring death to all but the one person destined to hear it. Lord Hauksbank brushes away what he recognises as a cheap pretext and commands the foreigner to tell his tale: ‘So be it,’ began the stowaway. ‘There was once an adventurer-prince named Argalia, also called Arcalia, a great warrior who possessed enchanted weapons, and in whose retinue were four terrifying giants, and he had a woman with him, Angelica . . .’ ‘Stop,’ said Lord Hauksbank of that Ilk, clutching at his brow. ‘You’re giving me a headache.’ Then, after a moment, ‘Go on.’ ‘. . . Angelica, a princess of the blood royal of Genghis Khan and Tamerlane . . .’ ‘Stop. No, go on.’ ‘. . . the most beautiful . . .’ ‘Stop.’ Whereupon Lord Hauksbank fell unconscious to the floor. (19; ellipses in original)

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Thus ends this section, leaving the reader to believe in the magic character of the event, and hence also activating the supernatural code for the fi rst time in this novel. However, the beginning of the next section already offers a more mundane explanation for the Scottish Lord’s condition: The traveller, almost embarrassed about the ease with which he had inserted the laudanum into his host’s glass, carefully returned the little wooden box of treasures to its hiding place, drew his particoloured greatcoat about him and hurried on to the main deck calling for help. (19) It is characteristic of The Enchantress of Florence that the supernatural code first manifests itself in the form of the pseudo-supernatural, for the novel is all about the nature of belief and the power of words. The pseudo-supernatural, of course, probes precisely these issues, playing with audience expectations and with readers’ flexibility in adapting to realist versus supernatural signals in the text, as well as with their confidence in the narrator. In The Satanic Verses, the pseudo-supernatural causes Saladin great anxiety when he returns to his family home in Bombay for the first time in decades, and finds that nothing has been changed since the day his mother died: ‘Mummified,’ Zeeny said, voicing the unspeakable as usual. ‘God, but it’s spooky, no?’ It was at this point, while Vallabh the bearer was opening the double doors leading into the blue drawing-room, that Saladin Chamcha saw his mother’s ghost. He let out a loud cry and Zeeny whirled on her heel. ‘There,’ he pointed towards the far, darkened end of the hallway, ‘no question, that blasted newsprint sari, the big headlines, the one she wore the day she, she,’ but now Vallabh had begun to flap his arms like a weak, flightless bird, you see, baba, it was only Kasturba, you have not forgotten my wife, only my wife. . . . ‘Please, baba, nothing to be cross, only when the Begum died Changez Sahib donated to my wife some few garments, you do not object? (65–66) As in the extracts from the other two novels, the manner of narration here suggests that Saladin really “saw his mother’s ghost,” justifying his reaction of severe shock, which renders him almost speechless. The tone of the narrator is assertive, seemingly giving expression to a mere fact. The effect of this is heightened by Zeeny’s comments on the atmosphere of the house. Characterising it as “spooky,” she prepares the ground for the sudden appearance of the “ghost.” Because the house is “embalmed” as Naseem’s “memorial” (65), readers might simply be ready to accept the possibility of a supernatural apparition in these eerie surroundings, but they soon have to resign themselves to the fact that they have been fooled. The assertiveness of the narrative tone is misleading, and the putative “ghost” turns out to be Kasturba, Saladin’s former ayah. Again, the “solution” to the mystery of the “ghost”

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is extremely practical and completely devoid of any hint of the supernatural. Nevertheless, in momentarily seducing the reader, the pseudo-supernatural effects a brief manifestation of the supernatural code, and even though the reader’s acceptance of the supernatural is subsequently frustrated, this is only a temporary development; the atmosphere of magic lingers, ensuring the continued availability of the supernatural code in the text. Whereas in the passages discussed so far, character and reader share the shock and surprise of the pseudo-natural event, in the following episode from The Ground Beneath Her Feet, it is only the reader who is faced with a pseudo-supernatural phenomenon. The reader’s confusion and shock are not mirrored by a character’s reaction, because the character in question—Rai, who is also the narrator,—has superior knowledge, which, however, he refuses to share with the reader until after the shock effect has been produced. After the death of his secret lover Vina Apsara, Rai becomes depressed. Persisting in their attempts to cheer him up, his friends finally decide to throw a party for him, hoping that he will fall in love with another woman. In the middle of this party, we encounter the pseudo-supernatural when Rai describes the following scene: “At that moment I saw Johnny Chow forcing his way through the crowd of revellers, grinning demonically, with Vina Apsara on his arm” (490). Genuinely surprised, the reader might, at first, be inclined to believe in Vina’s resurrection, but a realist explanation follows immediately: “I’d heard about the impersonation craze” (490), confesses Rai, adding that the specific impostor accompanying Johnny Chow is not even a very convincing double: “This Vina, the one on Chow’s arm, was unmistakably an older guy. Chinese too, which inevitably made the resemblance imperfect” (491). Only a few pages later, Rai’s knowledge of the “impersonation craze,” however, does not prevent him from being profoundly shocked himself. Ormus shows him video recordings of about three hundred different Vina impersonators and Rai concludes that since he seems to believe he can fi nd the real—and dead—Vina among these impostors, he must be in a terrible state. However, Ormus suddenly pushes a button, and there she is, three hundred times over and more, blazing from all the monitor screens. He pushes a set of audio slide controls; and her wonderful—her inimitable—voice wells up and drowns me. Vina. It’s Vina, returned from the dead. It’s not up to you, she sings. And again and again, as the old song accelerates towards its conclusion, no, it’s not up to it’s not up to it’s not up to you. Her voice is doing extraordinary things—new and familiar— with the song’s melodic line . . . . The invisible crowd goes crazy. She smiles: Vina’s smile, that can light up the darkest room. Oh Vina, Vina, I think. Where did you spring from, this isn’t possible, you’re dead. Three hundred Vinas surround me, laugh and bow. (518)

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The date on the tape shows Rai that the performance was recorded less than a week before, and Vina has been dead for almost two years, but he still fi nds it difficult to believe that this is not an old recording of one of Vina’s concerts. Even when Rai learns the name and life story of this particular Vina impersonator, Mira Celano, he still fi nds it hard to accept that this is not Vina returned from the dead, for their bodies are identical, and he is so moved that he starts “whispering” (519) in awe. In this instance, then, the supernatural code is activated for a much longer period, for Rai has to work hard to persuade himself of the impossibility of Vina’s resurrection: “Now that she’s back, I hear myself madly thinking. Now that she has returned from the grave” (523). Even though, in this instance, the supernatural code ultimately fails to be asserted because it is clear that Mira is not Vina, its impact on this episode is considerable. In The Moor’s Last Sigh, a pseudo-supernatural incident occurs in the course of the nightmarish scene of Moor’s arrest after Uma’s death and his imprisonment in Bombay Central. As the main suspect, Moor is maltreated by the police and taken to a prison in a part of Bombay which he has never seen before and which he can hardly believe really exists. The wardens in this place seem to be “hybrid monsters” (286), and the one responsible for Moor himself is no exception: “After a long while I found my way blocked by a man with—I narrowed my eyes and peered—the head of a bearded elephant, who held in his hand an iron crescent dripping with keys” (286). As in the other examples, the manner of narration seems to assert the supernatural. Yet the mundane explanation soon follows: “The illusion of the elephant’s head, I now saw, had been created by the hood of a cloak (the flapping ears) and a hookah (for a nose). This fellow was no mythological Ganesha, but a coarse, sadistic brute” (287). Even later, we learn that at the time of his imprisonment, Moor was suffering from drug-induced hallucinations (291–92), which further invalidates the fantastic assertion of the existence of these “hybrid monsters.” Nevertheless, the impression of Bombay Central as a fantastic place lingers because of the vivid manner in which it is depicted. Ultimately, then, the pseudo-supernatural adds to the impact of the supernatural code. Nightmarish episodes such as this one occur frequently in Rushdie’s fiction, and with their bizarre and often threatening atmosphere of the illogical they also serve to distance the narratives from pure realism, thus reinforcing their magic component. The nightmarish feeling that pervades such passages leads to a dream-like air of unreality, suggesting that the realist code does not apply. The whole of Moor’s sojourn in Bombay Central is characterised by such a nightmarish atmosphere of unreality. The prison to which he is taken is an enormous building, so fantastically large that it fills Moor’s “entire field of vision” (285) with its “single featureless wall” (285), a house which Moor, who knows the area well, should doubtless recognise but feels certain he has never seen before. When Moor is fi nally released from gaol again, the prison has somehow metamorphosed

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back to “conventional size” (291), strengthening the feeling of unreality which results from the hideous dreamscape. It is only afterwards that we learn that his impressions on entering were drug induced, but this does nothing to impair the atmosphere of unreality with which the nightmarish episode in Bombay Central comes to be associated in the reader’s mind, for a hallucination is, of course, precisely that: unreal. The ending of Shame is of a similarly nightmarish quality. Shortly after Omar Khayyam has brought Raza and Bilquìs Hyder to his mothers’ house, all three of them develop malaria, and together with them, the narrative succumbs to the logic of the hallucinations it records, and hence to an atmosphere of unreality. Once the hallucinations subside, however, the text still retains the same nightmarish quality, depicting the killing of Raza Hyder by Omar Khayyam’s mothers and the murder of Omar Khayyam by his wife with particular gusto, and ending with a gory climax in the apocalyptic scene of destruction which closes the novel: His body was falling away from her, a headless drunk, and after that the Beast faded in her once again, she stood there blinking stupidly, unsteady on her feet, as if she didn’t know that all the stories had to end together, that the fi re was just gathering its strength, that on the day of reckoning the judges are not exempt from judgment, and that the power of the Beast of shame cannot be held for long within any one frame of flesh and blood, because it grows, it feeds and swells, until the vessel bursts. And then the explosion comes, a shock-wave that demolishes the house, and after it the fi reball of her burning, rolling outwards to the horizon like the sea, and last of all the cloud, which rises and spreads and hangs over the nothingness of the scene, until I can no longer see what is no longer there; the silent cloud, in the shape of a giant, grey and headless man, a figure of dreams, a phantom with one arm lifted in a gesture of farewell. (286) The dream-like atmosphere of unreality in this passage is further emphasised by the description of the Omar-shaped cloud which blots out the scene of the crimes as a “figure of dreams, a phantom.” Another set of devices which contribute to the unreality effect is formed by the references to superstitions, prophecies, curses, and rumours. Most of Rushdie’s novels are full of these: his characters tend to be extremely superstitious, rumours form an important source of information in the societies he depicts, and many events are causally linked to prophecies and curses. The world view of many of Rushdie’s characters is at least partly informed by traditional systems of belief. What advocates of a world picture based on scientific verifiability would haughtily reject as mere superstition, is for them, if not a fact, so often at least a possibility. When Tai

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the Kashmiri boatsman presses Dr. Aziz always to follow the advice of his nose, for instance, the Western-educated doctor, even though not rejecting this notion, still often fails to bear Tai’s warning in mind. His grandson Saleem, however, not only readily accepts the alleged capacity of his grandfather’s nose to foretell evil, but when relating important events in his grandfather’s life invariably stresses the reliability of Aadam Aziz’s nose. In his version of the 1919 massacre at Amritsar, for example, Saleem insists that his grandfather’s nose issued a warning by itching: ‘It is a peaceful protest,’ someone tells Doctor Aziz. Swept along by the crowds, he arrives at the mouth of the alley. A bag from Heidelberg is in his right hand. (No close-up is necessary.) He is, I know, feeling very scared, because his nose is itching worse than it ever has; but he is a trained doctor, he puts it out of his mind, he enters the compound. (Children 35) Eventually, Doctor Aziz’s nose even saves him from certain death during the massacre, or so Saleem claims: As the fifty-one men march down the alleyway a tickle replaces the itch in my grandfather’s nose. The fifty-one men enter the compound and take up positions, twenty-five to Dyer’s right and twenty-five to his left; and Aadam Aziz ceases to concentrate on the events around him as the tickle mounts to unbearable intensities. As Brigadier Dyer issues a command the sneeze hits my grandfather full in the face. ‘Yaaaakhthoooo!’ he sneezes and falls forward, losing his balance, following his nose and thereby saving his life. (36) The way in which events are presented in this passage suggests that Aadam Aziz’s nose indeed saved his life, urging the reader to accept the applicability of the supernatural code. And Saleem is by no means the only one of Rushdie’s characters susceptible to superstitions. In Shame, Bilquìs is tormented by the idea that the Loo, “an evil wind” (68), will blow away not merely the furniture but also the occupants of her house (68, 208). Gibreel, in The Satanic Verses, is “convinced of the existence of the supernatural” (21), and Changez believes that his son Saladin’s soul is “safe” (48) with his father in the walnut tree planted at his birth, despite their estrangement. In a similarly superstitious vein, and influenced by the farewell advice of her sherpa—“Not to try again” (Verses 303)—Allie is convinced that she “would surely die” (303) should she ever attempt to climb Mount Everest again. This last example also shows that superstition is by no means exclusively reserved for characters born in the East. This is also true of The Ground Beneath Her Feet, where Vina adopts Ameer’s habit of keeping new jewellery under her pillow for one week before wearing it, in order to test its “effect” (125) on her dreams. In this novel, as in others, we also

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encounter several bad omens: the mist before Vina’s arrival in Rai’s home (83), which marks the beginning of the end of his golden childhood, and the “mark of death” (490) which Rai is convinced he discerns on the forehead of his friend Aimé Césaire during the party his flatmates organise for him a year after Vina’s death, to name but two. Similarly, in Shalimar the Clown, several portents seem to announce Max Ophuls’s murder, and for the citizens of Kashmir, superstition is an integral part of existence. When the Gegroo brothers appear to have died in the mosque of Shirmal, superstition prevents the villagers from entering the mosque ever again (128). In Fatepuhr Sikri in The Enchantress of Florence, information about the present and future is gathered from “signs and auguries” (84), and the citizens of Florence touch the gates of the city for good luck whenever they start a journey (145) and are well-versed in the art of recognising witches (270–71). The fact that all of these characters so easily accept the possibility of the supernatural is likely to lower the reader’s threshold for the acceptance of the supernatural code as well. Superstition gives rise to rumours, and these are also well-represented in Rushdie’s fiction. Mostly these rumours concern highly improbable occurrences, and the activation of the supernatural code here tends to rely rather heavily on the certainty with which they are introduced. After the clearance of the magicians’ ghetto in Midnight’s Children, for instance, another, more mysterious, slum is soon reported: it is said that the day after the bulldozing of the magicians’ ghetto, a new slum was reported in the heart of the city, hard by the New Delhi railway station. Bulldozers were rushed to the scene of the reported hovels; they found nothing. After that the existence of the moving slum of the escaped illusionists became a fact known to all the inhabitants of the city, but the wreckers never found it. It was reported at Mehrauli; but when vasectomists and troops went there, they found the Qutb Minar unbesmirched by the hovels of poverty. Informers said it had appeared in the gardens of the Jantar Mantar, Jai Singh’s Mughal observatory; but the machines of destruction, rushing to the scene, found only parrots and sun-dials. (431) Even though this account begins with “it is said that,” a phrase that clearly qualifies the story related as rumour, the presentation soon seeks to assert the existence of the “moving slum” when Saleem insists that it “became a fact known to all the inhabitants of the city.” Nevertheless, the repeated use of phrases such as “[i]t was reported” and “[i]nformers said” simultaneously with the admission that the slum was never actually found stresses the fact that its existence was never confi rmed, let alone proven. Ultimately, the story about the “moving slum” remains confi ned to the realm of rumours, but this does not diminish its impact on the unreality effect. The mere plethora of rumours in Rushdie’s novels leads to an atmosphere of

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unreality because it renders unclear what is reliable information. In Shalimar the Clown, rumour has it that the king cobras which killed General Kachhwaha came from far away in order to “avenge the wrongs against Kashmir” (317), and rumours of miracles surround both Simonetta Vespucci and Qara Köz in The Enchantress of Florence (136, 217, 277–78). Similarly, Sufyia Zinobia’s escape in Shame gives rise to rumours even more fantastic than she as a character already is, rumours in which the escapee is transformed into a “white panther”: Slowly it became clear to him that the stories of the white panther were indeed being told again; but what was remarkable was that they had begun to come from all over the country, in the bus-top bundles of gas-field workers returning from Needle and in the cartridge belts of rifle-toting tribesmen from the north. . . . Murders of animals and men, villages raided in the dark, dead children, slaughtered flocks, bloodcurling howls: it was the time-honoured man-eater scare, but with a new and terrifying twist: ‘What animal’, a six-foot Frontiersman asked Omar Khayyam with the innocent awe of a child, ‘can tear a man’s head off his shoulders and drag his insides out through the hole to eat?’ (253) The vivid description of the crimes of the “white panther,” which is clearly informed by the gothic, suggests that in the rumours about her, Sufiya Zinobia takes on the form of a fantastic, and almost mythological, largerthan-life being. This is also true of Hind of Jahilia in The Satanic Verses, who rumour claims is a witch who has found the formula of everlasting youth. When her husband sees her for the first time in “two years and two months” (392), she looks younger rather than older: He saw that she hadn’t aged by so much as a day since he last saw her; if anything, she looked younger than ever, which gave credence to the rumours which suggested that her witchcraft had persuaded time to run backwards for her within the confi nes of her tower room. (393) The way in which Hind is depicted seems to endorse such rumours, and their persistence activates the supernatural code, rendering Hind’s witchcraft at least possible. Intimately connected with superstition, prophecies and curses are also prominent in Rushdie’s novels. In Midnight’s Children, for instance, the events of Saleem’s life are prophesised before his birth by Shri Ramram Seth, and Saleem claims that “the fellow got nothing wrong” (87). This is open to debate since the highly enigmatic nature of the prophecy makes it hard to verify. Also, although Saleem makes the prophecy fit his own life—or, for all we know, he may even have modelled his life on the prophecy—the child in Amina’s womb is not Saleem, but in fact his rival Shiva, of whose connection to the prophecy we remain unaware. Nevertheless, the

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text presents Shri Ramram Seth’s prophecy as accurate, and Saleem is so persistent in establishing links between his life and the prophecy that the supernatural code is partly confi rmed. Prophecies can also take the form of curses, and, indeed, when the prophetess Nazarébaddoor foretells the coming of horrors in Shalimar the Clown, it is not quite clear whether she is uttering a prophecy or a curse: “The age of prophecy is at an end,” Nazarébaddoor whispered, “because what’s coming is so terrible that no prophet will have the words to foretell it.” Firdaus lost her temper. “Okay, die if you want to,” she said fiercely, placing defensive hands upon her swollen womb, “but to curse us all just because you’ve decided to go is just plain bad form.” (68) We are told that nothing happens for a while, but even though the fulfi lment of Nazarébaddoor’s prophecy is not immediate, in a novel which ostentatiously equates the effects of communalism on Kashmir and Kashmiriyat with the destruction of paradise, her clairvoyance is unambiguous. This is also true of the curse with which Epifania in The Moor’s Last Sigh seeks to take revenge on her granddaughter Aurora, who watches her die without making the slightest effort to fetch help: “may your house be for ever partitioned, may its foundations turn to dust, may your children rise up against you, and may your fall be hard” (99). All the elements of this curse come true, the last part even literally, as Aurora dies by falling off the roof of her house. By contrast, but unsurprisingly, in The Enchantress of Florence prophecies are more ambivalent. Dashwanth, the future master of Akbar’s royal art studio, is fi rst discovered due to a series of graffiti in which he caricatures members of the court, one of which depicts Akbar’s cousin Adham falling from a great height. Years later, the caricature acquires prophetic meaning: Six years later, when Adham, in a delirious bid for power, physically attacked Akbar and was sentenced by the emperor to be hurled head-fi rst to his death off the city walls, the monarch remembered Dashwanth’s prophecy with amazement. But Dashwanth said he didn’t recall doing it, and the picture had been cleaned off the brothel wall long before, so the emperor was left to question his memory and wonder how much of his waking life had been infected by dreams. (118–19) The supernatural code is activated, but in the absence of any proof, a shadow of ambivalence remains. Once more, the novel highlights the fluidity of the boundaries between the real and the imaginary. One of the most powerful devices generating the unreality effect is the introduction of magical cause-and-effect relationships. When Saleem, Ayooba Baloch, Farooq Rashid and Shaheed Dar lose their way in the Sundarbans,

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they soon fall prey to the peculiar atmosphere of their surroundings, gradually “beginning to succumb to the logic of the jungle” (Children 361). As a result, they start seeing causal links where reason would see none, and these lend mundane events an air of magic. The realisation that they are lost in the Sundarbans leads to the mental breakdown of “Ayooba-the-tank” (352), which in its turn causes his comrades to loosen their grips on reality and logic: Ayooba Baloch cried without stopping for three entire hours or days or weeks, until the rain began and made his tears unnecessary; and Shaheed Dar heard himself saying, ‘Now look what you started, man, with your crying,’ proving that they were already beginning to succumb to the logic of the jungle, and that was only the start of it, because as the mystery of evening compounded the unreality of the trees, the Sundarbans began to grow in the rain. (361) Apart from the general air of ambivalence which pervades this passage in the references to the uncertainty of time and the “unreality of the trees,” which all serve to implement the unreality effect, the magical rather than logical cause-and-effect relationship between Ayooba’s tears and the rain suggests a world view informed by acceptance of the supernatural. This process is typical of magic realism, in which magic relationships between seemingly unrelated events tend to arise, imbuing everything with meaningfulness and hence virtually precluding pure coincidence. Like all of Rushdie’s fiction, The Satanic Verses is full of such magic causal connections. On the very day Gibreel Farishta loses his faith in God, his recovery from his mysterious and near-fatal illness begins (30). Similarly, as soon as he has feasted on pork, that is, forbidden meat, the serial dreams which eventually drive him mad start, and the text insists on a connection between the two events: “Why did he leave? . . . because after he ate the pigs the retribution began, a nocturnal retribution, a punishment of dreams” (32). And when Saladin is on board a plane, take-off is presented as successful not because of the pilot’s skill, but “thanks to his magic trick of crossing two pairs of fi ngers on each hand and rotating his thumbs” (33). Finally, Zeeny’s re-entry into Saladin’s life is not entirely accidental either, as the text suggests that it might be the magic fulfi lment of Saladin’s wish when he at last takes possession of his father’s magic lamp: He took the lamp from its shelf and sat at Changez’s desk. Taking a handkerchief from his pocket, he rubbed briskly: once, twice, thrice. The lights all went on at once. Zeeny Vakil entered the room. ‘O God, I’m sorry, maybe you wanted them off, but with the blinds closed it was just so sad.’ Waving her arms, speaking loudly in her beautiful croak of a voice, her hair woven, for once, into a waist-length ponytail, here she was, his very own djinn. (533–34)

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The magic connection between Saladin’s rubbing of the lamp and Zeeny’s appearance here is also strengthened by an instance of the pseudo-supernatural, whereby Zeeny’s entrance and the sudden flood of light are at fi rst presented as magic, only to be explained immediately after the shock effect has been achieved. We encounter an equally “magic” wish-fulfi lment in The Moor’s Last Sigh and its depiction of the return of Aurora’s father after his imprisonment: On her tenth birthday Aurora da Gama was asked by the Northern fellow with the charrakh-choo, the accordion, the U.P. accent and the magic tricks, ‘What do you want most in the world?’—and before she answered he had granted her wish. A motor-launch sounded its siren in the harbour and came in towards the jetty on Cabral Island, and there on the deck, paroled six years before the end of their sentences, were Aires and Camoens, all-thin-and-bone, as their mother cried out in delight. (47–48) Again, the presentation of the event invites the reader to interpret the release of Aurora’s father as a direct result of her unspoken wish. In the world of Rushdie’s magic realism, such connections are not innocent or accidental but indicative of the intricate web of relations and connections between the various strata of life. This is particularly noteworthy in the circumstances surrounding Ormus’s awakening from his year-long coma.3 His sudden regaining of consciousness is also depicted as caused by something very like magic—it occurs at the very moment at which Vina fi nally fi nds him and re-enters his life. Through the fantastic accumulation of events so typical of magic realism this is also the very day on which he almost dies, just before her voice calls him back into life. Any interpretation of this as a sheer coincidence is emphatically rejected not only by Vina but also by the text itself, which affi rms that Vina “fl ies back into his life: and saves it” (Ground 321). By fi rmly establishing the magic relationship between cause and effect, the text provokes the implementation of the supernatural code, which not only allows for but invites such logic. Up to now, I have focused on stylistic and structural tricks which facilitate the development of the supernatural code. In Rushdie’s magic realism, however, the supernatural is also a prominent theme. A number of Rushdie’s novels actively engage with the supernatural on a thematic level, as when characters ponder the possibility of supernatural occurrences in a manner which might well influence the evaluation of such events by the reader. As so often, both The Satanic Verses and The Enchantress of Florence first spring to mind, since they feature an exceptionable number of characters preoccupied with the supernatural. I have already mentioned the superstitiousness of Gibreel and Changez, who are by no means the only superstitious characters in The Satanic Verses. We also find characters like Rosa Diamond, who, although

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not superstitious herself, spends most of her time reflecting on the nature of ghosts: “I know what a ghost is, the old woman affirmed silently. . . . And I know what it isn’t, too, she nodded further, it isn’t a scarification or a flapping sheet, so pooh and pish to all that bunkum. What’s a ghost? Unfinished business, is what” (129). Her first sentence is echoed literally by Allie, another character deeply concerned with the issue of ghosts: ‘I know what a ghost is,’ Allie Cone said to a classroom of teenage girls whose faces were illuminated by the soft inner light of worship. ‘In the high Himalayas it is often the case that climbers fi nd themselves being accompanied by the ghosts of those who failed in the attempt, or the sadder, but also prouder, ghosts of those who succeeded in reaching the summit, only to perish on the way down.’ (194–95) Similarly, the supernatural is introduced as a theme also in connection with Pamela’s work, since she has to investigate “allegations of the spread of witchcraft among the officers at the local police station” (280), an aspect of her job which leads to her violent death, or so the narrator suggests. Likewise, in The Enchantress of Florence, Akbar is deeply concerned—and this is a concern he shares with many of the other characters of the novel, not least his imaginary wife Jodha, who is uncertain about her own ontological status—with the nature of reality, the question of how far Mogor dell’Amore and his fantastic tale are to be trusted, and the (im)possibility of defi ning what is real and what is not. But the supernatural is also a theme in Rushdie’s other novels, such as in the fanciful style of Aurora’s paintings (Moor 174, 302, and throughout), in the legends Lambajan likes to tell of Elephanta Island (Moor 127), and in Lady Spenta Cama’s religious obsessions (Ground 24, 39). It seems probable that the persistence with which some of Rushdie’s novels address the supernatural as a theme through the thoughts and occupations of their characters reinforces the reader’s acceptance of the supernatural as well; a magic realist text that stresses its characters’ belief in the possibility of magic time and again cannot avoid strengthening its own supernatural code. However, if there are many characters ready to accept the supernatural in Rushdie’s novels, there is an equal number of sceptics, and so ambivalence is preserved on this level as well. The list of devices I have tried to suggest for the implementation of the unreality effect is by no means exhaustive, but it contains some of the most frequent and important means by which an atmosphere of magic is created. Together with its realist counterpart, the unreality effect prepares the ground for the duality of the text, since both ensure the continuous presence of both codes. This duality will be explored in more detail in the following chapter.

4

Verbal Magic

1

The Poetics of Ambivalence

The ambivalence of magic realism does more than affect the borderline between the supernatural and the natural or establish the presence of two contradictory epistemological codes. Indeed, in the particular variety of magic realism discussed here, ambivalence is palpable on all levels. In Rushdie’s texts, the boundaries between seemingly distinct categories are constantly challenged as binary oppositions are deconstructed. Most frequently, this happens through the inversion of common hierarchies, a process which, as Derrida has stressed, is crucial for the trajectory of deconstruction: “I strongly and repeatedly insist . . . on the necessity of the phase of reversal, which people have perhaps too swiftly attempted to discredit” (qtd. in Culler 165). In Rushdie, “reversal” comes into its own as a central mechanism of unsettlement. In the following two sections, I will discuss some of the poetic devices employed in the implementation of ambivalence on various formal and thematic levels, devices which are crucial to the destabilisation of the fabric of the magic realist text.

THE POETICS OF MAGIC REALISM In magic realism, the parameters we live by are inverted, and readers become estranged from the world as it is represented in the text; the magic realist universe is a fluid space in which boundaries between familiar and supposedly clear-cut separate entities collapse. As a formal gesture, the inversion of parameters is achieved by poetic devices such as animation and reification, literalisation and metaphoricalisation, hyperbole and a particular use of numbers, repetition and the creation of unstable signifiers, as well as by the notion of the simulacrum. In what follows, I will discuss each of these devices separately in order to highlight their particular trajectories, as well as their impact on the magic realist universe of Rushdie’s texts. One of the most prominent poetic devices in Rushdie’s novels is animation, a technique by which inanimate objects and concepts are described as animate, no matter whether as animals or people. 2 What animation shows is how precarious the boundaries are between such categories, how

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arbitrary and how dependent on perspective. Animals, people, objects— these are not as neatly separate as we like to believe, and in Rushdie’s texts they refuse to remain distinct. His characters, therefore, live in a world in which such denominations tend to be very fluid, forcing them to constantly renegotiate their own positions in what appears to be a highly unstable universe. Such is the experience of Saleem’s grandfather Aadam Aziz, who realises, upon his return from Heidelberg to his native Kashmiri valley, that attempts to ignore the alteration caused by five years of absence are futile, and that his place at home needs to be redefi ned. The valley to which he returns is presented as very much alive, a shifting environment which refuses to function merely as the background to its inhabitants’ evolving life stories, and which offers only an illusory sanctuary: The world was new again. After a winter’s gestation in its eggshell of ice, the valley had beaked its way out into the open, moist and yellow. The new grass bided its time underground; the mountains were retreating to their hill-stations for the warm season. (In the winter, when the valley shrank under the ice, the mountains closed in and snarled like angry jaws around the city on the lake.) (Children 10) This rather unusual presentation of a mountain valley as a newly hatched chick helps blur the boundaries between the categories animate/inanimate. In the presentation of Aadam Aziz’s Kashmiri valley as an active and living force rather than a passive object, the world of Midnight’s Children is unbalanced from the start, as the environment refuses to succumb to established dichotomies. This destabilisation is enhanced by the emphatically indeterminate geographical conditions of the valley: the very mountains which enclose and, consequently, defi ne the valley are unreliable points of reference, approaching and retreating with the change of the seasons. Far from constituting comforting markers of stability, they are profoundly threatening, creating “a hostile environment” (11) for the Western-educated Doctor Aziz, and giving voice to their displeasure by “snarl[ing] like angry jaws.” The presentation of the valley as alive is further emphasised by its function as the fi rst fully and premeditatedly active subject in the novel. When Aadam Aziz hits his nose on the ground while praying, the valley deliberately attacks him: “On the morning when the valley, gloved in a prayermat, punched him on the nose, he had been trying, absurdly, to pretend that nothing had changed” (11). In fact, the valley is even presented as scheming, for the tussock lies in wait before delivering its punch: “he had carried the rolled cheroot of the prayer-mat into the small lakeside garden in front of their old dark house and unrolled it over the waiting tussock” (11). The destabilisation caused by this collapse of boundaries can be seen in its immediate effect on Aadam Aziz, who rapidly starts to feel that “the

Verbal Magic 79 old place resented his educated, stethoscoped return” (11). He senses that the very ground on which he wants to rebuild his old life cannot be trusted, turning him into the fi rst “victim” of the deconstruction of alleged certainties in the novel: “The ground felt deceptively soft under his feet and made him simultaneously uncertain and unwary” (11). Rushdie’s other novels collapse the animate/inanimate dichotomy in similar ways, and just as in the example from Midnight’s Children, the effect is frequently threatening, as his characters are shown to be grappling with a universe which refuses to remain stable or comfortable. Very often, it is their immediate surroundings which are depicted as hostile. Omar Khayyam in Shame is convinced that Nishapur, the house in which he has been confi ned since his birth, is his wilful enemy; bent on confusing and fooling him by continuous expansions and contractions, tempting him further and further into its labyrinthine self and granting him glimpses of liberty only to refuse to release him. Desperate to put a stop to this process of constant re-invention and re-structuring, he takes a hatchet to its rooms, but he derives no comfort from this “murder” (30). Instead, the “corpses of his useless, massacred history” provoke “illogical tears” (32), and freedom remains elusive. Similarly, Gibreel, on his odysseys through London, finds himself in a hostile and confusing environment: The city’s streets coiled around him, writhing like serpents. London had grown unstable once again, revealing its true, capricious, tormented nature, its anguish of a city that had lost its sense of itself and wallowed, accordingly, in the impotence of its selfish, angry present of masks and parodies, stifled and twisted by the insupportable, unrejected burden of its past, staring into the bleakness of its impoverished future. (Verses 320) As a living environment, London refuses to offer stability, hence frustrating Gibreel’s desire for certainty, and disorienting him to the extent that he loses all sense of reality as he roams the “writhing” maze of streets. Shalimar the clown seems more adept at dealing with his threatening surroundings, and he proves that he has learnt not to expect comfort from his environment, but to reciprocate in the manner in which he fi nds himself treated: “The storm’s fury grew. He saw dead men’s hands flying past his face, catching at him from their airy graves. The wind screamed and meant to kill him but he screamed back into its face and cursed it and it couldn’t take his life” (Shalimar 55). Such a hostile environment, Rushdie seems to suggest, elicits violence in the mildest of people, a notion which, in the larger context of the novel’s engagement with terrorism, serves as a reminder of the sources of violent and destructive resistance. That the world in which the characters fi nd themselves is imposing and disrespectful of the boundaries of the human body is a disconcerting concept that pervades all of the novels. In Shalimar the Clown, the weather is

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depicted as threateningly intrusive—“in the mornings and evenings the fog came down and pushed its clammy hands through your skin and froze your bones” (207)—and in The Enchantress of Florence, Mogor dell’Amore, when imprisoned in the cellar of the Mughal palace, is physically haunted by the possibility of having to die without being able to relate his story: “He found this thought intolerable and so it refused to leave him, it crawled in and out of his ears, slid into the corners of his eyes and stuck to the roof of his mouth and to the soft tissue under his tongue” (91). These examples suggest that Rushdie’s characters are at the mercy of both hostile surroundings and their own anxieties, a subject which will be explored in more detail in Chapter 5. The opposite of animation is reification, a strategy which presents living beings as objects and which, although far less frequent in Rushdie’s fiction, also reinforces the convergence of the two. The effect of reification can be threatening, as well as demeaning, as the human subject is faced with the loss of its most basic characteristics. The shocking aspect of this loss of identity is apparent when Saleem meets three of his childhood friends during the war over Bangladeshi independence, but is kept by their seriously injured conditions from acknowledging their humanity, depicting them instead as a moving pyramid of “six feet and three heads and, in between, a jumbled area composed of bits of torso, scraps of uniforms, lengths of intestine and glimpses of shattered bones” (Children 373). Combined with physical characteristics which clearly reveal the three as Saleem’s former friends, this description brings home the full atrocity of the war, which turns people into (dead) objects. When used by characters to describe one another, reification frequently expresses negative attitudes, as is the case in the treatment of Farah Zoroaster in Shame. Guided by their strong dislike of her, the inhabitants of Q. discursively dehumanise her: courting Farah is known as “courting Disaster” (25). This phrase, of course, reflects the fact that due to Farah’s pronounced narcissism, attempts to win her love must necessarily fail; however, it also shows how easily Farah is marginalised in the eyes of the locals, because she does not conform to their conventions. This is also apparent in the following pejorative “joke” (54) told to Omar Khayyam by the ice vendor he meets on his departure from Q., in a reference to Farah’s return: “‘Such is life,’ he said, ‘one ice block returns to town and another sets off in the opposite direction’” (54). Omar Khayyam’s initial failure to understand the joke provokes an even more explicit insult: “‘O, no, sahib, great lord,’ the ice-vendor grinned as he pocketed the cash, ‘this is one ice block that goes everywhere without melting at all’” (55). Again, Farah is denied human properties and reified because she resists appropriation by the dominant social group. The very fact that reification is regarded as an insult is indicative of the powerful hierarchy between animate and inanimate entities, which is exactly what devices like animation and reification seek to deconstruct.

Verbal Magic 81 Reification also functions as an expression of lack of status in the following example from The Moor’s Last Sigh, which exposes Moor’s father’s involvement in the trade of women: Thus Abraham the spice merchant was able to use his widespread Southern connections to harvest a new crop, entered in his most secret ledgers as ‘Garam Masala Super Quality’, and also, I note with some embarrassment, ‘Extra Hot Chilli Peppers: Green.’ (183) This example of reification, of course, relies on the conventional connection between the notions “sexy” and “hot,” or “spicy,” implying that Abraham trades in women just as he trades in spices, thus reducing the women whom he sells to Scar to mere commodities. The crudeness of this is stressed by the nature of Abraham’s entries in his account books. With “Green” presumably referring to the fact that these girls are virgins, the background information which Moor provides elucidates the link between the girls’ humble origins and their reification as goods on the sex market. Moor draws attention to the fact that the girls come from extremely poor families who, unable to either “marry off or feed” their daughters, are forced to “donate” them to their favourite temples (183). If they do so in the hope that in the temples the girls might at least lead respectable lives, the girls’ chances are ruined by the corruptness of priests who are not averse to selling their female staff to pimps. Rather than corroborate the conceptual difference between animate and inanimate things, Rushdie here exposes the manner in which underprivileged members of society are discursively turned into objects, and shows how such a mode of representation influences their very real lives. Literalisation is a device which blurs the boundary between “truth” and metaphor, and which constitutes one of the most fruitful and frequently used sources of the supernatural in magic realism. Literalisation occurs when a metaphor is taken literally, and when what is normally only a figure of speech is actually integrated into the reality of the fictional text.3 Faris has described literalisation as a technique which connects “words and the world” and which “implicitly suggests the linguistically determined nature of experience” (Enchantments 110): All of this linguistic magic celebrates the solidity of invention and takes us beyond representation conceived primarily as mimesis to re-presentation. The play of language in these texts, often in the form of literalized metaphors, thus ultimately embodies a central problem of language theory, the question whether words reflect or create the world. It is a question that allies magical realism with much postmodern fiction. (115) Literalisation, then, is about the power of language. It textually performs how reality is created through language, but at the same time frequently

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calls into question this power by highlighting the bizarre nature of a reality constituted by literalised metaphors. The freezing of Ahmed Sinai’s accounts, which literally renders him impotent because his testicles have turned into little cubes of ice (Children 135–36); the peculiar sensitivity of Aurora da Gama’s family home, which becomes so highly charged through family quarrels that entering it makes “your hair stand on end” (Moor 41); the “vanish[ing] from sight” of the mosque in which the Gegroo brothers are supposed to have died (Shalimar 128); and the literal coldness of the whore Mohini, which is an asset in summer but makes business difficult in winter (Enchantress 65)—all of these expose the role of language in shaping reality and perception, and alert the reader to its power in making the improbable seem mundane. One of the most powerful and memorable literalisations in Rushdie’s fiction is Saladin’s gradual transformation into a goat-like devil in The Satanic Verses. This instance of literalisation also shows how self-consciously Rushdie employs this device, a tendency which Faris traces back to his “position as a later magical realist, more self-conscious about its characteristic techniques than his predecessors” (Enchantments 112), but which to me seems more often connected to the particular socio-political trajectory of his texts. The following dialogue between Saladin and one of his fellow victims reads like a recipe for literalisation. Its critical potential is hard to miss: ‘But how do they do it?’ Chamcha wanted to know. ‘They describe us,’ the other whispered solemnly. ‘That’s all. They have the power of description, and we succumb to the pictures they construct.’ (168) Saladin’s interlocutor is a male model from Bombay who has been transformed into a manticore. As his explanation suggests, the only ones affected by the transformational power of language in the manner described are immigrants to the United Kingdom, who are forced to succumb to the racist views which they encounter upon their arrival in Britain. As an Indian immigrant, Saladin is regarded as something very like a Beelzebub, and surrendering to this image, he indeed metamorphoses into a creature which looks like a parody of a cross-breed between the devil and a giant goat. As is the case with reification, this instance of literalisation also exposes the power the dominant group holds over the marginalised and underprivileged. At the same time, this example of literalisation draws attention to how language, in the mouths of those who know how to wield its power, can change the very essence of the described object. That Saladin himself interprets his condition as an instance of literalisation is apparent in the connection he sees between his goat’s horns and his wife’s adultery:

Verbal Magic 83 ‘What consolation can there be,’ Chamcha answered with bitter rhetoric, his irony crumbling beneath the weight of his unhappiness, ‘for a man whose old friend and rescuer is also the nightly lover of his wife, thus encouraging—as your old books would doubtless affi rm—the growth of cuckold’s horns?’ (277) This is, of course, another possible interpretation of Saladin’s misfortune: Saladin’s metamorphosis is not only the result of his association with the devil in the eyes of the former coloniser, nor caused by some devilish streak in his own character, but also the visible symptom of having been cuckolded. Like Saleem and his comrades in the Sundarbans episode already discussed, Saladin here succumbs to the logic of magic realism. A similar crossing of the boundaries between “words and the world” occurs in instances of metaphoricalisation, a device which blurs the dividing line between metaphor and reality by depicting ontologically unspectacular—although often, of course, experientially horrifying and traumatic—incidents in metaphorical terms. Through this particular mode of representation, the mundane is transformed, acquiring a new, often magic, quality, thus conveying to what extent the fictional universe is permeated by magic. At the same time, metaphoricalisation shows precisely that the events conveyed in this manner are everything but mundane and normal, and should not be accepted as such. Metaphoricalisation seeks to render experiences tangible by appealing to the creative imagination affectively, often by evoking a sense of intense physical discomfort. During the 1965 war over Kashmir in Shalimar the Clown, for instance, the very environment is depicted as suffering physically: “The sky screamed as invisible warplanes scarred it with savage white lines” (127). The image of the screaming sky renders the intrusiveness and the horrors of the war palpable with minimal descriptive means. In the same manner, the depiction of Zoon Misri as “a vague drifting presence, half-human, half-phantom” after her rape (190) conveys the young girl’s precarious situation and unstable sense of physical identity, and also highlights the social failure of a community which, far from providing strategies of healing and reconciliation, ostracises women for the brutal invasion of their own bodies. Metaphoricalisation is similarly used to convey the experiences of the victims of dominant ideologies and discourses in the following passage from The Satanic Verses, in which Hind Sufiyan attempts to formulate her experience as an immigrant in London in an inner monologue: they had come into a demon city in which anything could happen, your windows shattered in the middle of the night without any cause, you were knocked over in the street by invisible hands, in the shops you heard such abuse you felt like your ears would drop off but when you turned in the direction of the words you saw only empty air and

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Hind’s exposure to racism in London is compared to hauntings. Thus the uncanny experience of being abused and attacked by strangers who seek to evade a direct confrontation is expressed in a way which highlights both the absurdity and the cowardliness of xenophobic attacks. The very invisibility of Hind’s tormenters further aggravates the effect of their actions, depriving Hind of any chance to defend herself. Her attempts to confront her attackers are thwarted by the confrontation with “empty air and smiling faces,” a wall of blankness which she cannot dismantle. The desperate nature of Hind’s situation is rendered tangible through discursive strategies reminiscent of the depiction of the supernatural in horror films. The threat is palpable but not concrete. Ultimately, her utter helplessness when confronted with the perpetrators of racist violence causes Hind to retreat from her hostile surroundings into a realm of nostalgic reminiscences: the world of Indian films and movie magazines becomes her “real world” (251), offering at least a temporary, if illusory, respite from the dreary and dangerous world outside.4 Hyperbole, although also concerned with the referentiality of language, differs from literalisation and metaphoricalisation insofar as it does not transform reality in itself but merely stretches its scope. As such, it is a perfect vehicle for ambivalence, since it blurs the edges of what is realistic. In the following passage from Shame, for instance, the extent to which the account of Omar Khayyam’s mothers’ triple pregnancy is exaggerated is impossible to determine: Now the three of them began, simultaneously, to thicken at the waist and in the breast; when one was sick in the morning, the other two began to puke in such perfectly synchronized sympathy that it was impossible to tell which stomach had heaved fi rst. . . . They slept in the same room. They endured the same cravings—marzipan, jasmine-petals, pine-kernels, mud—at the same times; their metabolic rates altered in parallel. They began to weigh the same, to feel exhausted at the same moment, and to awake together, each morning, as if somebody had rung a bell. They felt identical pains; in three wombs, a single baby and its two ghostly mirror-images kicked and turned with the precision of a well-drilled dance troupe . . . suffering identically, the three of them—I will go so far as to say—fully earned the right to be considered joint mothers of the forthcoming child. (20; last ellipsis in original) The extent to which the narrator insists on the genuine synchronisation of all three pregnancies is marked by excessive exaggeration, as is apparent in

Verbal Magic 85 the mere list of symptoms that the sisters develop. The complete uniformity of the one real and the two phantom pregnancies renders it impossible to decide which of the three sisters is actually pregnant, turning all three of them into their son’s true mothers. Thus an event which is not extraordinary per se is rendered fantastic through hyperbolic representation. In a similar manner, the borderline between reality and the supernatural is blurred in a great many other instances in Rushdie’s texts. The chameleon butterflies in the Titlipur sections of The Satanic Verses, for instance, which appear in the most unexpected of places—“under the closed lids of the thunderboxes in the toilets of Peristan, and inside every wardrobe, and between the pages of books,” as well as on the cheeks of sleepers (217–18)—and which form the prophetess Ayesha’s only food and clothing; Moor, who claims he can feel his “rapidly-enlarging feet pushing against the insides of [his] shoes” (Moor 161), and who insists that his hair grows “almost fast enough to see” (161); and the “command of silence” which forbids the inhabitants of Fatehpur Sikri to utter even the slightest sound whenever Akbar is present (Enchantress 29)—all of these instances of hyperbole strengthen the ambivalence of the narratives and draw attention to the precarious relation between language and reality. If, as Faris puts it, “[l]anguage is used extravagantly” in magic realist texts (“Scheherazade” 184), this is particularly true of the use of numbers. Numbers in Rushdie’s fiction are introduced mainly for symbolic rather than referential purposes, or else employed to signify excess. Midnight’s Children immediately springs to mind. The text revolves around a few carefully chosen and symbolically highly charged numbers, the most significant of which is, of course, the number 1001. That the choice of this number is motivated by other than referential reasons is something Saleem himself is quite ready to admit, as when, having just revealed how the widow ruined the midnight’s children, he is overcome by weariness: “Sometimes I feel a thousand years old: or (because I cannot, even now, abandon form), to be exact, a thousand and one” (440). Although 1001 is intricately bound up with Saleem’s desire to cast his tale in a symmetrical and meaningful form, the symbolic weight of the number still exceeds its structural significance. It is “the number of night, of magic, of alternative realities” (217), and it also constitutes, of course, a discursive bridge to one of the most persistently evoked intertexts of the novel, the Arabian Nights. As such, the constant repetition of the number 1001 is integrally connected with the “alternative realities” Midnight’s Children conjures up, as well as with the magic realist unhinging of the referential function of language.5 The number of children who survive long enough to be imprisoned by the widow is similarly conspicuous: 420 is “the number of trickery and fraud” (436). Earlier, 420 was also the number of the children who died before their tenth birthday, leading Saleem to suggest that the reason for their deaths must have lain in their partial inadequacy (196). Hence the symbolic significance of the re-appearance of this number, which seems to

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foreshadow the impending fate of the remaining children. Not only are they soon to be castrated or sterilised but they are to be deprived of their magical powers, and will thus indeed be reduced to little more than “fraud[s].” Clearly, the numbers with which the midnight’s children are associated eloquently comment on their role in the novel. Timothy Brennan has drawn attention to the recurrence of the number three in Shame, which results in a symmetry so striking that it has led him to read the novel as a parody of “sacred texts in general” (124), and of the Qu’ran in particular. Yet most frequently, numbers in Shame signify excess. The fi rst numbers in the novel, which are part of the family tree which precedes the beginning of the text proper, already denote excess. The family tree illustrates the complex character relationships in the novel, listing the off spring of Raza’s extended family in a way which highlights the sheer number of his relatives rather than their individuality. Raza’s grandmother is described as having “2 sisters” and “3 brothers,” who in turn have “11 legitimate sons” and “many illegitimate off spring.” The “11 legitimate sons” have fathered “32 boys” and just one daughter. Raza’s second daughter Naveed alone, fi nally, has “27 children,” the sexes of whom are not even specified in the family tree (10). Obviously, individuals as such are of only minor importance in this family tree—their names are completely omitted. All that counts seems to be the impressive size of the family, and the numbers given are selfconsciously excessive. In other novels it is the particular context in which numbers occur which renders them devoid of realistic referentiality. In The Satanic Verses, Gibreel sleeps “for four days without waking once” and upon waking urinates “for eleven minutes” (82), and Saladin has a coughing fit which lasts for “nineteen and a half minutes” (164), and in The Ground Beneath Her Feet, Rai’s mother screams at Vina “for three hours and twenty-one minutes without appearing to draw breath” (Ground 167). The ridiculously improbable preciseness displayed in these quotations defies credibility and makes the reader wary of such assertions.

DECENTERING THE TEXT: UNSTABLE SIGNIFIERS AND SIMULACRA A particularly interesting magic realist poetic device is excessive repetition. The constant recurrence of specific signifiers—and these can be objects just as much as abstract concepts, characters, names, and even situations— effectively severs their ties with any specific signifieds. Instead, such signifiers acquire a quasi-symbolic meaning, but this temporary attachment to a particular meaning is subsequently also deconstructed through endless deferral; emptied of meaning, these signifiers become entities without centres, circling around nothing, and their real significance lies in their very

Verbal Magic 87 repetition, whose structural importance supplants that of their increasingly obscure symbolic meaning. Shifting, re-aligning themselves, but ultimately floating through the text unanchored, these empty signifiers are central to the destabilisation of magic realist texts. Their leitmotif-like function is thwarted by the absence of stable signifieds, and so they fi nally point to nothing but themselves. Midnight’s Children offers a plethora of such unstable signifiers, such as the perforated sheet (or, more generally, the motif of the hole and all aspects connected with the theme of fragmentation), the nose, the basket, chest or trunk, and various colours, such as green, yellow, saffron or gold, and black. One of the most prominent among these is the spittoon. In the course of Saleem’s life and narrative this spittoon assumes a host of various meanings, but these meanings never remain fixed, and the order which Saleem intends the spittoon to convey collapses into disorientation. Before Saleem’s spittoon actually appears in the novel as a concrete object, its transformation into a symbol has already begun. The game of “hit-the-spittoon,” played by “the old men at the paan-shop” in Agra who symbolise the non-anglicised Indian population (44), is treated by the text as an expression of traditional Indian culture. Although the old men’s “spittoon-hittery” (45) can be regarded as a symbol of pre-Raj India, however, it also becomes associated not only with indigenous rather than colonial culture but more explicitly with the culture of the people, and it thus combines two central aspects of the Indian independence movement. In Nadir Khan’s Marxist credo, elitism and art should be mutually exclusive: “art must be beyond categories; my poetry and—oh—the game of hit-the-spittoon are equals” (45). It is this comment that prompts the Rani of Cooch Naheen to humorously propose to reserve one room in her house “for paan-eating and spittoon-hittery” (45) as symbols of native Indian cultural activity, and which causes her to give Nadir Khan and Mumtaz her “superb silver spittoon, inlaid with lapis lazuli” (45) as a wedding present, a gift which symbolises a synthesis of Gandhi’s homespun movement and Nehru’s socialism and, as such, India’s hope for a postcolonial future. The meaning of the spittoon shifts during Nadir and Mumtaz’s underground marriage. Too afraid to come out of hiding after the murder of Mian Abdullah, Nadir Khan retreats from the political arena, and the spittoon becomes associated with the escapism of his married life. In their own private cellar chambers, husband and wife indulge in their very own form of marital happiness: In their comfortable lamplit seclusion, husband and wife played the old men’s game. Mumtaz made the paans for Nadir but did not like the taste herself. She spat streams of nibu-pani. His jets were red and hers were lime. It was the happiest time of her life. (58)

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Again, the meaning of the spittoon is split: although it signifies the couple’s escapism in a time of great political upheaval that will soon result in the Indian nation, the spittoon also epitomises the innocent and happy intimacy of Mumtaz’s fi rst marriage and thus a niche of private happiness. This happiness, however, is shattered when the most private aspect of Nadir and Mumtaz’s marriage is exposed. Examining his daughter’s body when she falls ill, Aadam Aziz discovers that after two years of marriage, she is still a virgin, and his fury brings about the end of this infertile alliance, an end which can also be read as the novel’s comment on escapism. The spittoon now assumes meaning in connection with Nadir Khan’s gesture of divorce: and in the soft lamplit seclusion of the Taj Mahal, a shining spittoon, and a note, addressed to Mumtaz, signed by her husband, three words long, six syllables, three exclamation marks: Talaaq! Talaaq! Talaaq! (62) The spittoon, then, is all that remains of Mumtaz’s marriage, and so it becomes associated not only with the “happiest time of her life,” but also with its traumatic ending. When Mumtaz Aziz re-marries and becomes Amina Sinai, the spittoon accompanies her to her new life in Delhi as the expression of her continued love for her fi rst husband. Locked away in the trunk which contains her dowry, the spittoon symbolises the subversive presence of Amina’s suppressed feelings, which only receive a qualified outlet around the time of Saleem’s tenth birthday, when Amina and Nadir manage a few clandestine meetings, which, however, kindle Saleem’s jealous wrath and lead to the catastrophic end of another couple’s extramarital affair (258–67). If Saleem is self-righteously outraged by his mother’s feelings for her fi rst husband, however, this does not prevent him from claiming the concrete reminder of this devotion as a part of his “inheritance” (107). As such, the spittoon is also turned into a symbol of Saleem’s past, assuming, however, a curiously contradictory function: although for a long time Saleem treats the spittoon as a signifier of his ties to his past, it eventually becomes the agent of the disruption of this very connection. When almost all the members of Saleem’s family are killed on the last night of the Indo-Pakistani war of 1965, Saleem survives but suffers a complete loss of memory, in which the spittoon once more assumes a central role: the fi ngers of the explosion reaching down down to the bottom of an almirah and unlocking a green tin trunk, the clutching hand of the explosion flinging trunk-contents into air, and now something which has hidden unseen for many years is circling in the night like a whirligig piece of the moon, something catching the light of the moon and falling

Verbal Magic 89 now falling as I pick myself up dizzily after the blast, something twisting turning somersaulting down, silver as moonlight, a wondrously worked silver spittoon inlaid with lapis lazuli, the past plummeting towards me like a vulture-dropped hand to become what-purifies-andsets-me-free, because now as I look up there is a feeling at the back of my head and after that there is only a tiny but infi nite moment of utter clarity while I tumble forwards to prostrate myself before my parents’ funeral pyre, a minuscule but endless instant of knowing, before I am stripped of past present memory time shame and love . . . brained (just as prophesied) by my mother’s silver spittoon. (343) With his loss of memory, what Saleem used to regard as the most vital aspect of his life is temporarily suspended; paradoxically it is Saleem’s past itself which, in the shape of the spittoon, disconnects him from his own history, and, therefore, from history as such. Although this is partly a liberation and a purging, both retrospectively and prospectively, enabling Saleem to dissociate himself from his past actions as well as from his role in the war to come, it also, of course, constitutes a profound incision. Drained of all his memories, Saleem also loses his identity, because he literally does not remember who he is. Saleem remains cut off from his past for more than six years, and curiously, during this period it is, once more, the spittoon which provides his only connection to his former self. As the only remnant of his past which Saleem still possesses, the spittoon now acquires the metonymical meaning of being Saleem’s past, and despite the fact that he does not actually recall its significance, he treasures it above all things. On fi rst being introduced to him, his future comrades Ayooba, Farooq, and Shaheed are explicitly warned about interfering with Saleem’s spittoon: “‘Don’t try to get it away from him,’ Sgt-Mjr Najmuddin indicates the spittoon, ‘It sends him wild’” (348). And Saleem is right to hold on to his spittoon, for once he has become reconnected to his past and is smuggled back into India in Parvatithe-witch’s magic wicker basket, it is the spittoon which reminds him of the world outside and thus prevents him from losing himself in the “sphere of absence” of his invisibility and from letting his “hold on the world slip” (381). The spittoon hence becomes a symbol of reality and of the world outside, and, more generally, of life. In functioning as a canvas onto which Saleem projects various meanings, the spittoon emerges as a structural element rather different from traditional leitmotifs. Whereas the meaning of leitmotifs remains fi xed and allows them to serve as linking devices which construct meaningful cross-references, the spittoon gradually develops into a vehicle of ambivalence. Overladen with a variety of widely divergent and partly contradictory meanings whose coexistence explodes the semantic unit, the spittoon ceases to function as a meaningful symbol. On its journey through different contexts and acts of signification, the spittoon is eventually emptied of any

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specific meaning; it becomes impossible to state with any certainty what it actually stands for. Ultimately, it points to nothing but itself, and all that remains is its structural significance: repetition becomes a means in itself, and the spittoon is, finally, nothing more than an empty vehicle.6 Whereas Saleem “recycles” mainly concrete objects, in The Satanic Verses a similar process of circulation concerns ideas, names and dreams. The question of the particular quality of various thought experiments, attitudes, and concepts, for instance, together with the relative merits of singularity, hybridity, and compromise, is explored throughout, and the novel is repeatedly brought to a halt when characters are forced to scrutinise their own causes and beliefs. “What kind of idea are you?” (95 and throughout)—this existential question, which goes to the very heart of the characters’ attempts to position themselves in the world, eventually develops an impetus of its own, and although it surfaces in the various different sections and plot-lines of the novel, its function is not primarily one of unification. Instead, this question initiates a chain—or rather, a cycle—of endless deferral of meaning, in which each attempt to provide a convincing answer is cancelled by the re-emergence of the original question. The question develops into one of the overarching concerns of the novel, but even though the text as a whole seems to favour particular kinds of ideas over others—those characterised by multiplicity rather than singularity, and adaptation and compromise rather than stasis—a fi nal answer to the central question remains elusive. Engagement with it can always only be provisional, and its constant recurrence results in an unsettling déjà-vu effect. One of the other core sites of repetition in The Satanic Verses is that of names. Numerous characters share names, and even though it is not difficult to differentiate between the various namesakes in individual scenes or even sections, on the level of the larger plot signification is disrupted, as the referential relations between names and characters are not immediately apparent. The multiple applicability of certain names to various characters empties the names of specific meaning, as they can no longer refer to any single person. The most noteworthy of these names is “Ayesha,” which is assigned to no fewer than four different characters: Ayesha the prophetess, who leads the pilgrims towards Mecca, Ayesha the Empress of Desh and enemy of the exiled Imam, Ayesha the favourite wife of Mahound, and fi nally the prostitute Ayesha, who assumes the role of Mahound’s favourite wife in the brothel in which Baal hides. Other names which are shared are “Hind,” which refers both to the wife of the Grandee of Jahilia and fiercest enemy of Mahound and to the owner of the Shandaar Café; “Mishal,” the name of the daughter of the owner of the Shandaar Café as well as of the wife of the zamindar of Titlipur; “Bilal,” “Khalid,” and “Salman,” which are the names both of the followers of Mahound and of the followers of the Imam; and “Nasreen,” the name both of Saladin’s mother and his father’s second wife, a “coincidence” which results in Saladin’s step-mother being called “Nasreen Two” (48).

Verbal Magic 91 It is obvious that by complicating strategies of character identification, such a mixture of names and characters should heighten the opaqueness of the text. In the context of The Satanic Verses, a question as seemingly unambivalent as “Who is Ayesha?” is impossible to answer in any straightforward way. “Ayesha” in The Satanic Verses is four different women whose personalities reflect, inflect, complement, and negate each other, hence exploding the concept of stable and contained characters. Any attempt to defi ne “Ayesha’s” identity through straightforward denotation has to remain incomplete. Interestingly, Rushdie has recently returned to this technique of mirroring in The Enchantress of Florence. Here again, we have various female characters who share names, such as the Enchantress herself and her favourite slave and companion, who both assume the name “Angelica.” Sometimes names are repeated in the form of variations, as happens with the various prostitutes who appear in the different sections of the novel: Mohini the Skeleton and her obese double the Mattress, Mogor dell’Amore’s lovers and owners of the House of Skanda in Fatehpur Sikri, are mirrored, or perhaps indeed, re-created, by Mogor dell’Amore in his stories about the prostitutes of Florence: the Scandal—“a skeletal creature”—and La Matterassina (147). Clearly, it is not just names which are at stake here; rather, these characters are each other’s doubles. Some instances of doubling in Rushdie’s fiction—such as the dynamics between Saleem and Shiva and between Saladin and Gibreel—can fruitfully be conceptualised in terms of the doppelganger motif, but the complexities of the relations among the female characters in The Enchantress of Florence, as well as similar patterns in other novels, concern larger issues of original and copy, and are hence better captured by the concept of the simulacrum. Although the Enchantress’s companion is called “the Mirror” (109), an appellation which suggests that Qara Köz is the original and the slave girl the copy, the implied hierarchy is, of course, merely a result of convention: as the hierarchically lower member of the relationship, the slave girl has to be denied the status of the original. When read in terms of Derrida’s supplement, however, her presence is crucial, for it is only her agreed function as Qara Köz’s copy which turns the Enchantress into an original in the fi rst place. And when regarded outside the discourse of courtly convention, it becomes clear that the roles of “original” and “copy” do not apply to the two women at all. That they look identical does not turn them into original and copy but rather highlights the fact that there is no original, only two simulacra whose empty centre and always already absent original is the male fantasy of the perfect woman.7 The same is, of course, true of the prostitutes who are doubled across time and space, as simulacra of male desire created in male speech acts. The idea that there are no originals but only imitations pervades the text of The Satanic Verses, which is linguistically obsessed with the notions of the “counterfeit” (52) and “remakes” (64). But the “simulacrum” (67) also surfaces in broader thematic engagements. Many characters search

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for what is “really real” (175), but this quest is constantly frustrated, as characters are surrounded by the simulacra of emotions, objects, and even people. Saladin and Pamela’s relationship is a case in point: both hunger for signs of truth and reliability, and both tie their lives to the simulacra of what they most desire. For Saladin, Pamela forms a substitute for the version of England which he wants to conquer and possess, and represents his stereotypical vision of his new home: “I was bloody Britannia. Warm beer, mince pies, common-sense and me” (175). His “possession” of Pamela comes to signify Saladin’s own success as the “real” Englishman he is desperate to become: He pursued her for two years. England yields her treasures with reluctance. He was astonished by his own perseverance, and understood that she had become the custodian of his destiny, that if she did not relent then his entire attempt at metamorphosis would fail. . . . He needed her so badly, to reassure himself of his own existence, that he never comprehended the desperation in her dazzling, permanent smile, the terror in the brightness with which she faced the world, or the reasons why she hid when she couldn’t manage to beam. (49–50) Pamela’s “smile” becomes the basis of Saladin’s newly reconstructed self and of the image of their relationship which he clings to. Yet her “smile” is only a mask, a “brilliant counterfeit of joy” (51), and, as such, a simulacrum which Saladin accepts because there is nothing else: “she had no confidence at all, and every moment she spent in the world was full of panic, so she smiled and smiled” (50). Ignoring the fact that their relationship is, in fact, circling around an emotional void, Saladin continues to rely on his wife’s fake smile as a signifier of their—not only marital—happiness. As a result, once this carefully constructed façade tumbles down and Saladin proves himself wrong by going to bed with Zeeny a mere five hours after having arrived in Bombay, he faints, unable to process the contradictions between reality and the fictions he has chosen to inhabit (51). Although Pamela despises Saladin for his “picture postcard” vision of England, she is just as adamant as he is in her clinging to her own view of England as the one and only correct and authentic version: “The place never stopped being a picture postcard to him. You couldn’t get him to look at what was really real” (175). Thus Pamela falls into exactly the same trap as Saladin, failing to understand that her vision of England is just another version, albeit a very different one. That the novel does not endorse her insistence on something that is “really real” is clear, and becomes tragically explicit in its refusal to support her attempt to defi ne herself: ‘But I’m really real, too, J.J.; I really really am.’ She reached over to him, pulled him across to where her mouth was waiting, kissed him with a great un-Pamela-like slurp. ‘See what I mean?’ (175)

Verbal Magic 93 The irony in this passage is obvious: at the very moment Pamela tries to construct herself as “really real,” she is described as behaving in an “unPamela-like” fashion. Her attempt to pin down some sort of essential Pamela-ness is thus discredited by the text as a mere chasing of illusions. The Pamela she wants to believe in and whom she posits as “really real” is merely another version, and it joins the league of simulacra that permeate the novel. Just as Pamela is desperate to prove to herself and others her essential Pamela-ness, so Rai in The Ground Beneath Her Feet is obsessed with recreating the “real” Vina through his narrative. She forms the focus of his story, the centre around which everything revolves, but since she dies at the very beginning of the novel and the rest of the text is devoted to Rai’s doomed attempts to retrieve her personality from what she told him about her past as well as from his own memory, this centre is also a lacuna from the start. The past does not yield the “real” Vina, and Rai has to be content with the representation of a chain of various avatars of Vina: Vina as a child in America, Vina as a teenager in India, Vina as a pop star, Vina as a feminist, Vina as a promiscuous lover, Vina as a married woman, Vina as an ageing pop queen, and dead Vina as a bizarre saint. The gaps between these various visions of Vina prevent her from emerging as a single unified essence, and however much he wants to appear as Vina’s most intimate friend, Rai eventually has to admit that the elusive Vina eluded even him. All he is left with are fragments. The fragmentary nature of Vina as both a private person and a public icon fi nds full expression in the “impersonation craze” (490) which sets in after her death. This phenomenon clearly takes its momentum from Vina’s multiple identities, which hold the potential of attracting a great variety of people: I’d heard about the impersonation craze, the Vina supperclub/cabaret look-alikes, the underground, heavy-metal and reggae Vinas, the rap Vinas, the Vina drag queens, the Vina transsexuals, the Vina hookers on the Vegas Strip, the Vina strippers outnumbering the Marilyns and Long Tall Texans on amateur nights around these infi nitely varied United States, the porno-Vinas on the adult cable channels and closedcircuit hotel tvs, the hardcore under-the-counter blue-video-Vinas, and the innocent biannual gatherings of dweeby karaoke Vinas whose numbers rivaled even the indefatigable Star Trek conventioneers. (490) Although the “impersonation craze”8 is evidently absurd and comic, the fact that all of these radically different people attempt—and to some extent manage—to physically possess Vina emphasises her function as a floating signifier on which others can project their own ideas of her, as well as of themselves. Her versatile nature and ability to accommodate complete opposites allow her memory to be inhabited by nearly everybody, a

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phenomenon which simultaneously demonstrates the gaps within Vina herself: Vina is so many different things and people at once that any original and essential Vina-ness can only be illusory. The impersonators hence have to come to terms with the fact that they can only represent facets of her persona: There was some disagreement as to which Vina most merited commemoration, the fi rebrand Afro-Vina of her younger days, big-haired, big-voiced, big-mouthed and sexually rampant, or red-haired MexiVina, older but still hot, her voice never better, her aura a little wiser, or Death-Vina, the sad-eyed lady of the broken lands. In the end, pragmatism ruled. The younger impersonators did the early Vina, the older men (yes, and women too) made the latter-day Vina their own. (491) The absence of any single “original” Vina compels her self-proclaimed doubles to choose which particular version of Vina they want to make “their own.” Hence the original to which all these simulacra point is a lacuna, as becomes even more forcefully clear when we consider Mira, the one impersonator who manages to fool both Rai and Ormus: And I can see, too, that although this is Vina, it’s her to the life, it’s also an odd composite Vina, a Vina who never really was. She has the dyed red hair gathered above her head in that springy fountain I remember so well, that Woody Woodpecker crest, and she’s wearing the sequinglittered gold bustier and leather pants from Vina’s last performance, but this is not a woman in her middle forties, this is not the mature solo artiste on the comeback trail. This Vina is no more than twenty years old. She is, however, wearing a moonstone ring. (519) Mira is a wholly anachronistic Vina. In crossing age and period she recreates a Vina who never existed, but nevertheless bizarrely manages to become Vina’s double in a manner beyond all the other impersonators who more carefully re-create the Vina of a particular phase. Indeed, Mira’s Vina-ness is not an effect of disguise: On the monitors, Mira Celano is taking off her kimono. Underneath it is Vina’s naked body. Vina with lighter skin, but Vina nevertheless, in every last detail, the weight and angle of the breasts, the jaunty sling of the hips, the full, the incomparable Vina ass, the thick unshaven bush. (523) Again, Mira is Vina, albeit a Vina that never was. And when Mira sings, we witness the same effect: her wonderful—her inimitable—voice wells up and drowns me. Vina. It’s Vina, returned from the dead.

Verbal Magic 95 It’s not up to you, she sings. And again and again, as the old song accelerates towards its conclusion, no, it’s not up to it’s not up to it’s not up to you. Her voice is doing extraordinary things—new and familiar—with the song’s melodic line, stretching and bending the sound, bringing a jazzy feel to it, the way Vina used to do when she felt in the Holiday mood. . . . The invisible crowd goes crazy. She smiles: Vina’s smile, that can light up the darkest room. Oh Vina, Vina, I think. Where did you spring from, this isn’t possible, you’re dead. Three hundred Vina’s surround me, laugh and bow. (518) What we have here, then, is not an original and its copy, but a simulacrum. Vina is many different women, not any one version of herself, and it is hence precisely Mira’s deliberate anachronism, together with the slight physical discrepancies—her lighter skin, the newness of her style of singing—which enable her to become Vina on a level completely different from and infinitely more complex than pure imitation. To some extent, the simulacrum serves as a mise en abyme of the magic realist text itself—hence, perhaps, the prominent engagement with this concept in Rushdie’s fiction. I have argued that due to the irresolvable opposition between the two codes the magic realist text is de-centred; the language of the text is caught in the dynamics of two discursive centres, neither of which can assume any ultimate dominance. Together with floating signifiers, the simulacrum fulfils a similar function: endless deferral of meaning further destabilises the text by jeopardising the process of signification. The epistemological search for clarity is frustrated by lacunae which fill the places of meaningful semantic centres. The resulting ambivalence is strengthened by the precarious status of many “magic” events, which are discussed in the following.

AMBIVALENT MAGIC Just like the poetics of magic realism and the stylistic tricks through which magic is created from language, in Rushdie’s fiction supernatural occurrences themselves are subjected to ambivalence. In Chapter 1, I discussed a few of Rushdie’s most prominent magic events in order to tease out the particular nature of the relationship between the two codes in his fiction. I concluded that, although to some extent the character of this relation is specific to the individual novels, it is never harmonious or unproblematic. In the following, I will analyse several magic instances from Rushdie’s novels in order to explore more fully how the two codes destabilise each other, and how they are arranged variously in near harmony or are openly incompatible. Rushdie’s novels display a virtually constant oscillation between realist and magic perceptions of reality, and explanations in tune with either

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of these world views are favoured in different moments in his texts. One of the main problems as far as the epistemological position of extraordinary occurrences is concerned is the unreliability of the narrators. Rushdie mainly employs homodiegetic narrators, whose extreme subjectivity renders all their explanations suspicious. Indeed, many of his extradiegetic narrators either explicitly reject any superior knowledge and insight (Shame) or complicate their own status by consciously foregrounding their unreliability (The Satanic Verses). Even when they explicitly assert or discredit one particular version of events, therefore, readers hesitate. Rushdie’s narrators tend to have problems with their memories, conceal information, be heavily biased, and occasionally even lie. That readers are reluctant to trust them, therefore, is not surprising, even less so when they are faced with what seem to be extraordinary claims. Although the partial omniscience and panoramic viewpoint which many narrators claim for themselves are often presented so persuasively that readers are tricked into relying on them despite their reservations, the assertion and denial of supernatural events are hence affected by the narrators’ unreliability nevertheless. Narratorial unreliability is, of course, a typically postmodern gesture, but in Rushdie’s fiction its role exceeds the habitual postmodern function of foregrounding the impossibility of uncovering any defi nite “truth.” In further complicating the interplay of the two codes which constitute the narrative reality, the narrators’ unreliability crucially contributes to the disintegration of the very fabric of the magic realist text itself. We have seen (in Chapter 1) how in Midnight’s Children, the existence of the midnight’s children is subtly undermined by the manner in which their story is introduced by Saleem. Of course, we never seriously doubt that the midnight’s children exist(ed) because doing so would render the text quite meaningless, but the narrative discourse of the novel nevertheless invites us to share Padma’s suspicion when Saleem fi rst addresses the topic of the children. Her horror and disbelief at the disclosure of Saleem’s central claim leave a minute vestige of doubt, an uncertainty which Saleem’s claim to be recording nothing but “the literal, by-thehairs-of-my-mother’s-head truth,” followed, as it is, by his concession that “[r]eality can have metaphorical content” (200), fails to alleviate. We have also seen that doubt is much stronger in The Moor’s Last Sigh, where Moor himself draws attention to discrepancies in his account of Aurora’s pregnancy. In The Enchantress of Florence, the influence of the narrative situation on the two codes is, of course, yet more extreme, as much of the story is related as a tale within a tale. Whether Qara Köz really possesses magic powers, therefore, is never conclusively clear, since the text—or Mogor dell’Amore’s story—suggests both. Although Qara Köz is described as having magic gifts from the start, her supernatural powers are also occasionally regarded with suspicion. Already at the very beginning, when Akbar fi rst learns about the princess missing from the official royal genealogy, he ridicules the suggestion that she might be an

Verbal Magic 97 enchantress: “‘perhaps you have all lost your minds, and that is the reason why you credit such arrant nonsense,’ he bellowed” (112). The seemingly extradiegetic narrator, by contrast, insists that it was “plain that Lady Black Eyes was the possessor of superhuman powers” (122). But this narrator, of course, is really Mogor dell’Amore, an intradiegetic narrator whose tale is highly unreliable, not least because of his high emotional investment in the question of the Enchantress’s magic. On the one hand, Mogor dell’Amore needs to persuade the emperor of Qara Köz’s powers in order to ensure his own position at the Mughal court, but on the other hand, and perhaps even more importantly, he also needs to believe in her powers himself in order to be able to preserve his own vision of himself as a royal prince. Without Mogor dell’Amore’s trust in Qara Köz’s supernatural gift, this self-image is bound to crumble and to give way to unpleasant questions certain to undermine his self-perception. Due to the manner in which the novel is constructed, however, it is easy for the reader to forget that everything we know about Qara Köz originates in Mogor dell’Amore’s tale, a tale related to him by various other unreliable sources. As chapter after chapter of the Enchantress’s story unfolds, the high degree of narratorial reticence by which large stretches of the account are characterised seduces readers into ignoring the fact that they are inside Mogor dell’Amore’s story rather than the extradiegetic narrator’s sphere. It is hence probable that readers will follow the narrator’s lead and for the most part accept Qara Köz’s “superhuman” nature. And yet, doubt is occasionally introduced, such as when Qara Köz’s new lover is miraculously saved and allowed to escape from the Turkish court: No satisfactory explanation was ever given of why Sultan Selim the Grim’s fleet-footed head gardener suddenly fell down clutching his stomach just thirty paces from the end of the Gardener’s Race, or why he then succumbed to a bout of the foulest farting anyone had ever smelled, releasing blasts of winds as loud as gunshots, and crying out in pain like an uprooted mandrake . . . . ‘Did you do something?’ Argalia asked his beloved when he met her at Bursa. ‘What could I have done to my dear little Basha?’ she answered, wide-eyed. ‘To send him a message thanking him in advance for slaying you, my vile abductor, along with a jug of Anatolian wine to demonstrate my gratitude, that is one thing, yes; but to calculate exactly how long a certain potion stirred into the wine would take before it had its effect on his stomach, why, that would be quite impossible, of course.’ When he looked into her eyes he saw no sign of any subterfuge there, no indication that she, or her Mirror, or both of them together, might have done anything to persuade the gardener to fail in his duty, perhaps even to take the drink at a time specified in advance, in return for a moment of bliss that would last such a man a lifetime. No, Argalia told himself, as Qara Köz’s eyes drew him deeply into their spell, nothing of that sort could have

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The text here strongly suggests that the explanation behind this supposedly mysterious event is entirely realistic and that no witchcraft is involved. But Argalia rejects the evident realist solution to the head gardener’s sudden and bizarre illness in favour of one more mystery connected with his beloved. Obviously, Rushdie’s male characters fi nd it easier to deal with the idea that their women possess extraordinary and perhaps supernatural powers than to accept the possibility that they are not sexually faithful. In a similar manner, Qara Köz’s alleged enchantment of the people of Percussina is put in perspective by the possibility that “the locals’ bad eating habits, which rendered them vulnerable to fantasies and hallucinations” might be responsible for their behaviour (272). In the same vein, the golden times which Florence experiences during her sojourn in the city and which the citizens ascribe to her presence might well be the result of the Florentine Medici Pope’s influence rather than the effect of any magic spell. Although the narrator openly discusses these possibilities, he emphatically rejects them as the reasoning of “sceptics who by virtue of their sour temperament resist a supernatural account of events” (279), concluding that all this is “fortunately, quite beside the point” (280). The mere presence of these realist explanations in the narrative, however, highlights the opposition between the two codes and the ambivalence of magic in the fictional universe of the novel. Even if the supernatural code is clearly favoured in these instances, magic occurrences are not integrated harmoniously, and the jarring between the two codes is palpable. When Mogor dell’Amore leaves Fatehpur Sikri, for instance, the phenomenon of the vanishing lake is accompanied by ambivalences which clearly point towards the opposition between the two codes. Akbar reads the gradual receding of the lake on which his city depends in terms of “all that talk of curses” (343): For the rest of his life the emperor would believe that the inexplicable phenomenon of the vanishing lake of Fatehpur Sikri was the doing of the foreigner he had unjustly spurned, whom he had not decided to take back into his bosom until it was too late. The Mughal of Love had fought fi re with water and he had won. (345) Even if the disappearance of the lake is Mogor dell’Amore’s doing, however, the conclusion that he must have cursed the city might be premature, since the vanishing waters might have origins which are all but supernatural. At least, this is suggested by our knowledge of a much earlier passage in the novel, which relates Mogor dell’Amore’s formative years as a trickster and paints a picture that is decidedly at odds with any intimation of the occult:

Verbal Magic 99 Once at home in Florence he had met a man who could make water disappear. . . . It was a trick, of course, and before that day was done he, the traveller, had coaxed the fellow’s secret out of him, and had hidden it among his own mysteries. (8) That a street magician’s trick should be applicable to a whole lake is hardly credible, but still, the realist assertion of Mogor dell’Amore’s techniques is opposed to the categorisation of the vanishing lake as a curse. Whether the disappearance of the lake is a trick or a supernatural event remains, ultimately, irresolvable. Ambivalence in Rushdie’s magic realist fiction is introduced by various means. Sometimes the implementation of both codes is complete, and their simultaneous and equal assertion unhinges the text, as we saw in the example from The Satanic Verses in Chapter 1. In other instances, although both codes are implemented, other literary devices come into play and significantly influence the dynamics between the codes. Frequently, the device is sarcasm, such as in the passages relating to the legend of the gold-digging ants in Shalimar the Clown. Firdaus Noman, Shalimar’s mother, traces her ancestry back to Alexander the Great, who, in the magic realist version of history presented by the text, came to India in search of the gold-digging ants supposed to live in the north of the country. On a purely literal level, the novel at fi rst appears to corroborate the existence of these mythological creatures: Once the Greek army, or at least its generals, found out that the golddigging ants actually existed, many of them refused to go back home, settling in the region instead and leading the lives of the idle rich . . . . (74) Although the text here insists that “the gold-digging ants actually existed,” this assertion is simultaneously undermined by the latent sarcasm present in this passage. There is, of course, no need for mythological ants in order to explain the wealth acquired by the leading figures of an invading army, and the brief hint that the lay soldiers were excluded from this sudden prosperity clearly points to other than supernatural sources of these riches. If the legend of the ants is only lightly discredited in the beginning, though, the sarcasm of later passages is much more pronounced and unambiguous: Firdaus Noman was a third-generation Pachigami and the wife of the headman, and in spite of her lazy eye and her tales of subterranean ant and snake cities she had the protection of Nazarébaddoor, so the village arranged to forget what everyone knew in her grandfather’s time, namely that when a Mr Butt or Bhat comes to town at dead of night from a well-known bandit region and buys his way into the community by throwing money around and sleeps sitting up with a shotgun across his lap and uses a name that everyone suspects is not his own because

100 Exploring Magic Realism in Salman Rushdie’s Fiction he doesn’t know how to spell it, you don’t have to believe in furry, marmotlike, treasure-hunting ants to understand the situation. (74) In the realist counter-explanation, then, the ants are an unconvincing cover-up story, and the source of the wealth of Firdaus’s family is crime. Although the supernatural version is suggested as a polite way out of the necessity to accuse the headman’s wife’s family of a dubious past, it is never fully dismissed. Eventually, Firdaus’s grandfather’s story is tolerated by his new neighbours: he calmed down and began to act as if he believed that whoever he was running from wasn’t coming after him. After ten years he smiled for the first time. Maybe the bandit chief who had deposed him out there in Buffliaz had settled for his newfound power and didn’t need to finish off his ousted rival. Maybe there really were giant treasure-hunting ants, but they had let him go. It was said in the ancient tales that the ants chased you if you stole their wealth . . . . Mr Butt or Bhat had probably been afraid that the ant army would come after him, but his luck had held, they had lost his trail or found a new motherlode to mine . . . . people called it quits and stopped bitching about the family’s shady past. (75) “Maybe there really were giant treasure-hunting ants”—with this clause, the text gradually shifts back to presenting the supernatural version of Firdaus’s family’s wealth in a more convincing light, an effort to rehabilitate the mythological which quickly gathers momentum as the villagers concede that Firdaus’s grandfather “had probably been afraid that the ant army would come after him.” The ironical manner of representation and the sarcasm reflected in the narrative consciousness in this entire episode affect the status of the supernatural and clearly suggest that the legend of the golddigging ants should be regarded with suspicion, but ultimately, the novel refuses to settle the question of whether the ants really exist. As this passage shows, the development of ambivalence is tied to more than the most central riddles in the novels. At times, the simultaneous assertion of the two representational codes happens almost casually, and as such is indicative of the extent to which the implementation of both codes is an integral component of Rushdie’s magic realism. Hashmat Bibi’s mysterious death in Shame, for instance, shows that one code can be implemented by as little as a single phrase, despite the fact that the other code has been established much more elaborately and has already been accepted. When Hashmat Bibi, Omar Khayyam’s mothers’ old servant, dies, the text at fi rst suggests that her death is the result of self-hypnosis, and, as such, a supernatural event: Hashmat Bibi also agreed to ‘go under.’ Omar made her imagine she was floating on a soft pink cloud. ‘You are sinking deeper,’ he intoned as she

Verbal Magic 101 lay upon her mat, ‘and deeper into the cloud. It is good to be in the cloud; you want to sink lower and lower.’ These experiments had a tragic sideeffect. Soon after his twelfth birthday, his mothers were informed by the three loving menservants, who stared accusingly at the young master as they spoke, that Hashmat had apparently willed herself into death; at the very end she had been heard muttering, ‘. . . deeper and deeper into the heart of the rosy cloud.’ The old lady, having been given glimpses of non-being through the mediating powers of the young hypnotist’s voice, had finally relaxed the iron will with which she had clung to life for what she claimed was more than one hundred and twenty years. The three mothers stopped swinging in their seat and ordered Omar Khayyam to abandon mesmerism. (34–35; ellipsis in original) Presenting Hashmat Bibi’s success in willing “herself into death” as the result of self-hypnosis as a fact, the narrator seems to affirm the preposterous claim that her death is a “tragic side-effect” of Omar Khayyam’s hypnotic experiments, thus inducing the reader to accept the supernatural character of the episode. Yet, as might almost be expected, when the narrator describes the effects of the three sisters’ decision to stop breast-feeding Omar Khayyam two pages later, a casual comment unhinges the supernatural code and installs its realist counterpart instead: During the next six years, as breasts dried and shrank, the three sisters lost that fi rmness and erectness of body which had accounted for a good deal of their beauty. They became soft, there were knots in their hair, they lost interest in the kitchen, the servants got away with murder. (36) The implementation of the realist code here depends, of course, on the question of whether the phrase “to get away with murder” should be understood literally or metaphorically, and as we have seen, the borderline between the literal and the metaphorical is far from fi xed in magic realism. If read literally, this single phrase activates the realist code; as no other death has occurred in Nishapur at this stage in the novel, it is clear that this statement must refer to the “murder” of Hashmat Bibi, and that the supernatural explanation of her death presented by “the three loving menservants” is to be rejected as a story cooked up by the three culprits in order to placate their weak employers. Once again, the ironic manner of representation apparent in the fi rst passage affects and weakens the supernatural explanation. But since the phrase might equally well be read metaphorically, as an indication of the sisters’ loosening regime, the discrediting of the supernatural code is not fi nal, and the tension between the two codes is not resolved, the balance between them not re-established. In addition to the full assertion of both magic realist codes, Rushdie’s novels also contain many episodes in which one code predominates while

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the other code, although partly unsettling it, remains clearly subordinate. Occasional allusions activate this second code in the reader, but it is never fully implemented, and the oscillation between the two codes is temporary rather than definite, preventing ambivalence from developing its full force. Extraordinary events tend to be either accepted and conclusively incorporated into the supernatural code after a limited period of ambivalence, or to be explained in realist terms. In both cases, ambivalence is eventually resolved, or, at least, reduced to a minimum. This technique is, of course, precisely what characterises the manner in which the fantastic, according to Todorov and Chanady, develops into the marvellous or the uncanny, respectively; in Rushdie’s magic realist fiction, however, instances of uncomplicated resolution remain isolated gestures within an ambivalent universe which is defined by the opposition of incompatible codes. Even if individual occurrences can definitely be ascribed to one or the other of the two codes, this does not resolve the larger contradictions created by the presence of two mutually exclusive systems of representation in the first place. A partial exception to this rule is The Ground Beneath Her Feet, in which the predominant dynamic between the two codes consists of the pull towards resolution, and the gradual integration of the supernatural into the narrator’s world view forms the main narrative trajectory. Ambivalence in this novel seems to be rooted less in the text itself than in its relationship to extra-textual reality, and hence stems from its uchronian elements rather than internal discrepancies. Even the main riddle in the text—whether the otherworld is real or a product of Ormus’s imagination—is eventually solved, and the otherworld is accepted as a part of the diegetic world. Nevertheless, this is the one instance in the novel in which ambivalence is sustained for a considerable length of time. The acceptance or rejection of the otherworld fundamentally depends on Ormus’s credibility, which, however, remains dubious until almost the end of the novel, rendered ambivalent through the constant introduction of contradictory signals, which alternately suggest that Ormus is really a prophet, thus validating the otherworld, or that Ormus is mad, thus reducing the otherworld to a mere product of his imagination. From the beginning, the narrator Rai insists on being “the least supernaturally inclined of men” (99), and the reader’s perception of Ormus— deeply influenced, as it is, by Rai’s presentation of him—hence hinges significantly on Rai’s own dismissive attitude. Rai’s opinion of Ormus is shaped by jealousy and resentment, and both fi nd expression in his eagerness to discredit his rival by portraying him as a madman. Keenly aware of Ormus as an insurmountable obstacle between himself and Vina, Rai projects his resentment onto Vina’s attempts to engage with Ormus’s growing obsession with the otherworld: For all her fearsome competence, Vina didn’t know how to deal with Ormus’s deepening obsessions. I was her safety valve, her light relief.

Verbal Magic 103 If you believe, she despaired, he wants me to get the mayor to agree to give us an acre of the park, a field for cows to graze in. That way, he says, when the earthquakes come, we’ll get an early warning. He says everybody has to play music non-stop and there should be daily love festivals in major city centers everywhere because all we have to fall back on is harmony, all we have to protect us is the power of music and love. That, and Ermintrude the cow, I observed. I don’t know what to do, she said. I don’t know what to fucking think. I remember her despair. I remember promising myself at that moment, I will break this crazy marriage if it’s the last thing I do. If it’s the last fucking thing, I will set this lovely woman free. (438) Depicting Ormus as a madman who “imprisons” Vina, Rai tries to usurp the role of the hero rescuing the maiden. He stresses Vina’s despair in order to foreground the fact that even she, Ormus’s most faithful ally who initially accepted his prophetic status and chose to support him, is losing her stamina and faith. Hence Rai’s version of what he perceives to be Vina’s subtext: “She was saying she was married to a lunatic and she loved him and couldn’t handle it” (438). The categorisation of Ormus as “a lunatic” is given further credence through Rai’s unsettling depiction of Ormus’s complete breakdown, caused by his fear of the impending collision of the two worlds: We were all changing. The change in Ormus, his sleep-masked retreat into locked and darkened rooms for days on end, his worsening migraines, his sobbing fits, his shrieks, these things gave rise to a great turbulence within Vina, tore her apart, made her feel helpless, alienated her, made her sit outside his locked door pleading to be let in. When she was let in she would attend at his darkened bedside for days on end, holding his hand, nursing him, while he thrashed like a great fish out of water and screamed about the imminent catastrophe. Doctors were brought to him, sedatives were prescribed. The condition of his mind was not good. Vina came to me more often now . . . She said, His breakdown leaves a hole where our relationship used to be . . . . He’s off in outer space or the fi fth dimension, watching out for the end of the world. Sometimes I think he isn’t coming back. (449) This passage clearly depicts Ormus as somebody not to be trusted, least of all as an “oracle” (418). Yet despite all attempts to discredit Ormus, Rai eventually and reluctantly has to concede that Ormus is, in fact, not insane, but a visionary. “We should have listened to Ormus” (450), he admits when he refers to the earthquakes of the 1980s, the fierceness of which provokes fearful questions about the future of the planet: “Is the

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world coming apart at the seams?” (451). And when he comments on the changes wrought on him, Vina, and Ormus by migration, he states unambiguously that “Ormus . . . saw visions of the otherworld and was transformed into an oracle” (418). Rai’s assertions of Ormus’s prophetic status are at odds with his perception of Ormus as mad; yet this contradiction originates less in the simultaneous implementation of both codes than in the fact that as a narrator, Rai veers between dissonance and consonance, interspersing the report of his former scepticism of Ormus with indications of his subsequent acceptance of the otherworld. The one pivotal event which prompts this transformation and convinces Rai of the truth of Ormus’s visions, however, occurs very late in the novel, compelling readers to wait until almost the end before they can fully comprehend Rai’s conversion. Rai’s eventual acceptance of the otherworld is inextricably linked to Maria, Ormus’s visitor from the otherworld. Ormus’s fi rst encounter with Maria takes place on his fl ight to London, but at this point the supernatural quality of her sudden appearance is not yet obvious. She becomes a true mystery only when she keeps materialising at Ormus’s bedside after his accident, and “nobody can recall letting her in” (315). No one ever sees her arrive just as nobody manages to keep her away from Ormus, no matter to what level security measures are raised. It is not until Ormus reawakens and starts communicating with Maria that he fi nds out that she is part of another version of the world, as whose material proof she serves. Maria’s appearance to Rai hence constitutes an assertion of the otherworld, and it marks the impetus for his gradual conversion into a believer in the supernatural. Maria fi rst appears to Rai on his photos, and shortly afterwards enters one of his dreams (448). The last time he sees her is after Vina’s death, when once again, he fi nds the “ghost-image” (505) of this strange woman on one of his photos without being able to explain its provenance. This last encounter with Maria, however, is supplemented by the appearance of her teacher on a video tape which Rai records while asleep, and on which the teacher introduces him to her world, the otherworld, confi rming also that the collision foretold by Ormus has indeed taken place, but that, contrary to Ormus’s prophecies, it is her own world which is about to be destroyed in its aftermath. The tape ends with what is doubtless the destruction of the otherworld (506–10). This is the point, then, at which the existence of the otherworld fi nally becomes a fact, although, ironically, this does not happen until the otherworld no longer exists. Since its existence is asserted at the very moment when it ceases to exist, however, the assertion of the otherworld is rendered relative, because it becomes, to a certain extent, untrue yet again. What we now know for certain, though, is that the otherworld existed, and Ormus’s prophetic status is, thus, confi rmed. In The Ground Beneath Her Feet, therefore, interpretive closure is not forestalled but

Verbal Magic 105 only delayed, and even though the riddle of the otherworld is not solved until almost the very end, a defi nite answer is, eventually, provided. Hence ambivalence, although an essential feature of Rushdie’s novels, is not displayed with the same intensity in all of his works. Whereas The Satanic Verses is defi ned by a continuous oscillation between the two codes which is never resolved and leaves the reader with a maze of incompatible possibilities, in The Ground Beneath Her Feet, all the potentially ambivalent events eventually tend to be assigned a precisely defi ned ontological status, thus facilitating their identification as either clearly supernatural or clearly realistic. Rushdie’s other novels inhabit a wide spectrum between these two extremes. The extent of the mutual destabilisation of the two codes varies, but clear assertions which completely exclude one code in favour of the other are rare. Mostly, the ambivalence of the textual universe is not resolved, and even when the supernatural is unambiguously accepted, it is never integrated harmoniously. As a constant source of confusion and ambivalence, the coexistence of the two codes transforms Rushdie’s magic realist novels into sites of an ontological struggle which deconstructs any illusion of textual unity and coherence. The fabric of his texts remains unstable, and readers have to engage with a plethora of unsettlingly irresolvable lacunae, which forever forestall the success of closed readings. The subversive postcolonial and more generally ideological implications of such a postmodern obstruction of interpretative closure, as well as of the coexistence of the two codes as such, provides the impetus for the following chapters. Before embarking on a discussion of the role magic realism plays as a commodity on the global literary market, and of postcolonial strategies of resistance, however, I will now consider how Rushdie’s magic realist character portrayal interconnects with and comments on the postcolonial condition.

5

Of Beasts and Houris Rushdie’s Magic Realist Characters

As I have shown in the preceding chapters, Rushdie’s novels break the illusion of mimesis created by realism in a variety of different ways. The supernatural and the unreality effect are combined in his texts with what are by now stock postmodern characteristics, such as intrusive narrators and episodic narrative structures,1 in order to frustrate mimetically oriented readings. Rushdie’s novels playfully engage with but refuse to be forced into patterns of traditional realism. As a central counter-strategy to mimetic readings, the discourse levels of the novels are constantly foregrounded in order to remind readers of the constructed nature of the texts and prevent them from falling completely under the narrative spell of the stories. So far, I have concentrated on the (postmodern) strategies complicit in creating the amalgamation of realist and supernatural elements in Rushdie’s texts. In the chapters that follow, I want to consider the ideological implications of Rushdie’s magic realism, and of how it challenges realism as a—let alone the exclusive—mode of representation. As canvases for the projection of readerly identification and sympathy, characters have traditionally been crucial to the process of eliciting readers’ emotional involvement and are hence among the most powerful tools for the ideological agenda of realism. The portrayal of literary characters as “consistent subjects who are the origin of meaning, knowledge and action” (Belsey 67) typical of the realist novel tends to obscure the impact of material conditions on their psychological development and therefore helps promote particular social and cultural values as universal. As such, the role of realist characters is recognised to have been particularly precarious in the context of the colonial educational system, which employed the realist novel as a vessel for the conveyance of English cultural, social, and political values. 2 As part of the colonial educational system, the realist novel was complicit in the construction of English bourgeois reality as a desirable social paradigm, and the vividness of realist characters, together with their representation as “unified and coherent” (Belsey 73) facilitated the promotion of English bourgeois codes of behaviour as natural and normal. Rushdie has repeatedly expressed his rejection of realism as an adequate means of conveying reality; “quoting Brecht, [he] denies the naturalness

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of realism and doubts its ability to ‘describe what you see’” (Mukherjee 113). My analysis of Rushdie’s magic realist characters in what follows seeks to uncover what his magic realism wants to make us “see” in rejecting the hegemonic tradition of the realist novel. In particular, I am interested in the ideological impact of his non-mimetic character portrayal and the manner in which his grotesquely non-realist characters position themselves in the world.

RUSHDIE’S MAGIC REALIST CARICATURES In an article that argues for a direct connection between the characters of Midnight’s Children and Rushdie’s subversion of realism, Arun Mukherjee suggests that Rushdie’s characters ought to be viewed as types rather than fully rounded characters. This approach is useful insofar as it does credit to the fact that Rushdie’s characters are clearly not only non- but positively anti-realist. Yet it simultaneously neglects the fluidities and indeterminacies which characterise not only Rushdie’s texts as such, but also his portrayal of characters. Mukherjee aptly describes Rushdie’s characters as “‘gestic’ or ‘stylised’” (116), but her emphasis on “markers of gender, race and class” (118) in their presentation seems to encourage precisely the clear-cut divisions which Rushdie so often writes against. His characters, I want to suggest, eschew—indeed, subvert—such strict categorisation. In Midnight’s Children, for instance, Saleem is simultaneously the child of Muslim upper-middle-class Indian parents and the illegitimate son of a Hindu street singer’s wife, the offspring of her affair with an upper-class Englishman. He thus crosses religious, class, and race divisions through the sheer hybridity of his origins. In The Moor’s Last Sigh, it is religious hybridity which is highlighted in the figure of Moor, who grows up as the son of Jewish-Catholic parents in a country where both of these religious communities form minority groups. Similarly, Gibreel, in The Satanic Verses, crosses religious and class boundaries as the progeny of a Muslim working class family who becomes a superstar with his portrayals of Hindu deities in Bollywood “theological movies” (Verses 24), and his counterpart Saladin is perpetually confused about his nationality and racial affiliation. Vina, in The Ground Beneath Her Feet, is a similar traverser of ethnic and class boundaries, leaving behind her origins as the lower-class daughter of an Indian immigrant to become one of America’s biggest pop stars. She is also singularly adept at disregarding religious boundaries, flirting with various religions across the continents. After her death, Vina even becomes the source of gender crossing, since her magnetism is such that men and women alike impersonate her in the Vina craze. Such a crossing of gender barriers is also highlighted in Shame, in which Bilquìs is surrounded by characters whose gender becomes confused in various ways: her father is known by his nickname “the Woman” (59), her daughter is regarded as the unsuccessful

108 Exploring Magic Realism in Salman Rushdie’s Fiction reincarnation of her son, and her husband and son-in-law end up having to disguise themselves as women in order to escape certain death, only to be murdered anyway. The characters most adept at transforming themselves, however, are Uma, in The Moor’s Last Sigh, as well as Mogor dell’Amore and Qara Köz (and, to some extent, her “Mirror”), in The Enchantress of Florence, who manage to turn themselves into what others desire in a series of personal metamorphoses. Clearly, the notion of character types, in particular as defi ned by stable “markers of gender, race and class,” fails to encompass the hybridity of such characters. Timothy Brennan’s description of how Rushdie’s character portrayal defies convention seems better suited to expressing the fluidity and heterogeneity of Rushdie’s texts: Characterisation in any conventional sense barely exists—only a collection of brilliantly sketched cartoons woven together by an intellectual argument. Narration never follows the emotional logic of the characters’ lives, but the brittle, externally determined contours of ‘current events’. Rushdie deliberately prevents his readers from being caught up in a story with its own ‘organic’ life, that progresses uninterrupted, and that creates a completely imagined world. (84–85) In drawing attention to the influence of the “contours of ‘current events’” on Rushdie’s characters, Brennan acknowledges a much more open point of reference for character evolvement which foregrounds but does not consist solely of the importance of historical developments for Rushdie’s fiction. Whereas Mukherjee’s claim that Rushdie’s characters “demand judgements along the lines of class and race privilege” (116), moreover, suggests an element of rigidity that seems at odds with the general trajectory of Rushdie’s fiction, Brennan’s reading of the characters in relation to an “intellectual argument” points to the multiplicity of meanings characteristic of Rushdie’s novels. The hybridity of Rushdie’s characters, apparent even from the short list above, is essential since it allows him to emphasise some of his most urgent ideological points in a way which their reduction along the parameters of “gender, race and class” would largely preclude. In his subcontinental novels, for instance, the kind of India that Rushdie advocates and insists should and could have been built after Indian independence is a nation that acknowledges its own hybrid state, striving to reconcile all its different religious and ethnic groups in a system in which hybridity is recognised as a positive force, not a threat. India’s religious diversity, Rushdie suggests, can only be accommodated by its transformation into a profoundly secular state, and its ethnic diversity calls for a celebration of fusion and tolerance that eschews nationalism. His characters are allegories both of this hybrid ideal and of its failures. Class and gender, however, do not seem to be central issues for Rushdie; in fact, he has been criticised for his virtually exclusive

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focus on the Anglophone upper middle class as well as his neglect of rural and working class India (Hassumani 88–89; A. Ahmad 138–39), and his protagonists are indeed mostly members of the “post-colonial élite” (Brennan 86). Similarly, Rushdie has been accused of failing to “write woman into the narrative of history” (Spivak qtd. in Hanne 233), thus reinscribing their marginality even when professing to do otherwise. 3 Indeed, the position of women in Rushdie’s novels deserves a separate analysis, and I will return to this in the last part of this chapter. Of crucial importance to Rushdie’s character portrayal is his use of shorthand characteristics. Each of Rushdie’s characters is determined by one or more idiosyncratic features which are highlighted throughout.4 These typical traits—which can be either physical or psychological—are repeated so frequently that they eventually come to be associated with individual characters or character groups in a metonymic fashion. As examples, Mukherjee cites Indira Gandhi’s centre-parting as well as upper-class markers in Dyder and Dodson’s speech5 in Midnight’s Children. A plethora of other such “shorthands” (Mukherjee 115) come to mind: Methwold’s centreparting6 as well as Aadam Aziz’s, Ahmed Sinai’s, and Saleem’s noses in Midnight’s Children; Bilquìs’s pencilled eyebrows which give her an air of perpetual fear and uncertainty and the black pouches which form around Raza’s eyes in Shame; Allie’s coolness and Pamela’s booming English voice in The Satanic Verses; Aurora’s freakishly white hair, Abraham’s asthmatic wheeze, and Moor’s deformed hand in The Moor’s Last Sigh; Virus’s beatific smile and Ormus’s sensual hip-rotating walk in The Ground Beneath Her Feet; Neela’s beauty as well as male slapstick reactions to it and Mila’s changing angry hairstyles and eye colours in Fury;7 Firdaus’s lazy eye and Margaret Rhodes Ophuls’s guffaw in Shalimar the Clown; and, fi nally, Qara Köz’s black eyes and general sensuality as well as various whores’ emastication and obesity in The Enchantress of Florence. All of these characteristics, through hyperbole, become representative of the characters with which they are associated. Hence psychological individuality and veracity often retreat behind physical—and frequently grotesque—idiosyncrasies, and exaggeration emerges as the governing principle of character presentation. As this list suggests, Rushdie’s characters can best be conceptualised as overt caricatures.

FREAKS IN A FREAKISH WORLD Among the traits which most of Rushdie’s characters share is megalomania, related to their obsessive search for meaning in the world around them, as well as to their insecurity concerning their own position in the world. As such, it can fruitfully be read in relation to the identity crisis of the “postcolonial subject.” Due to its position in newly independent countries with long histories of colonisation, the postcolonial subject finds itself in a

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world that is simultaneously entirely new and inconceivably old. As a further complication of this time-warp, the postcolonial subject is faced with a situation in which new dependencies and the rapid forging of neo-colonial ties precede the actual achieving of independence. In Rushdie’s oeuvre, the resulting confusion is most explicitly addressed in Shame, which depicts a Pakistan almost torn apart by the contradictions between the Indian centuries beneath its Pakistani present and the myth of newness which is propagated by its leaders in their attempts to suppress the Indian history of the new nation (87). This already bizarre situation is further complicated by the growing and confl icting interests displayed in the new nation by the United States, the Soviet Union, and China. The competing alliances resulting from this prove highly destructive for the country, as reflected in the lives of many of the characters in Shame. As such, their condition mirrors that of the postcolonial subject, which is faced with the task of asserting itself in a world highly contradictory and difficult to negotiate. No wonder that this world is often perceived as antagonistic, even hostile; no wonder that Rushdie’s characters react with frantic assertions of their own importance and centrality in order to elude the danger of being swallowed by a relentless world and its history, which alternately exploits and forgets them. A world of which one cannot make sense is a grotesque world, and in Rushdie’s fiction this grotesqueness is highlighted throughout. To aggravate the sense of displacement which Rushdie’s characters experience, this grotesqueness is often accompanied by an open hostility towards the characters, a hostility which further complicates their endeavours to decipher their own role in the world. Recall the malevolence with which the Kashmiri valley “welcomes” Aadam Aziz back from Heidelberg in Midnight’s Children, punching him on his oversized nose and surrounding him with “angry jaws” (10), thus forcing him to acknowledge that he is stranded in “a hostile environment” (11). Similar emotions assail Gibreel on his various odysseys through London, which he experiences as a “hellish maze” (Verses 201) spitefully determined to torment him and steer him, in his already delusional state, towards a crisis. Faced with the dilemma of how to cope with and defi ne themselves in such a grotesque and hostile world, Rushdie’s characters resort to various strategies of pursuing meaning in the confusion and disarray around them. Saleem imposes the structure of his own life onto history; Omar Khayyam seeks refuge in sheer pleasure and, when this fails him, becomes an impartial servant of the powers that be; Saladin denies his Indian origins, identifies with the former coloniser, and masquerades as British; Moor clothes the story of his betrayal and exile in a tale of biblical dimensions; Rai seeks to come to terms with Vina and Ormus’s story by modelling it on a mythical pattern; Shalimar and India/Kashmira take refuge in violence and revenge; and Mogor dell’Amore clothes his supposed mother’s life story and his own suspicious origins in a tale of supernatural powers and enchantment. Yet

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none of these strategies yield the desired results; all attempts at imposing order on the world outside fail—the world is not comprehensible, and the characters’ obsessive search for certainty and fi xed meaning is in vain. This does not mean, however, that endeavouring to impose coherence on the world leaves the characters unchanged. On the contrary, their attempts at coming to terms with their grotesque environment have profound effects, as their encounters with an elusively unintelligible and frequently hostile universe that frustrates their every effort to preserve, or even attain, their dignity, transform the characters themselves into grotesques. Rushdie’s fiction is densely populated with grotesque characters, some of which are deformed from birth whereas others are subjected to a gradual transformation into grotesque beings by the forces of reality and history; yet each character carries the grain of such a grotesque metamorphosis within him- or herself from the beginning. The grotesque quality of Rushdie’s characters is mostly expressed in physical terms, although occasionally also in idiosyncrasies of speech. This is fitting for at least two reasons: on the one hand, the fact that characters are rendered physically grotesque highlights how dramatic the situation of the postcolonial subject is, whose very body bears the scars of encounters with a bizarre world; on the other hand, the body seems a suitable site for the encounter between the postcolonial subject’s search for identity and the construction of its identity by others, since the body has traditionally played a central role in Western representations of the Eastern “other.” Hence the grotesque corporeality of Rushdie’s characters mirrors both their precarious situation in an unintelligible, grotesque, and hostile world, as well as their encounters with national and colonial stereotypes which seek to construct them as inferior. Contact with hostile environments leaves the characters battered and bruised, and the stereotypical identities which colonial and racist discourses want to superimpose on them bend and distort their personalities and their bodies. As a result, the characters are deeply frightening, but they also demonstrate the distorting effects of hostility. Almost every single character in Rushdie’s fiction can be read as grotesque in some form or other, and true freaks abound as well. Midnight’s Children already presents us with a plethora of grotesque characters at the very start, when we are fi rst introduced to the population of Aadam Aziz’s Kashmiri valley: the boatman Tai, who claims to be older than the valley itself (16) and who, upon Aadam Aziz’s return home as a foreign-educated doctor, resolves to stop washing in protest against Aadam’s foreign transformation, determined to drive “that German Aziz” (27) away, if simply by his outrageous stench;8 Aadam Aziz himself, with his gigantic nose, alleged token of his fertility, which releases rubies when punched (10); “Ghani the landowner” (18), blind and shrewd, who resolves to trap the young doctor into marrying his daughter Naseem, kindling his interest in her by revealing her in fragments, through glimpses revealed by a perforated sheet; Naseem herself, the fragmented girl whose reassembled whole does not correspond

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to her individual parts, as presented to Aadam Aziz over a period of three years (Natarajan 172), and who, once married, changes from a giggling pretty girl into a stubbornly traditional and obese matron; Aadam Aziz’s father, who, after his stroke, spends his days conversing with birds (12); and Aadam’s mother, whose decision to come out of purdah in order to be able to take over the family business after her husband’s stroke has literally defiled her body, in the form of rashes, blotches, and boils (18–20). Among the grotesque characters appearing a little later in the novel are bald William Methwold, representative of the receding Raj, who charms married women under false pretences, arousing their illicit interest with the glorious centre-parting of his wig; Ahmed Sinai, another possessor of a dynastic nose, who likes his wife to wheedle money out of him by employing “the techniques of street beggars” (70), and who invents a fictional family tree and family curse which he will later, once he has succumbed to the spell of djinns, frantically strive to recover (110–11); Amina Sinai, who repeats her father’s mistake by teaching herself to love her husband in fragments; the Brass Monkey, whose flaming red hair anticipates her habit of burning shoes as well as her emotional destructiveness, and who talks to animals but lashes out against every human being that loves her; Tai Bibi, the “whore of whores” (319) who claims to be 512 years old and possesses the gift of being able to manipulate her own body odour so that it imitates that of anyone specified (319); and, of course, the midnight’s children, essentially an assembly of (magically gifted) freaks, most prominent among whom are Parvati, Shiva, and Saleem. Rushdie’s other novels confront the reader with an equal number of freaks, of which I want to name but a few. Omar Khayyam in Shame, although not (contrary to his wife Sufiya) literally a monster, is monstrously fat and equally monstrous in his moral degeneration, as shown in his repeated rape of hypnotised women, as well as his bizarre love for his underage patient, “idiot” Sufiya (120). More radically, the immigrants Saladin meets in the hospital in The Satanic Verses are depicted as freaks, metamorphosed into hybrid combinations of man and beast, just as he himself is transformed into a freakish parody of a Beelzebub by the racist gaze of the former coloniser; other characters who feature grotesque traits are Ayesha with her freakishly silver hair, which later turns partly golden (482), and Gibreel, the megalomaniac superstar with the horribly sulphurous breath, who defies sleep for days on end for fear of his serial dreams. In The Ground Beneath Her Feet, grotesqueness predominantly arises directly out of the characters’ puffed up self-importance, causing them to make fools of themselves unawares. Such a profoundly megalomaniac streak of self-admiration informs Piloo Doodhwala’s grotesque display when he strides onto the beach followed by his clamorous “magnificentourage” (65), and Sir Darius Xerxes Cama’s highly embarrassing performance of “Musical Muscle Control” (51) originates in frustrated self-importance and the disastrous wish to assert his superiority over

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India’s post-independence trendy intellectual set. The Moor’s Last Sigh, in contrast, is characterised by a profoundly dark atmosphere which also affects the presentation of the grotesque. In addition to its grotesque protagonist and his chameleon-natured lover Uma, the novel presents the reader with some truly uncanny freaks, who appear like actual versions of the freaks Saladin watches on TV in The Satanic Verses.9 And Moor’s companions at Raman Fielding’s, fi nally, seem to originate in a nightmare: “Chhaggan Five-in-a-Bite, a snaggletoothed giant who looked as if he were carrying an overcrowded cemetery inside his enormous mouth” (296), known by this loving nickname because he once bit off his brother’s toes in a wrestling match; and Sammy Hazaré, the “TinMan” (301), a bizarre crossbreed of man and machine so frightening that Moor refuses to believe that his return to reality after his imprisonment in Bombay Central is complete: I saw standing before me a figure so terrifying, so bizarre, that in a rush of dreadful enlightenment I understood that I had never really left the phantasmal city, that other Bombay-Central or Central-Bombay into which I had been plunged after my arrest on Cuffe Parade and from which, in my naïvety, I believed that Lambajan had rescued me in the hypothecated taxi of my blessed freedom-ride. It was the figure of a man, but a man with metal parts. A sizeable steel plate had somehow been bolted into the left side of his face, and one of his hands, too, was shiny and smooth. The iron breastplate, it gradually dawned on me, was not a part of his body, but an affectation, a defiant embellishment of the eerie cyborg-image created by the metal cheek and hand. It was fashion. (300–01) Moor’s description of Sammy exposes the impact of the outside world on the latter’s deformation: the encounter with obviously hostile surroundings has left very real scars on Sammy’s body, literally transforming him into a grotesque caricature of a cyborg. That his deformities are partly selfinflicted—he has lost his hand and jaw as a result of his “first love,” bombmaking (312)—in itself highlights the destructiveness of his relation to the world. He is the embodiment of the changes wrought on the body of the postcolonial subject in its attempts to come to terms with its environment, striving to fi nd its place in a grotesque world, whose bizarre antagonism persistently humiliates and gradually dehumanises it. Sammy’s transformation into a being “half-man, half-can” (311) explicitly robs him of his human aspects, and his nickname, “Tin-Man,” acknowledges his physical hybridity between man and machine in a manner which is simultaneously comical and threatening.10 This nickname, which still bears the traces of possible past abuse and contempt but which Sammy has successfully appropriated and turned into his trademark, fully encompasses the ambivalence of the grotesque, which is evident in the two founding,

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but almost diametrically opposed, theories of the mode, those of Wolfgang Kayser and Michail Bakhtin. Whereas Kayser emphasises the uncanny aspects of the grotesque, the horror that arises out of the encounter with an alienated world and vents itself in a fundamental fear of living,11 Bakhtin celebrates the triumphant laughter which he perceives as integral to the grotesque and its subversive power. In this, he emphatically contradicts Kayser, who, although conceding that the function of laughter is the most complex aspect of the grotesque, an aspect which he cannot fully explain, tends to interpret grotesque laughter as cynical and satanic.12 For Kayser, the grotesque in its most artistically successful forms is partly an attempt to demystify and defuse the uncanny: Das Dunkle ist gesichtet, das Unheimliche entdeckt, das Unfaßbare zur Rede gestellt. Und so ergibt sich eine letzte Deutung: die Gestaltung des Grotesken ist der Versuch, das Dämonische in der Welt zu bannen und zu beschwören. (Kayser 202)13 In opposition to Kayser, whose description of the grotesque above seems to assign the mode an essentially passive role, suggesting that it seeks to contain and thereby make safe the demonic without actively engaging with it, Bakhtin’s conception of the grotesque incorporates an element of active subversion. Linking the grotesque with the carnivalesque, he identifies its liberating potential in people’s laughter, which is directed against authority, fear, restrictive laws, and the sacred (Bakhtin 39, 90–96), facilitating instead an atmosphere in which the elevated and the profane intermingle, and normal hierarchies are temporarily subverted or dissolved (9–10). Hence Bakhtin’s celebration of the carnival and of the cheerfulness of the grotesque, which effectively deprive intimidating power structures of their impact in an essentially disrespectful and liberating act. Sammy, the “Tin-Man,” seems to be an embodiment of the fusion of Bakhtin’s and Kayser’s defi nitions of the grotesque, combining both the triumphant and the uncanny aspects of the grotesque highlighted in their respective theories. Sammy is—physically as well as psychologically—a fundamentally terrifying character, whose conspicuously violent dwarfing by hostile surroundings, inscribed upon his body by the uneasy combination of flesh and metal, foregrounds the dehumanising effects of the postcolonial/postmodern condition. Bakhtin draws attention to how the grotesque focuses on the points at which world and body “enter into each other,” and celebrates the body as “unfinished” and transgressive (26). He argues that “the grotesque body is not separated from the rest of the world” (26), and presents this “incompleteness” (26) as symbolic of an enabling potential for connection. For Bakhtin, the grotesque body is a growing and ever developing formation, “blended with the world, with animals, with objects” (27). But in Sammy’s case, the material intersections with

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the world take the shape of bodily incisions and point to specific destructive encounters with the world. As a result, Sammy is also a profoundly humiliated character, keenly aware of how his grotesque corporeality confi nes him to an underground existence, rendering ridiculous his yearning for the love of Miss World Nadia Wadia.14 Yet Sammy’s “defiant” (301) reversal of his deformity into a fashion statement by the incorporation of additional metal accessories such as an “iron breastplate” (301) betrays the will to flaunt rather than disguise his uncanny hybridity, to embrace his own freakishness and transform it into an advantage. Having found a job, however sinister and destructive, because of rather than despite his deformity, Sammy has detected a niche where he can exploit his grotesqueness for its empowering potential, turning it into a benefit which grants him momentary authority and agency. This power fi nds its fullest expression in the apocalypse which Sammy calls down upon the heads of all agents of his humiliation, blowing up the best part of Bombay, and thus topping Uma’s war-cry “Confusion to our enemies” (275) by literally bringing death to his opponents. Despite being a demonstration of Sammy’s power, his explosion of Bombay also indicates that he has not been able to explode the vicious circle of intolerance. His triumph, therefore, is only partial. By opting for sheer violence, he proves that he has not managed to free himself from destructive power discourses, and that he can merely re-direct the intolerance which he has suffered. Sammy’s own death in the explosion of Bombay clearly shows that his appropriation of his own freakishness is not, fi nally, productive; failing to prompt a re-negotiation of diametrically opposed world views, it merely records their destructive clash. For a more productive example of how postcolonial subjects might embrace and appropriate the racist stereotypes with which they are confronted, we have to turn to another of Rushdie’s novels—to The Satanic Verses. In this novel as well, Rushdie explores the notion of the grotesque for its subversive potential, but whereas Sammy in The Moor’s Last Sigh opts for destruction, Saladin in The Satanic Verses achieves a more satisfying deconstruction of grotesque colonial stereotypes. Hence through the figure of Saladin’s grotesque transformation Rushdie suggests that the conscious acceptance and appropriation of stereotypes might present itself as a liberating strategy to counter degradation through an oppressive post- and neo-colonial world. Saladin’s metamorphosis into a grotesque goat-man and a devil-like figure is triggered by his first contact with India in fifteen years and his subsequent confrontation with racist stereotypes upon his return to England. Preventing him from re-entering his cosily constructed life as a true Englishman, his transformation forces him back towards the only people in London still willing to accept him—the South Asian immigrant community, whom he has rejected for the whole of his assimilated English life. Saladin at first reacts with a retreat into self-pity and despair, pining for what he perceives as his

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real self and real life. Disgusted by his monstrously abnormal body, he refuses to acknowledge that the British will never cease to see him as their negative “other.” Gradually, however, and with the help of other immigrants, Saladin discovers that his new transformed state can be empowering. He learns to accept what he has become, and decides to draw strength from the very stereotype to whose descriptive powers his body has already succumbed. Looking like a fully formed devil, he decides to become the very devil the English imagine him to be. Thus in rejecting English notions of normality and civility he becomes a symbol of resistance for South Asian immigrants in their fight against Euro-centric world views which designate them as deviant. Saladin’s slow acceptance of his transformed self starts with his appearance in the dreams of both white and non-white Londoners, as a threatening and as a liberating symbol, respectively. Whereas Saladin still shrinks fastidiously from his grotesque body and refuses to acknowledge it as his own, his new Asian friends urge him to see his new devil-like form as a symbol of resistance, encouraging him to assume the role of his people’s “hero” as a gloriously angry black man prepared “to kick a little ass” (286): ‘Chamcha,’ Mishal said excitedly, ‘you’re a hero. I mean, people can really identify with you. It’s an image white society has rejected for so long that we can really take it, you know, occupy it, inhabit it, reclaim it and make it our own. It’s time you considered action.’ (286–87) Soon enough, and spurred on by such encouragement, the symbolism of Saladin’s metamorphosed form becomes too blatant to ignore even for Saladin himself. Saladin’s body has become a site of identification for the South Asian immigrant community, Bakhtin’s “collective . . . body” (19). Deciding to embrace his transformed self, he fi nally chooses to “occupy” and “inhabit” his role of a bogeyman, and to embrace all strands of his personality and corporeality: He would enter into his new self; he would be what he had become: loud, stenchy, hideous, outsize, grotesque, inhuman, powerful. He had the sense of being able to stretch out a little fi nger and topple church spires with the force growing in him, the anger, the anger, the anger. Powers. . . . I am, he accepted, that I am. Submission. (288–89) Thus Saladin rejects Western notions of what is normal, what is human, and what is grotesque, a decision which he experiences as deeply, and immediately, empowering. By distancing himself from Western categories of right and wrong he also dissociates himself from Western categories of thinking which have dominated his life ever since he first arrived in England and decided to reinvent himself as an Englishman.

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Saladin’s acceptance of his dehumanisation initially leads to destruction, but it also has an instantaneous re-humanising effect. After giving vent to his hatred of his alter ego Gibreel, he fi nds himself metamorphosed back into his old physical self—although not quite, since his eyes continue to glow “pale and red” (294), signifying his newly integrated and unsubdued dark side. With the corporeal expressions of his monstrosity gone, Saladin for a short while seeks to restore his old equilibrium, pretending that no deeper metamorphoses have occurred. His final acceptance of the radical changes within him comes only once he realises that the notion of evolution through slow progress is an English middle-class myth designed to defuse and even thwart the threat of radical revolutions (418), such as the one that his own transformation represents: What Saladin Chamcha understood that day was that he had been living in a state of phoney peace, that the change in him was irreversible. A new, dark world had opened up for him (or: within him) when he fell from the sky; no matter how assiduously he attempted to re-create his old existence, this was, he now saw, a fact that could not be unmade. He seemed to see a road before him, forking to left and right. Closing his eyes, settling back against taxicab upholstery, he chose the lefthand path. (418–19) Saladin’s choice represents a symbolic act of separation; severing himself from Western and Christian dichotomies of good and evil, he fi nally dissociates himself from “his old existence.” Saladin proceeds to hunt Gibreel down, and he wreaks havoc and destruction. Yet his embrace of his own devilishness and his resolution to shed his assumed Westernness also allow him to engage with members of society whom he has previously despised and ignored. He learns to appreciate both the South Asian immigrant community as well as the people he has left behind in India. Thus Saladin’s recognition and acknowledgement of his identity, his “I am . . . that I am,” form a turning point in his life that sends him on a path towards redemption, and towards his tentative re-integration into a community. Just as in Sammy’s case, the motivation behind Saladin’s acceptance of his freakishness is directly related to the urge to destroy, but whereas Sammy stops here, Saladin moves on. Even though both are initially driven by hatred, Saladin manages to translate hatred into resistance. Learning to channel his hatred, he is able to reacquaint himself with members of the South Asian immigrant community of London, gradually reaching a genuine appreciation of them and the bonds that unite them. This slow process of rediscovery culminates in his attempt to save his erstwhile rejected and despised Asian landlords from the burning Shandaar Café. Thus Saladin is eventually re-integrated into a community, something emphatically impossible for Sammy, whose hatred is directed indiscriminately at the world at

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large. Saladin’s willingness to take responsibility for his destructive past and his eventual acknowledgement of his hybridity, his capability not only to grant but also to accept forgiveness, and his choice of flexibility and fluidity over single-mindedness and intolerance gradually lead him towards a fresh start, and the fi rst almost happy ending of Rushdie’s fiction. Rushdie’s engagement with the grotesque reveals the discursive strategies involved in gaining material dominance over those outside the “norm,” simultaneously suggesting how these same strategies might lend themselves to a discourse of resistance against such designations. In The Satanic Verses, the eagerness with which the South Asian population of London adopts the image of the devil as their symbol of resistance against (post) imperialist appropriation demonstrates its subversive potential. In addition, the image of “the Goatman” also presents a warning to (neo)colonial powers, suggesting that the continued humiliation and suppression of people is the surest way of creating powerful enemies.15 On a less specifically postcolonial level, Rushdie’s engagement with the grotesque also seeks to confront the condition of the postmodern subject in general. Showing that the exposure to a world that has ceased to offer any certainties renders the subject itself grotesque, Rushdie depicts the grotesque as an intrinsic component of our postmodern condition. Again, Rushdie supplements the destructive component of this condition by emphasising how this very grotesqueness can become a positive force. After all, it is Saleem’s nose with its freakishly oversized proportions that becomes the source of his magic; similarly, Moor’s deformed hand saves him from death by offering Mainduck a reason to employ him; and, fi nally, it is Ormus’s freakish position at the gate between two worlds that becomes the source of his artistic inspiration and his appeal. Repeatedly, Rushdie’s texts urge us to exploit the creative potential of our grotesque position, often most explicitly through his characters’ attitudes and actions. When Aurora paints her son Moor, his deformed hand is, invariably, transformed into a symbol of intense beauty;16 similarly, once Vina has accepted Ormus’s visionary powers, she prevents him from retreating into fear and denial, advising him to seize his powers and transform them into productive artistic creativity: “Make it sing, she says. Write it with all your heart and gift and hold on to the hooks, the catchy lyrics, the tunes. Fly me to that moon” (Ground 351). This is precisely the invitation Rushdie’s texts extend to his readers: to engage with the loss of certainty productively, to seize it as an advantage and transform it into a fluid basis for our perpetually dynamic position in the world, in short, to “[m]ake it sing.”

THE ROLE OF WOMEN IN RUSHDIE’S FICTION Discussions of the role of women in Rushdie’s fiction often cite the following passage from Shame: “I had thought, before I began, that what I had on

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my hands was an almost excessively masculine tale, a saga of sexual rivalry, ambition, power, patronage, betrayal, death, revenge. But the women seem to have taken over” (173). The narrator here claims that his control over the story has been usurped by his female characters, who are not content with the peripheral narrative position he has assigned them and force themselves rebelliously into the foreground of the tale. He concludes that these female stories provide a useful continuation of his intended male focus, and that both kinds of stories are really one and the same (173). Many critics have accepted this claim and treated female characters in Shame, as well as in other novels by Rushdie, as convincing, autonomous, and fullyformed individuals of remarkable attractiveness and strength.17 However, I believe that one needs to scrutinise the appropriateness of the narrator’s claim more closely, and approach Rushdie’s female characters in general more critically. Rushdie’s novels clearly tend to be dominated by men, and Shame does not really appear to be an exception. Granted, the novel does devote a lot of narrative space to the development of its female characters, and it ensures that their stories achieve prominence. But although the portrayal of women is partly sympathetic, it is hardly liberating. The sarcasm so noticeable in this novel in general is robbed of its productiveness when it activates old discourses of hysteria (Bilquìs) and sexual frustration (the Virgin Ironpants, Sufiya). One might argue that in engaging with these discourses, Rushdie draws attention to how women are victimised by men, demonstrating how the female characters in Shame are constantly thwarted not merely by the environments that men and women share, but by the particular circumstances created for them by their male partners. The novel is full of female characters who have been abandoned, discarded, or locked up by their husbands and lovers, and who either gradually fade away in isolation or lose their grip on reality and sanity as a result of separation and estrangement. Others, such as Naveed Hyder, suffer from their husbands’ sexual aggression and are broken by the manner in which their bodies are instrumentalised. No matter whether they are punished for sexual transgression,18 frigidity, intelligence, or just for being in their partners’ ways, all these women’s destinies are shaped by men, and although this might be a realist rendition of the situation Rushdie describes, the novel never seems to attempt to imagine a productive alternative. No single woman in Shame manages to take her fate into her own hands in a way which promises an even remotely satisfying outcome, and even though the novel thus forcefully demonstrates what obstacles women are faced with, and how easily their potential is thwarted, its female characters are so automatically and repeatedly cast in the roles of victims that the text ultimately re-inscribes the victimisation of women even as it exposes it. Magic realism in Shame becomes a crucial vehicle for the rendition of the overwhelming nature of the obstacles that face its female characters. The magic realist world in which these women fi nd themselves is limiting and destructive. When Bilquìs’s father is killed and her entire world

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collapses around her, for instance, her vulnerable position is expressed through the wind of fi re which tears off her clothes, leaving her naked but otherwise miraculously unharmed in the middle of the street. In a vein typical of magic realism, not only does Bilquìs’s dupatta remain intact (64), but the only physical damage she suffers from the fi re is singed eyebrows. These will never grow again, giving her a perpetually startled expression which metaphorically conveys to what extent all certainties in her life have become unsettled. Indeed, although Bilquìs, who almost straightaway meets Raza and becomes engaged to him, at fi rst seems to have managed to overcome the horrors of her past to an astonishing degree, the impact of the traumatic event becomes more and more noticeable as time goes by. She becomes “the Bilquìs who was afraid of the wind” (68), frantically trying to hold her furniture in place during the hot afternoon wind, for fear that yet another explosion will blow away her life. As such, Bilquìs’s desperate attempts to get a grip on the world around her and to attain some level of stability make her the object of family shame: “there were days when she had to be kept indoors as a virtual prisoner, because it would have been a shame and a scandal if any outsider had seen her in that state” (68). If Bilquìs is fundamentally changed by her pre-Partition experiences, her daughter Naveed’s life is ultimately destroyed by her husband’s ruthless exploitation of her body and its fertility. The supernatural manner in which this is presented conveys the daunting brutality with which Naveed is literally turned into a breeding machine. Forced to give birth to an ever increasing number of babies year after year, Naveed becomes little more than a living womb. The magic realist set-up here emphasises her complete helplessness and lack of control over her own body and hence her life: in the face of the relentless and clearly supernatural yearly progression of multiple births from her womb, Naveed is utterly defenceless: she “understood that there was no hope for women in the world, because whether you were respectable or not the men got you anyway” (207). The fact that the only escape she can devise after having given birth to 27 children is suicide is indicative of the differences between male and female powerlessness in Rushdie’s magic realist novels. Although Sammy’s revenge is ultimately self-destructive as well, it nevertheless makes an impact. He has found an eloquent, although certainly not a productive, way of making himself seen and heard, even if only through his demise, and his actions are impossible to ignore. Naveed, by contrast, tries to make her suicide as unobtrusive as possible, without assigning blame even in her suicide note, and carefully scenting the room in order to disguise the smell of her death (228). As a result, her suicide can discursively be fi xed as a private rather than a more socially or publicly relevant tragedy, and when Bilquìs accuses Raza of being responsible for Naveed’s death, he has her taken home before the funeral is even over (228). When women become potentially threatening, they can swiftly be locked up, and in contrast to their male counterparts, their deaths and suicides are fi nal, without disturbing consequences for the

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men. Hence the male characters of Shame can continue untroubled by the deaths they have caused, as becomes clear not only in Naveed’s case, but also in Pinkie’s: “no need to go into all that again. She stayed dead; she never haunted anybody” ( 238).19 One thing that is particularly noticeable about Rushdie’s portrayal of women is that we fi nd very little female solidarity. A world narratively dominated by men to the extent that we fi nd in Rushdie does not offer respite even on a private level. There is little room here for his female characters to form supportive connections. This is also related to the fact that since they are so rarely allowed to occupy centre stage, Rushdie’s women tend to be comparatively flat; indeed even when given more central narrative positions, such as in The Enchantress of Florence, they remain stereotypical. I have argued above that Rushdie’s characters in general tend to be represented as caricatures rather than realistic individuals, and I have treated this as a productive counter-realist strategy of representation. What makes Rushdie’s portrayal of women problematic, however, is the fact that his texts do not merely construct random and innocent types of femininity but that his “female characters overwhelmingly re-enact stereotypical male typologies of women” (Mann 296). This is particularly obvious in his later fiction; in fact, we can trace a gradual emergence and strengthening of specific female stereotypes from Rushdie’s earlier to his more recent texts. The models on which Rushdie’s female characters are moulded originate predominately in two non-realist sources: Bollywood cinema and the fairy tale. Both of these offer a very limited range of roles to female characters, and it is to such roles that many of Rushdie’s women are confi ned. From Bollywood come the stock characters of the vamp or whore (Vina in The Ground Beneath Her Feet, Boonyi in Shalimar the Clown, and to some extent also Mishal in The Satanic Verses, as well as Qara Köz and the Mirror in The Enchantress of Florence); the good mother and the evil stepmother (two figures which Rushdie tends to fuse in his fiction, as implied by Natarajan in her discussion of Bombay cinematic influences on Midnight’s Children 20); and the ayah (Mary Pereira in Midnight’s Children, Shahbanou in Shame, and Miss Jaya Hé in The Moor’s Last Sigh). The fairy tale contributes figures such as the witch (Indira Gandhi in Midnight’s Children, Omar Khayyam’s mothers in Shame, Hind in The Satanic Verses, various female characters in Shalimar the Clown, and to some extent again Qara Köz in The Enchantress of Florence); the temptress or evil sorceress (Hind in The Satanic Verses, Uma in The Moor’s Last Sigh); the nagging wife (Naseem Aziz in Midnight’s Children, Epifania in The Moor’s Last Sigh, and Marietta Machiavelli in The Enchantress of Florence); and the ugly duckling/Cinderella (the Brass Monkey in Midnight’s Children and Vina in The Ground Beneath Her Feet, both of whom start out as neglected siblings or poor relatives, only to develop into superstars and exceptional beauties). These roles, of course, can be deconstructed, and indeed this is what Rushdie’s earlier novels partly attempt. In this respect,

122 Exploring Magic Realism in Salman Rushdie’s Fiction the whore is significant as one of Rushdie’s favourite symbols of subversion and liberation, and the brothel constitutes a challenge to established norms and orthodox master discourses. As such, the brothel is a highly desirable focus of attraction in some of his novels, such as Midnight’s Children, The Satanic Verses, and The Enchantress of Florence, and although it is a place through which many men pass, few are admitted on a permanent basis. For those accorded this privilege, however, the whores assume the role of ultimate womanhood, embodying the apparently irresistible fusion of surrogate motherhood and expert eroticism. The Satanic Verses and The Enchantress of Florence both employ mirroring techniques in order to juxtapose two similar but socially radically different female spaces: the harem (or the community of wives) and the brothel. In The Satanic Verses, the harem is merely alluded to and present as an implicit model. We are aware of the fact that Mahound takes many wives, but the novel never actually depicts him in their company. Instead, the focus lies with the illicit mirror version of Mahound’s marital situation, “The Curtain.” This brothel is where the poet Baal hides from persecution, and where, in his period of hiding, he devises the idea that the whores should take the names of the twelve wives of Mahound as a special trick to arouse their clients. Hence the brothel, already a site of resistance to the regime of Mahound’s faith, becomes a symbol of disrespectful underground subversion. And when the whores demand, after a while, that Baal himself should assume the role of their husband, the challenge seems complete. Mahound, the stern representative of propriety and enemy of sexual licentiousness, is brought into imaginative connection with sensuality, illicit sexual pleasure, and betrayal, whereas the male inhabitants of the town flock to the brothel in order to sleep with his wives’ symbolic doppelgangers. Significantly, however, although the twelve prostitutes themselves are, of course, at the centre of resistance, it is only their customers, and therefore male characters, who can enter the brothel in order to partake of their subversive game. The other women of Jahilia are neither included in this form of subversion nor afforded any alternative strategies of resistance by the novel. Newly locked up in their homes due to the victory of Mahound’s faith and the general acceptance of its regulations, all respectable women are now denied engagement with public life. Hence the whores become the only female characters even given the chance to practice resistance in Rushdie’s novel, albeit in a very limited sphere and under precarious conditions. In fact, the danger of their project is revealed to be less serious than anticipated, as their clients are so unequivocally eager to play out their perverse fascination with Mahound’s harem that the whores’ clandestine adoption of Mahound’s wives’ names remains a secret until the eventual closure of all brothels. However, and this is where Rushdie’s brothel loses part of its subversive potential, it is the whores themselves who eventually succumb to the fantasy of wifehood which their assumption of the identities of Mahound’s wives has created. The direction which subversion takes here thus remains

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unclear. And as they embrace the identities of those whose names they have taken, the prostitutes emerge as highly conservative: It turned out that the whores of The Curtain were the most old-fashioned and conventional women in Jahilia. Their work, which could so easily have made them cynical and disillusioned (and they were, of course, capable of entertaining ferocious notions about their visitors), had turned them into dreamers instead. Sequestered from the outside world, they had conceived a fantasy of ‘ordinary life’ in which they wanted nothing more than to be the obedient, and—yes—submissive helpmeets of a man who was wise, loving and strong. That is to say: the years of enacting the fantasies of men had fi nally corrupted their dreams, so that even in their hearts of hearts they wished to turn themselves into the oldest male fantasy of all. (384) As always, Rushdie’s text plays with a variety of issues and presents them in a way which tends to unsettle any fi xed meaning. On the surface, this passage tells a straightforward story, depicting the prostitutes as ordinary women turned special solely by circumstances but not different from other women per se. At the same time, however, this tale also changes direction, arguing implicitly that all women are whores—are, in fact, turned into whores by Mahound. After all, the whores lead “[s]equestered” lives, out of public sight, and are seen only by those who require their sexual services, and so their situation is not fundamentally different from that of so-called respectable women, whom Mahound has newly forced into sequestration as well. The ostentatious purpose of “the locking up of wives” (376) might be the preservation of their chastity, but the text here shows how Mahound’s rule might be construed as collapsing the conceptual barrier between respectable women and prostitutes. Indeed, the very fact that it is felt necessary to lock women up already suggests that their honour is doubtful. The passage proceeds to challenge the difference between the whores and Mahound’s ideology. The expression “submissive,” for instance, cannot be innocent in a novel which so prominently insists on the links between “Submission” (125) and Mahound and his religion. The application of this term to prostitutes is, of course, scandalous. Moreover, it is highly ironic that it is precisely the members of society whom Mahound so irrevocably excludes and later has executed who so fervently wish to submit. In the same vein, the reference to corruption with regard to the fact that the twelve whores have developed the wish to please men in earnest suggests that this development is seen as destructive and as detrimental to the subversive potential of the brothel. On one level, therefore, the portrayal of the brothel in The Satanic Verses is used to highlight the problematic position of women in Jahilia, and to challenge the distinctions Mahound, and monologic discourses similar to his, want to make. On another level,

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however, this deconstructive trajectory is put in perspective by the fact that wherever prostitutes appear in Rushdie, their roles seem to be reduced to supporting their chosen men. The Enchantress of Florence is symptomatic of this tendency. In this novel, we fi nd a plethora of harem/brothel spaces, and the focus is partly on the forging of female community. Female characters tend to appear in pairs (the Enchantress and her Mirror, Akbar’s mother and aunt, the Skeleton and the Mattress, as well as their doubles in various parts of the novel), and they are normally so close as to suggest that the two characters in question form the two parts of one whole. Also, when describing the relationships among the prostitutes in her brothel, Mohini, the Skeleton, stresses their intimate knowledge of one another and of one another’s bodies (205). But the novel nevertheless falls short of successfully constructing alternative female spaces, for the emphasis remains on the male characters that own these establishments. In the harem, the women vie for the emperor’s favour and unite against his invented favourite, Jodha, only allowing her into their midst when they are afraid of losing Akbar completely to his infatuation with the image of Qara Köz. Significantly, this is the very moment when Jodha vanishes, because in managing to conjure up the phantom of Qara Köz, the emperor ceases to need her. Jodha, therefore, is the ultimate embodiment of male power over women. As the personification of male fantasies, she has to remain outside a community of womanhood. Her right to exist is exclusively determined by Akbar’s needs or neglect, and so she has to stay separate from her surroundings; she literally exists only for him. It is only logical, therefore, that at the very moment at which other women are fi nally ready to acknowledge her and recognise that she is “theirs as well” (323), she loses her exclusiveness for the male and, as a consequence, vanishes. And just as Jodha herself has no power over her own existence, appearance, or disappearance, so the other members of Akbar’s harem are powerless when it comes to the prevention of both Jodha’s disappearance and of her successor’s sudden and threatening appearance; unlike many male characters in the novel (Mogor dell’Amore and the painter Dashwanth, to name just two in addition to Akbar), they do not possess the gift of constructing the reality they want to inhabit but have to live in the world as they fi nd it. Indeed, the only female character who wields the power to shape reality in the novel, the Enchantress herself, eventually overexerts her creative and imaginative strength, and dies (336). If, as the dust jacket sleeve of the fi rst British edition of The Enchantress of Florence claims, the novel tells “the story of a woman attempting to command her destiny in a man’s world,” then Qara Köz’s fate ultimately suggests that even magic is powerless to secure a happy ending for women in a male-dominated world. Like the women in the harem, the whores in the brothel of Fatehpur Sikri are not autonomous but have their roles determined by the men they give pleasure to. Given the dynamics of prostitution, this is in tune with economic and other power relations; what is significant, however, is that

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in addition to such existing dependencies, Rushdie’s prostitutes also show decidedly little resistance to falling in love and, once in love, are ready to focus exclusively on supporting their beloved and his well-being, placing their often magic powers and knowledge at his disposal. Although Rushdie might be highlighting the underprivileged position of women in this vein, the repetition of this pattern in his fiction, and above all in The Enchantress of Florence, also points to a failure to imagine creative alternatives. This is particularly noteworthy when one compares his depiction of brothels with Angela Carter’s in Nights at the Circus. The brothel in which the heroine Fevvers grows up is, in spite of the inevitable presence of men, a decidedly female, and, what is more, a liberating space. The male customers are admitted solely for purposes of business; none of them are granted any rights that exceed what is implicit in the formal and purely professional contract between prostitute and client. The brothel is exclusively under female control, and whereas Baal and Mogor dell’Amore provide capital and/or business ideas in Rushdie’s brothels, Carter’s prostitutes defy male power and influence. Hence Rushdie and Carter construct two very different spaces: whereas the depictions of brothels in The Satanic Verses and The Enchantress of Florence celebrate sensuality from a fi rmly male perspective, the emphasis in Carter’s text lies on the practicalities and pragmatism behind the running of the brothel. Whereas the prostitutes in The Curtain, for instance, spend their days vying for their husband Baal’s favour, setting up a rota which ensures that he will fulfil his marital duties to all of them, the prostitutes in Nights at the Circus use their daytime liberty in order to study or engage in political activism (Nights 39–40). As such, Carter’s novel constructs a productive female space in which the community of women ensures mutual encouragement, nurturing, and empowerment. Above all, the brothel in Carter’s text facilitates the negotiation and construction of alternative concepts of femininity and womanhood. So even when this space is eventually threatened and closed by external male power, the effect of this is not destructive. Rather, the prostitutes emerge ready to test their alternative concepts of womanhood and to seize control over their own lives (Nights 45–47). Conversely, when female intimacy and the sharing of community are portrayed in Rushdie, they rarely happen outside the parameters of at least suggested lesbianism. As a result, the relations between women remain focused on sensuality and the private, and fail to have larger repercussions or even, for that matter, further-reaching personal consequences. Even as a liberal counter-space, the brothel is a place aimed exclusively at men, and outside the sphere of their beds, Rushdie’s prostitutes remain fi rmly dependent on male support. Critics have drawn attention to the manner in which Rushdie emphasises female agency by the autonomous spaces and narrative functions he assigns to his female characters. The example which fi rst comes to mind is Padma, the intradiegetic addressee of Saleem’s tale, who steers and changes his story by her active understanding of her role as his audience.

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Yet although Padma’s participation crucially influences the story, her role is always already inflected in the male narrator’s discourse. Indeed, there is no single female narrator in Rushdie’s entire oeuvre, and the female reflector characters who appear in his later novels are highly stereotypical; I have just discussed how one of them—Jodha in The Enchantress of Florence—is a male fantasy of a dream woman come (perhaps) to life. Contrary to Faris, who has praised the “fertile narrative power” of women in Midnight’s Children, “which is encoded obsessively in the text by the number of allusions to Scheherazade” (Enchantments 207), I would argue that such fi ltering of the female through the male frequently deprives female interventions of their subversive impact. Although Scheherazade is upheld as the ultimate storyteller in many of Rushdie’s texts, the “narrative power” which she embodies is always claimed by male characters who construct themselves as Scheherazade’s legitimate successors. Even though the narrative model is female, therefore, the act of narration in Rushdie is almost exclusively usurped by men. 21 In many of Rushdie’s earlier novels, the act of narration is metaphorically reflected in other creative acts, and it is here that women make a significant impact. Ayesha, the prophetess in The Satanic Verses, Aurora, the artist from The Moor’s Last Sigh, and to some extent even Vina, the pop star from The Ground Beneath Her Feet—all of these female characters assume crucial roles in the construction of counter-drafts of historical, national, religious, and gender discourses which challenge masculine master narratives. They are hence significantly involved in the development of public female perspectives on history, religion, and culture. Aurora and her art are most explicitly linked to such socio-political issues. From the beginning, Aurora’s art is concerned with India and its history. Her fi rst real painting is an enormous mural which seeks to embrace the whole of India, its past as well as its present, in a celebration of the diversity of subcontinental life and culture. As such, it also gestures towards a particular vision of the future and forms a clear plea for the preservation of Indian hybridity. With this mural, Aurora positions herself as an artist with a profound interest in political and national affairs, whose artistic imagination unfolds in a continuous dialectic with the social, historical, and political realities around her. Of particular interest is Aurora’s creative treatment of boundaries, which in the pre- and post-independence context of her formative years as an artist is symbolic of her engagement with prevalent political discourses, and of her development of an alternative agenda for the nation. Aurora’s hybrid vision far from ignores borders; instead, boundaries become the centre of many of her pictures, not as solid frontiers, but as edges to be blurred as well as overcome. Constant traffic across these borders is crucial since it leads to the creation of a new state of existence: as a result of repeated crossings, the two states of existence originally separated by borders start to flow into each other and form a new, hybrid realm:

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The water’s edge, the dividing line between two worlds, became in many of these pictures the main focus of her concern. She filled the sea with fish, drowned ships, mermaids, treasure, kings; and on the land, a cavalcade of local riff-raff —pickpockets, pimps, fat whores hitching their saris up against the waves—and other figures from history or fantasy or current affairs or nowhere, crowded towards the water like the real-life Bombayites on the beach, taking their evening strolls. At the water’s edge strange composite creatures slithered to and fro across the frontier of the elements. Often she painted the water-line in such a way as to suggest that you were looking at an unfi nished painting which had been abandoned, half-covering another. But was it a waterworld being painted over the world of air, or vice versa? Impossible to be sure. (Moor 226) Aurora’s paintings are clearly utopian. With a sweepingly all-encompassing gesture, she designs a world that is not devoid of boundaries, but in which boundaries emerge as sources of inspiration rather than fear, realms of transgression rather than guarding-posts of stability. The world of her creative imagination is, therefore, not a site of ultimate collision, but a place of magic fusion, where the laws of the universe are suspended: Place where worlds collide, flow in and out of one another, and washofy away. Place where an air-man can drowno in water, or else grow gills; where a water-creature can get drunk, but also chokeofy, on air. One universe, one dimension, one country, one dream, bumpo’ing into another, or being under, or on top of. (226) The new state of existence which Aurora’s art promotes is not without its perils. But the fluidity of Aurora’s vision and the unlimited multiplicity of possibilities which it promises suggest that what she depicts might be worth such perils. Hence Aurora’s is “an art whose leading principle is potentiality rather than realism” (Schülting 113), and even though it is eventually discarded as a “nostalgic vision” bound to remain unsuccessful (Schülting 118), the novel nevertheless celebrates Aurora’s art for its capacity to “at least imagine alternatives to the languages of fundamentalist religion and politics” (Schülting 119). A similar counter-model to masculine discourse is embodied by Ayesha and her Haj in The Satanic Verses, which Hanne, following Suleri, reads as “a daring attempt to restate the monolithic, nationalist, masculine dogma of Mahound in a more ambiguous, postcolonial feminine form” (233). The Ayesha episode is clearly constructed as a reflection of the narrative sections devoted to Mahound and the satanic verses episode, and although Ayesha’s behaviour in many ways echoes decisions taken by the male prophet, Suleri has shown how the imagery of the Ayesha sections effects a profound “feminization of prophecy” (205), thus wresting away the gift of revelation

128 Exploring Magic Realism in Salman Rushdie’s Fiction from the exclusive hold of the male. Significantly, Ayesha calls herself the “wife” of the archangel Gibreel, thus signalling her sexual unavailability to all mortal men. Indeed, this inaccessibility is highlighted from the fi rst, and even before Ayesha claims to be in communion with God. When Mirza fi rst sees her, he is overcome with sexual desire (219). Ayesha’s reaction to his presence and to his voyeuristic gaze, however, clearly reveal her status of unattainability and mark her as one of God’s chosen: after ignoring Mirza while she continues to eat butterfl ies (classic symbols of rebirth), she falls to the ground in an epileptic fit, a traditional sign of the mark of God on a human being. What in Rushdie’s later fiction is turned into a source of stereotypical representation—the desirable female body—is here used to indicate that, in contrast to Mahound, who remains tied to mortality through his sexuality, Ayesha achieves a much deeper union with the archangel Gibreel in her material—bodily—embrace of the divine. Contrary to Boonyi in Shalimar the Clown or Qara Köz or Simonetta Vespucci in The Enchantress of Florence, Ayesha’s beauty is not her fate. Although she is the typical blatantly exaggerated and stereotypically gorgeous Rushdie heroine, Ayesha’s attractiveness is separate from her supernatural beauty and her capacity to move and influence others with powers independent of her outer appearance. 22 With Vina from The Ground Beneath Her Feet, Rushdie’s depiction of women seems to enter a new phase. As a pop music superstar, Vina is also a creative figure, but although her vocal acrobatics form a central component of the success of VTO, the music Vina gives voice to is always her male partner’s composition, never her own. And although Vina’s own attempt at a solo career fails, Ormus, once he has found a substitute for her, is still able to reap professional success despite his personal pain. Significantly, whereas the male characters in the novel have doppelgangers, the female characters are simulacra. 23 This gendering of the simulacrum is related to a gradual shift in Rushdie’s representation of women. In his recent novels, and most noticeably in The Enchantress of Florence and Shalimar the Clown, female characters have increasingly been turned into screens for the projection of male fantasies. The focus of representation tends to lie with the highly eroticised female body, and with a clichéd female sexuality. Whereas most of Rushdie’s early female characters are either very beautiful (Aurora, the Brass Monkey, Nadia Wadia, Uma, Zeeny, Ayesha, Mishal, Vina, and Mira) or ugly and obese (almost all of Rushdie’s old matriarchs), his more recent female protagonists are not only excessively beautiful, but their supernatural beauty eclipses all other character traits. Although one might assume that this hyperbolic mode of representation allows the novels to criticise the male obsession with the female body depicted in the texts, the prevalent lack of irony in the portrayal of women as seductive sexpots frustrates this expectation. It is certainly true that the very presence of Jodha as a personification of male fantasies in The Enchantress of Florence constitutes

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an ironic comment on male obsessions with female eroticism, and to some extent even the Enchantress herself can be read in such terms, if less convincingly so. In the same vein, Shalimar the Clown is certainly sympathetic to Boonyi, and critical of the harsh and brutal punishment she receives for having been seduced by the allure of Max’s power. Nevertheless, both novels appear complicit in the perpetuation of sexist stereotypes, and they endorse reductive “typologies of women.” Female transgression is, in Rushdie’s recent fiction, practiced almost exclusively in sexual terms, and although the absence of other modes for the expression of female independence might constitute an implicit critique of the social discrimination of women, this critique is rendered in a manner which plays to male fantasies. That most of Rushdie’s sexually transgressive women eventually die speaks volumes not only about his perception of the underprivileged position of women in society but also about his own inability to envision female independence in less conservative and more liberating terms.

6

Juicy Mangos, Sexy Spices Magic Realism and the Strategies of Exoticist Discourse

The relationship between magic realism and exoticism is ambivalent, characterised by mutual cross-fertilisation and exploitation. As a fashionable label on the global literary market, magic realism has amply proved its potential as a marketing strategy for the “alterity industry” (Huggan vii) by serving as a buzzword that has been exploited for the quite unjustifiable homogenisation of postcolonial literatures as a commodity. Hailed as marking the emergence of an emphatically indigenous and genuinely “other”—that is, non-Western—form of literature, magic realism has been eagerly appropriated as the representative mode of postcolonial literatures by such disparate groups as literary critics and publishing houses. Homi Bhabha, for instance, has termed magic realism “the literary language of the emergent post-colonial world” (“Introduction” 7), and together with Alejo Carpentier’s construction of “lo real maravilloso” as the only authentic perception of Latin American reality this is indicative of the occasionally rather sweeping manner in which literary criticism has co-opted magic realism as postcolonial. This is mirrored by the fervency with which magic realism has been promoted as the paradigm of postcolonial literatures by publishers, as evident in the hyperbolic New York Times statement that “Midnight’s Children sounds like a continent fi nding its voice,” reproduced on the back cover of the 1995 Vintage edition of that novel. This tendency is observable also in the ascription of a “magical” quality to many postcolonial novels, irrespective of whether they actually are magic realist or not, as well as in their implicit or explicit comparison with what is arguably one of the canonical texts of orientalism—The Arabian Nights.1 That the overwhelming success of magic realism in both its Latin American and Asian forms is complicit in the commodification of postcolonial literatures is most obvious in the context of Latin America, where it triggered the boom, which in turn created a new market for Hispanoamerican literatures and propelled them to new heights of commercialisation. Similarly, magic realism was vital to the success of Midnight’s Children, its evaluation as exotic, and the subsequent boost of Western interest in India’s “new” English literature. Such potentially successful associations between magic realism and the literary market notwithstanding, magic realism is

Juicy Mangos, Sexy Spices 131 also burdened by its relation to the “alterity industry” and concomitant phenomena such as exotic commodification. In fact, the role of magic realism in the commodification of postcolonial literatures forms the basis of some of the most severe criticism of the mode. With regard to Rushdie especially, some critics are highly concerned about the apparent tendency of magic realism to cater to Western audiences and to commercial expectations which invite readings informed by commodified exoticism. In connection with this, the downside of the praise of magic realism as indigenous, as discussed in Chapter 1, becomes obvious: betraying the colonialist tendency to equate Western perceptions of reality with the rational and nonWestern ontological systems with the irrational, such praise tacitly implies that non-Western world views are naive and ultimately inferior to empiricist and scientific Western concepts of reality. The automatic opposition between Western and non-Western ontologies promoted here is seldom free of value judgements on either side. Bowers denounces the tendency to privilege Western world views which seems implicit in this opposition: “In colonialist terms, the binary opposition of the magical and the realist, places more value on realism and pragmatism than it does on the magical which it associates negatively with the irrational” (Magic(al) 123). Yet the opposite is also possible: the privileging of the magical due to the notion that realism is dull and inadequate for capturing reality in its full wonder, as expressed forcefully, for instance, in Carpentier’s formulation of the marvellous real. What is obviously at stake here is the suspect notion of authenticity, which appears implicated in the automatic conflation of magic occurrences with indigenous concepts of reality, a generalisation which occasionally comes perilously close to promoting magic realist world views as the exclusive postcolonial perception of reality. Critics of magic realism accuse the mode of pandering to precisely such ideas: as the “other” of what is seen as Western rationality, the hybrid world of magic realism acquires an aura of authenticity which signals exotic allure and offers routes into escapism. The potential “slide into exoticism” (Cooper 31) looms over much magic realist literature and occasions concern about its part in the exploitation of postcolonial cultures for global markets and readers. Hence criticism such as Brennan’s, which tends to be directed against Western-educated and urban intellectuals such as Rushdie and is indicative of the fear triggered by the potential sell-out of postcolonial subversiveness in the face of the commodification surrounding the global success of magic realism: Brennan accuses Rushdie of the “Anglicisation of ‘magical realism’” complicit with a “saleable ‘Third Worldism’” (65). Indeed, exoticism and exoticist readings, together with concomitant escapist tendencies, posit a very real danger to the potential subversiveness of magic realist writing. As a phenomenon of simultaneous appropriation and defamiliarisation, exoticism is complicit in designating the East as “other” while rendering it consumable by the West. If one follows Huggan’s defi nition of exoticism as “a particular aesthetic perception . . . which

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renders people, objects and places strange even as it domesticates them, and which effectively manufactures otherness even as it claims to surrender to its immanent mystery” (13), exoticism emerges as a strategy fundamentally interested in striking and maintaining a balance between self and other—a goal which in itself cancels out any subversiveness. To designate a person or object as exotic renders them recognisable in their very otherness, thus highlighting their familiarity, and exchanging potentially subversive cultural and political differences for the fashionable lure of a merely attractively commodified aesthetic difference. In Huggan’s words, marginality is deprived of its subversive implications by being rerouted into safe assertions of a fetishised cultural difference. Marginality is defi ned, that is, not only in terms of what, or who, is different but in the extent to which such difference conforms to preset cultural codes. Exoticism’s ‘aesthetics of diversity’ (Segalen 1978) is manipulated for the purpose of channelling difference into areas where it can be attractively packaged and, at the same time, safely contained. What is at work here is a process, commodified of course, of cultural translation through which the marginalised can be apprehended and described in familiar terms. (24) Exoticism can thus be seen as a strategy which facilitates the consumption of such monumental categories as “the East” through the West, rendering successfully exoticised objects more easily accessible and “digestible” for Western consumers, who are familiar with the integration of exotic goods into “preset cultural codes.” It arguably invites escapist readings which utilise such readily available “cultural codes” in order to evade a closer contemplation of the political agenda of literature received as exotic. In fact, recourse to exoticism might thwart a recognition of the subversiveness of such literature in the fi rst place by suggesting to readers that they have penetrated the mysterious realm of fanciful exotic allure. Hence critics’ concern about the aptness and willingness of magic realism to satiate “a metropole greedy for escapism” (Cooper 31). What such statements indicate is that the reader has emerged as a crucial factor in magic realist studies. The cultural location and the ontological schemata which partially defi ne readerly approaches to magic realist texts have increasingly been acknowledged as elements that determine readers’ reactions to the coexistence of the two magic realist codes to a significant extent, even if this means entering fairly slippery terrain, as Huggan asserts in his appeal against glib distinctions between groups of readers: “it cannot be assumed that audiences are neatly separable by ethnicity, class, gender, location—still less so in an age where reading communities, as well as individual writers, are products of an increasingly diasporised world” (72). That audiences are not “neatly separable” in any such way is indisputable; and yet, it seems similarly indisputable that readers’ concepts of reality and

Juicy Mangos, Sexy Spices 133 their belief systems fundamentally determine their classification of magic realist events as either magic or realist. Magic realist critics frequently connect such ontological idiosyncrasies with cultural traditions. Wendy Faris, for instance, highlights the influence of readers’ cultural backgrounds in her discussion of readerly hesitation in magic realism: The question of belief is central here, this hesitation frequently stemming from the implicit clash of cultural systems within the narrative, which moves toward belief in extrasensory phenomena but narrates from the post-Enlightenment perspective and in the realistic mode that traditionally exclude them. And because belief systems differ, clearly, some readers in some cultures will hesitate less than others, depending on their beliefs, and narrative traditions. (Enchantments 17) Bowers strikes the same chord and repeatedly emphasises the importance of readers’ cultural location in connection with their tolerance of magic (Magic(al) 56–57, 127–28). And even Rushdie himself subscribes to the idea that readers’ reactions to the magic realist component of his novels are culturally determined: “I also don’t like all this postmodern fabulism stuff. When Midnight’s Children was written and everybody in the West responded to it as a beautiful fairy-tale, everybody in India responded to it as a history book” (“Salman Rushdie” 131). This statement very clearly highlights some of the problems arising in connection with the reception of postcolonial, and especially magic realist, literatures, as well as with the homogenisation of different groups of readers. For one thing, Rushdie’s rejection of the fabulist label exposes yet again the fear, so often expressed by critics, that magic realism offers readers easy escapism, enabling them to ignore the serious and subversive content behind its “beautiful fairytale” surface. Apart from this, another issue arises through Rushdie’s subdivision of his readership into two groups—Indian and Western—and his insinuation that his Indian readers are more competent or, at least, closer to his own view of how Midnight’s Children ought to be read. Rushdie’s blatant over-generalisation arguably stems from his desire to legitimise his writing as non-Western—or, perhaps, as not exclusively Western—against frequently voiced accusations which deny him any insight into the East on the grounds of his Western education and life-style.2 In trying to dissociate himself from this (Western) “postmodern fabulism stuff,” however, Rushdie falls into the trap of cultural essentialism by sweepingly suggesting that all Westerners read in one particular way, and all Indians in another. Clearly, this is a danger which magic realist criticism must avoid. Although I want to embrace the notion that readers’ ontological systems influence their receptions of magic realist texts, Rushdie’s statements highlight the necessity to distinguish very clearly between cultural and geographical backgrounds, an implicit conflation of which will certainly prove reductive. After all, it is not plausible that a European Catholic who believes

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in transubstantiation and immaculate conception should be any less predisposed to accept the magic component of magic realism than an Indian Hindu.3 Such considerations aside, what concerns us in this chapter is how readers’ cultural competence partially determines their evaluation of magic realist fictional worlds as exotic, and subsequently whether Rushdie’s magic realist texts encourage and welcome such escapist readings, hence becoming complicit in the commodification of postcolonial literatures as exotic. “Transcultural competence” is a term that has recently been proposed by Susanne Reichl and Mark Stein as an alternative to the cultural insider/ outsider debate. Reichl and Stein suggest that readers’ successful interpretations of “cultural references” (14) hinge, in this “increasingly diasporised world” (Huggan 72) less on questions of “cultural belonging” (Reichl and Stein 14) than on their ability to decipher (cultural) clues to meaning, that is, on their “transcultural competence” (Reichl and Stein 14). The crucial question then seems to be where readers derive their transcultural competence from when decoding a culture—or one of its products—not their own. In the case of Eastern cultural products, the picture of the East for the non-specialist reader still appears to be determined by the type of commodified notions of mystic allure promoted by tourist boards. Hence readers whose “knowledge” of the East is largely formed through encounters with stereotypical descriptions of the Orient in fairy tales, tourist brochures, Bollywood films, or similar sources are particularly prone to pick up on exoticist signals in their construction of Eastern cultures or textual worlds; their specific limited cultural competence allows them to embrace the exotic and ignore the rest. A similar evaluation of the crucial influence of readers’ (trans)cultural competence seems to underlie Bowers’s appreciation of the “unpredictability of the reader’s reception of magical realism” (127) and her conclusion that “[i]t seems that unless the reading public are aware of colonialism, its attitudes and its aftermath, then the possibility to take an exotic or escapist approach to magical realist narratives will remain” (127). Although this is certainly true, it would be wise to recognise also that awareness of colonialism and concomitant problems does not preclude exotic reading strategies. Yet how exactly does magic realism encourage exotic and escapist readings? And how precisely are magic realist texts affected by exoticism themselves? A brief analysis of exotic elements in Rushdie’s magic realist fiction will throw light on these points.

REPRESENTATION AND EXOTICISATION The relation between Rushdie’s oeuvre and the exotic is, fi rst and foremost, corroborated by the sheer quantity of exotic signals in his novels. References to orientalist iconography feature prominently: “Snake-charmers, genies, fakirs; elegant saris and crude spittoons—most of the familiar

Juicy Mangos, Sexy Spices 135 semiotic markers of Orientalism are on display” (Huggan 72). Particularly conspicuous are allusions to Indian food and spices, clothes, artefacts, Indian varieties of English, Indian religions and mythologies, traditions and folklore, tropical weather conditions, and what might be termed “the mysteries of the East” (Shame 128),4 a category which includes elements such as Shri Ramram Seth in his capacity as seer in Midnight’s Children (84–88), Omar Khayyam’s mesmerism in Shame (127–28, and throughout), Firdaus’s snake and Olga’s potato magic in Shalimar the Clown, and the occult powers of Qara Köz in The Enchantress of Florence. All of these are propelled into the foreground of the novels through constant repetition so that reminders of the oriental aspects of the cultures portrayed are nearubiquitous and the fictional worlds are characterised as exotic. That Rushdie caters at least partly to audiences with limited cultural competence as far as the cultural settings of his novels are concerned is obvious from the need (ever-present in his fiction) he feels to explain certain culture-specific words and concepts, such as in the following description of Ahmed Sinai’s godown: “And then there is, in the godown, Mr Butt’s stockpile, boxed in cartons bearing the words AAG BRAND. I do not need to tell you that aag means fi re” (Children 71). The fact that the translation of “aag” is disguised as a signal of communality between narrator and reader does not fool the reader as to its real purpose: to reveal to Rushdie’s non-informed readers the pun inherent in the link between the impending destruction by fi re of the godown and the name of the matches which will cause this calamity. Paradoxically, it is precisely through strategies such as this one that Rushdie partly encourages his Western readers to approach his novels with exoticist expectations since the explanations which his narrators off er implicitly highlight the differences between their own cultures and those of their audience. Under the guidance of characters such as Saleem, the “Orientalist merchant” (Huggan 72) par excellence, readers are pushed into the role of cultural outsiders watching an exotic spectacle. The exoticist markers which Rushdie deploys still consolidate this role since their familiarity activates a very specific type of cultural competence, based on exoticist competence, thus facilitating the appropriation of the textual world as exotic. Indeed, despite much academic effort, orientalism is still alive and thriving, and habitual signs of exoticism are readily recognisable and classifi able for the reader. Whereas for readers who recognise their own culture in Rushdie’s fictional worlds such signals might serve identificatory purposes comparable to the reality effect, readers less competent with respect to these cultures are likely to appreciate particularly the exotic fl amboyance of Rushdie’s writing, which teems with Indian cultural markers turned into commodities on the Western market. In a fashion typical of English Indian literature, references to Indian food, for instance, are virtually omnipresent in all varieties and in all of Rushdie’s novels—fi rst and foremost as Saleem’s chutneys, but also as dishes from

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various regions that are described or consumed, in depictions of cooks preparing famous traditional recipes with, frequently, an ample dose of nostalgia, and, most prominently in The Moor’s Last Sigh, in numerous references to spices. This last point is particularly significant in its orientalist creation of a link between exotic spices and eroticism since the association of sex with spices that pervades The Moor’s Last Sigh in leitmotif fashion, once the connotation between Indian spices and Aurora and Abraham’s “pepper love” (90) has been established, is indisputably exoticising, perpetuating one of the oldest orientalist clichés—that the East is “hot” in every sense of the word. The depiction of the East as sensuous is in tune with its representation as exotic and plays to readers’ exoticist expectations. Indian clothes, for instance, and notably women’s clothes, are sketched in ways which highlight eroticism by emphasising the beauty not only of the garment but also of its wearer, such as in the following quotation from Shame, which fi rst introduces Pinkie Aurangzeb, Isky’s mistress-to-be: Pinkie’s body, excitingly on display, in a green sari worn dangerously low upon the hips in the fashion of the women of the East Wing; with silver-and-diamond earrings in the form of crescent-and-star hanging brightly from pierced lobes; and bearing upon irresistibly vulnerable shoulders a light shawl whose miraculous work could only have been the product of the fabled embroiderers of Aansu, because amidst its miniscule arabesques a thousand and one stories had been portrayed in threads of gold, so vividly that it seemed the tiny horsemen were actually galloping along her collarbone, while minute birds appeared to be flying, actually flying, down the graceful meridian of her spine . . . this body is worth lingering over. (Shame 105; ellipsis in original) Pinkie’s body, in its markedly exotic outfit, is “on display” in a fashion symptomatic of how the female body becomes itself an oriental commodity in Rushdie’s fiction. The highlighting of Pinkie’s sensuality is, furthermore, significant in relation to the stereotypical presentation of the exotic subject as sexually licentious, which Said exposes as a recurrent subtext in orientalist discourse, claiming that what orientalists tend to imply in their writing is that what is really left to the Arab after all is said and done is an undifferentiated sexual drive. On rare occasions—as in the work of Leon Mugniery—we do fi nd the implicit made clear: that there is a “powerful sexual appetite . . . characteristic of those hot-blooded southerners.” Most of the time, however, the belittlement of Arab society and its reduction of platitudes inconceivable for any except

Juicy Mangos, Sexy Spices 137 the racially inferior are carried on over an undercurrent of sexual exaggeration: the Arab produces himself, endlessly, sexually, and little else. (311–12; ellipsis in original) In the light of Said’s observations, the foregrounding of sexuality and sensuality in Rushdie’s fiction and particularly in the portrayal of his female characters acquires special weight: it emerges as complicit with a powerful but also highly conservative strategy of corroborating orientalist clichés. This is taken to extremes in Shalimar the Clown, where the citizens of Pachigam organise a traditional performance for the American ambassador Max Ophuls, which is perceived by him, however, as an exotic spectacle. The centre of his attention is the exotic body of the young dancer Boonyi, who eventually leaves her husband and family and follows the ambassador, lured away by the promise of money, education, and fame. Thus Max Ophuls literally buys an exotic “object,” which he discards once their affair has gone stale due to Boonyi’s deliberate destruction of her own body in an attempt to defy this objectification. Boonyi’s is the tragedy of the (female) exotic subject reduced to external features. When she seeks to transcend her physicality and to escape discourses, as well as gazes, that defi ne her as nothing but body precisely by throwing her body at the best bidder, she is ostracised, morally condemned, and eventually killed for her readiness to sell what others have defi ned as her most precious possession.5 It is, of course, significant that Boonyi veils her disgust with Max’s usurpation of her own body with a critique of the Indian occupation of Kashmir (196–97). The construction of Rushdie’s exotic narrative universe naturally depends to a large extent on the setting of his novels, and indeed, the vivid depictions of Indian cities (fi rst and foremost, of course, Bombay) buzz with the rendition of exotic excess, which decisively distinguishes them from Rushdie’s other cities. The following description of Bombay, with which Saleem celebrates his re-acquaintance with “his” city after his fi rst Pakistani exile has fi nally come to an end, is a case in point: and then we were in a real Bombay black-and-yellow taxi, and I was wallowing in the sounds of hot-channa-hot hawkers, the throng of camels bicycles and people people people, thinking how Mumbadevi’s city made Rawalpindi look like a village, rediscovering especially the colours, the forgotten vividness of gulmohr and bougainvillaea, the livid green of the waters of the Mahalaxmi Temple ‘tank’, the stark black-and-white of the traffic policemen’s sun umbrellas and the blueand-yellowness of their uniforms; but most of all the blue blue blue of the sea . . . only the grey of my father’s stricken face distracted me from the rainbow riot of the city, and made me sober up. (Children 297; ellipsis in original)

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The vibrancy of Bombay makes Saleem drunk with sensual appeal; by the time he has crossed Bombay and is confronted with his ailing father, he has to “sober up.” With its insistence on the superabundance of colour, Saleem’s description of his ride through Bombay recalls the strategies employed to market oriental cities. In fact, his portrayal of Bombay reads like a verbalisation of the pictures of Indian cities displayed in tourist catalogues, which promise customers a sheer intoxication with exotic excess. Bright colours, vegetation, food, and the buzz of a highly populated city are all present, together with syntactic markers of excess: Bombay is full of “people people people” and the sea is not merely blue but “blue blue blue.” The vividness of Bombay is thus highlighted through elements that are conspicuously absent from descriptions of, for instance, London, which is repeatedly depicted as oppressive, “stifled and twisted,” and as “staring into the bleakness of its impoverished future” (Verses 320). As such, London offers a vision of decay and is completely devoid of colours. While exotic India is intoxicatingly colourful, vibrant, and attractive, non-exotic England is “a low dark shape below a low grey sky, distantly mooing with uninterest” (Ground 278).6 Notwithstanding the fact that large sections of Rushdie’s novels are not, actually, set on the Indian subcontinent, he persistently constructs his stories as oriental tales. Not least signifi cant in this respect are the numerous allusions to Indian myths and fairy tales, notably to The Arabian Nights, the oriental tale par excellence and one of the key texts of orientalism. As one of Rushdie’s most constant intertexts, The Arabian Nights is deeply complicit in conjuring up an exotic atmosphere. The number 1001 (or, in The Enchantress of Florence, 101) circles conspicuously through all of Rushdie’s fi ction, yet this is by no means the only strategy which keeps the intertextual connection active in the reader’s mind. Rushdie’s characters and narrators frequently resort to The Arabian Nights as a model of their own or other characters’ lives and compare their circumstances with events presented in The Arabian Nights, all to different effect. Sometimes this is perfectly sinister, as in Shalimar the Clown, where Kashmira Ophuls clothes her revenge on Shalimar in allusions to Scheherazade’s attempts to ward off death: “I am your black Scheherazade, she wrote. I will write to you without missing a day without missing a night not to save my life but to take yours to wind around you the poisonous snakes of my words until their fangs stab your neck. Or I am Prince Shahryar and you are my helpless virgin bride” (374). Mostly, however, Rushdie’s characters seek confi rmation of their own signifi cance in the parallels they construct between their own roles and Scheherazade’s. Saleem is virtually obsessed with such correspondences, and he endeavours to align himself and his tale with Scheherazade and her stories in the hope that this analogy will at last endow him with the “meaning” for which he longs (Children 9). Rai, the narrator of The Ground Beneath Her Feet and Saleem’s equal in his insistence on his

Juicy Mangos, Sexy Spices 139 own importance, casts himself in the role of Dunyazade, Scheherazade’s sister, to emphasise both the larger-than-life proportions of his tale and the validity of his own contribution (180). By drawing attention to the parallels between the prototypically oriental characters of The Arabian Nights and his own story, Rai orientalises his tale. The very same eff ect is achieved in The Satanic Verses, a novel densely populated with objects and characters from Scheherazade’s mysterious world: “a magic lamp, a brightly polished copper-and-brass avatar of Aladdin’s very own geniecontainer: a lamp begging to be rubbed” (36), the “djinns”—actually a league of eunuchs—who guard the prostitutes in Jahilia’s brothel (377), and the Arabic fairy-tale formula “Kan ma kan/Fi qadim azzaman” (143), translated in the novel as “It was so, it was not, in a time long forgot” (143), all seem to have sprung straight from the pages of The Arabian Nights, itself present as a book in Changez Chamchawala’s library. All of these allusions hark back to the ancient oriental tradition with which the novel seeks to align itself. This same impulse is also obvious in The Enchantress of Florence, where the various contexts of story-telling are clearly based on the model of Scheherazade, implicitly presenting The Arabian Nights not only as the oriental tale, but as the ultimate tale. That the wealth of orientalist markers in Rushdie’s fiction highlights the exotic aspects of his novels is obvious, as is the role which this emphasis assumes in partly encouraging exoticist or escapist readings. Yet to suppose that this complicity can conclusively explain the function of exotic signals in Rushdie’s magic realist fiction would be as fallacious as to simply deride Rushdie for his perpetuation of exoticist stereotypes. The next sections propose alternative readings of Rushdie’s engagement with the exotic.

“WHY I SHOULDN’T EMPLOY?” 7: STRATEGIC EXOTICISM IN RUSHDIE’S NOVELS Rushdie’s complicity with the commodifi cation of postcolonial products on a global market described in the preceding section is symptomatic of what Huggan has termed “the postcolonial exotic,” a phenomenon which he defi nes in terms of a confl ict between two opposing tendencies, both integral to the postcolonial condition: “The postcolonial exotic represents the interface between two apparently incompatible systems— the oppositional system of postcolonial resistance and the profit-driven system of the transnational culture industries and global trade” (263). The postcolonial exotic, Huggan insists, “is very much central to the postcolonial field” (31), and writers, like all other producers of postcolonial cultural items, are faced with the dilemma of how to address and react to its reactionary force—“what,” Huggan asks, “is it possible for

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postcolonial writers/thinkers to do about the postcolonial exotic?” (32). Indeed, various possible strategies of dis/engagement exist, the most productive of which, Huggan suggests, might be what he proposes to call “strategic exoticism” (32). Strategic exoticism is at play when writers, aware of the conditions influencing their own cultural production, consciously inhabit the “systems of representation” (Huggan 32) at their disposal while simultaneously deconstructing them through subtle subversion. In practice, this can mean that the very orientalist clichés which are implicated in the commodifi cation of postcolonial literatures are deployed by writers in a decidedly tongue-in-cheek manner. Through the subtle manipulation of exoticist stereotypes readers are tricked into assuming a voyeuristic position towards orientalised fictional worlds, only to be confronted with their roles as consumers of cultural alterity. Hence the ironic fl avour that characterises much of the most boldly exotic iconography of Rushdie’s fi ction, and which eff ects in the reader a recognition of his or her own interpretive stance towards the text as an exotic cultural commodity. Readers’ self-awareness as consumers of exoticist stereotypes causes them to distance themselves from the blatant clichés exploited in the texts, rendering their relationship to orientalist markers highly uncomfortable, and leading, ideally, to a recognition of the constructed nature of a system of representation that relies on such signifi ers. The subversion of exoticist discourse in Rushdie’s fiction, whether playfully ironic, cannily cheeky, or acidly sarcastic, tends to ridicule exoticising readings, seeking to disclose their naivety. More or less subtly, readers are warned against falling into exoticist traps, as the narrators simultaneously work towards constructing and deconstructing oriental(ist) textual worlds. Saleem, for instance, always eager to test what levels of outrageousness Padma, his Indian audience’s spokesperson, is willing to accept, and continually moulding his tale to her tolerance of superstition, playfully ironises exoticist attitudes by giving voice to orientalist sentiments in a manner that invites ridicule through its sheer exaggeration and blatancy: But no literate person in this India of ours can be wholly immune from the type of information I am in the process of unveiling—no reader of our national press can have failed to come across a series of—admittedly lesser—magic children and assorted freaks. Only last week there was that Bengali boy who announced himself as the reincarnation of Rabindranath Tagore and began to extemporize verses of remarkable quality, to the amazement of his parents; and I can myself remember children with two heads (sometimes one human, one animal), and other curious features such as bullock’s horns. (Children 197)

Juicy Mangos, Sexy Spices 141 Tongue fi rmly in cheek, Saleem makes fun of orientalist myths that create and consolidate impressions of India as a wonder-full country, exposing them as hopelessly inadequate. Saleem’s contention of having seen two-headed children with “bullock’s horns” is reminiscent of medieval accounts of newly discovered and emphatically other(ed) continents and islands which, despite their claims to authenticity, are utterly fantastic, forfeiting all reliability as realistic representations of the new world. Michael Ondaatje includes one such depiction of Sri Lanka in Running in the Family, the fictional biography of his family, as an epigraph: “I saw in this island fowls as big as our country geese having two heads . . . and other miraculous things which I will not here write of.” Oderic, (Franciscan Friar, 14th century)

Oderic’s account of Sri Lankan poultry can be safely discarded as far as its reliability is concerned, but it is of interest as an example of a powerful tradition of representation that for centuries helped convey and construct images of the East as “miraculous.” It is this very tradition that Saleem gleefully exploits in ridiculing the familiar trope of two-headedness as a symbol of the ontological otherness of India, thereby, and in his sweeping generalisation, highlighting the inadequateness of such a view. Hence orientalist approaches towards the East are manipulated by Saleem for his own contradictory purposes: while using them to render the existence of the midnight’s children more plausible, he simultaneously exaggerates exoticist clichés and their underlying assumptions in ways which reveal their inappropriateness. Whereas Saleem deconstructs exoticist expectations with playful irony, the mutual clichés at work in encounters of East and West are criticised rather more sarcastically in the following episode from The Satanic Verses. On board the doomed Bostan, Saladin meets Eugene Dumsday, an American anti-Darwinist returning from a lecture in India in which he tried to persuade his audience of the dangers of Darwinist reasoning. Darwin’s theories, so Dumsday claims, severely depress the American youth by highlighting their simian ancestry, thus causing both their lack of sexual restraint and deplorable drug habits. This attitude and his naive belief that Indian audiences will happily embrace his views are heavily ridiculed in the depiction of how “those good people” (76) completely ignore Dumsday and start talking while his lecture is still in progress. More serious criticism, however, is directed at Saladin, the colonial subject turned traitor to his country of origin, who, like the “innocent ox” Dumsday (76), would have expected a more positive Indian echo to Dumsday’s theory. Yet India’s revenge for such exoticisation is vicious in its very indifference, and the heaviest blow is, after all, directed at Dumsday, hitting him squarely when he is forced to realise

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that Indians associate him with the very aspects of American society which he abhors: He had been accosted, at the end of a cruise around the magnificent natural harbour of Cochin, to which Vasco da Gama had come in search of spices and to set in motion the whole ambiguous history of east-andwest, by an urchin full of pssts and hey-mister-okays. ‘Hi there, yes! You want hashish, sahib? Hey misteramerica. Yes, unclesam, you want opium, best quality, top price? Okay, you want cocaine?’ (76) Dumsday cannot escape being associated with what he detests: for Indians, he is immediately identifi able as an American, just another one in an endless line of enlightenment-seeking tourists who, in fl eeing the West, inevitably come to represent the very society they despise. Hence the fervent deconstruction of Dumsday’s exoticist naivety through the confrontation with stereotypical notions about his own culture, which forms his true welcome to India.8 That “the exotic is not, as is often supposed, an inherent quality to be found ‘in’ certain people, distinctive objects, or specific places” but a matter of “aesthetic perception” (Huggan 13) is highlighted in Rushdie’s fiction by his insistence on the significance of context for exotic representation. This is quite clear in the privileging of the Mughal emperor Akbar’s perspective on the West in The Enchantress of Florence. Faced with the wonders of the West as Mogor dell’Amore relates them, Akbar becomes convinced not only of its backwardness, as in the case of the heliocentric world picture, long accepted by his own culture but still regarded as heresy in the West, but also of its absurdity and exoticism: The emperor, listening to Mogor dell’Amore as he told his story, understood that the lands of the West were exotic and surreal to a degree incomprehensible to the humdrum people of the East. In the East men and women worked hard, lived well or badly, died noble or ignoble deaths, believed in faiths that engendered great art, great poetry, great music, some consolation and much confusion. Normal human lives, in sum. But in those fabulous Western climes people seemed prone to hysterias—such as the Weeper hysteria in Florence—that swept through their countries like diseases and transformed things utterly without warning. Of late the worship of gold had engendered a special type of this extreme hysteria, which had become their history’s driving force. (329) That the East is turned into an extraordinary spectacle in the eyes of Westerners is a familiar mechanism, but here this strategy is reversed, and it is the West that is represented as exotic and strange. Although Akbar is unequivocal about his evaluation of the West as “incomprehensible”

Juicy Mangos, Sexy Spices 143 and “prone to hysterias,” however, what we witness in this passage is not mere reversal, by which the Eastern subject claims superior logic and rationality. On the contrary, Akbar clearly acknowledges that “much confusion” is a “normal” aspect of human life; exoticism is a matter of degree and perspective. Such a view of exoticism also informs the following description of Mirza Saeed’s house Peristan in The Satanic Verses, whose exoticism, the narrator insists, is a mere effect of its failure to merge with its surroundings: The house: in spite of its faery name, it was a solid, rather prosy building, rendered exotic only by being in the wrong country. It had been built seven generations ago by a certain Perowne, an English architect much favoured by the colonial authorities, whose only style was that of the neo-classical English country-house. . . . so here Peristan now stood, in the middle of near-tropical potato fi elds and beside the great banyan-tree, covered in bougainvillaea creeper, with snakes in the kitchens and butterfly skeletons in the cupboards. Some said its name owed more to the Englishman’s than to anything more fanciful: it was a mere contraction of Perownistan. (230) This is an instance of Western exoticism turned on its head: its apparent prosiness notwithstanding, in an Indian context it is the European edifice that becomes exotic. The exotic is solely an effect of context, and of the observer’s perspective; as the case of Peristan clearly demonstrates, it does not relate to any essential quality of a person or object. The image of a snake- and butterfly-infested Peristan overgrown with bougainvillaea creeper, furthermore, emphasises the reciprocal character of exoticism, and is thus in tune with one of the central tenets of Said’s Orientalism, namely that “like any set of durable ideas, orientalist notions influenced the people who were called Orientals as well as those called Occidental, European, or Western” (42). As a symbol of the transformation of the coloniser through the colonised, Peristan demonstrates that the construction of orientalist discourse does not leave the observer intact and that in the encounter of East and West, both parties are changed, regardless of whether they are aware of this process or not. What happens when reader and text enter into a dialogue of exoticism forms the subject of the next section.

INTERRELATIONS: MAGIC REALISM AND EXOTICISM I will now turn to another manner in which Rushdie employs exoticism strategically yet which differs fundamentally from the strategies Huggan suggests. The preceding sections have shown that Rushdie’s fiction contains a plethora of exotic markers which facilitate the construction of exotic worlds through the reader. I have also highlighted the importance of readers’ ontological

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systems in the reception of magic realism and argued for their ability to influence the evaluation of texts as magic realist by different readers. Fusing these two arguments allows one to perceive a connection between the exotic and magic, an associative link which I believe postcolonial magic realist writers and their publishers have incorporated into their writing and marketing strategies. In fact, in the Western imagination, the Orient is linked to magic and mystery through a long history of aesthetic perception in which the East was promoted as a realm full of wonders, an a-mimetic site where anything might happen. Partially, the aura of infinite possibility which surrounds Western visions of the East is an effect of the—formerly very real, now to some extent “merely” discursive—distance between East and West, as Haddad explains in her delineation of the sources and the evolution of orientalism (4–6). Among the reasons she gives for the extraordinary impact of fairy tales and travelogues on the conception of the East in nineteenth-century Britain is the fact that the Orient was too far removed from the average British experiential horizon to check narrative sources against empirical evidence, a situation which facilitated the mythologisation of the mysterious East due to a lack of contradictory evidence.9 The presentation of the East as mysterious is also intricately connected with the seminal impact of The Arabian Nights on the British imagination and the decisive role this collection of fairy tales played in early orientalism.10 Frances Mannsåker draws attention to the fact that the publication of The Arabian Nights “largely pre-dates the scholarly and the experienced discoveries” of the East (qtd. in Haddad 4). Hence The Arabian Nights “is able to establish the terms for Europe’s interpretation of the East. It is understood to represent with exciting accuracy the places it portrays” (Haddad 4). Simultaneously, however, the world of The Arabian Nights is removed from the European experiential horizon, and, accordingly, also from European empirical constraints. The image of the Orient promoted through The Arabian Nights is therefore complicit in establishing the East as a literary space liberated, in the European imagination, from the limitations of verisimilitude.11 Despite persistent attempts by postcolonial studies to demystify the East and deconstruct orientalist stereotypes, orientalism is, today, thriving, and the partial equation of India with mystery and magic which it promotes generates in the reader a higher tolerance of magic. Through the long tradition of seeing the Orient as a place of wonders and magic as an integral component of the oriental experience, the ground is, so to speak, prepared for the development of the supernatural code of magic realism. Fictional events which might be rejected as impossible by Western readers against the backdrop of their own world will be integrated far less reluctantly into their visions of an exotic India. The relationship between magic (realism) and the exotic is reciprocal: if magic and magic realism conjure up notions of the exotic, the exotic also provokes expectations of magic. Such readings are often consciously provoked by writers through references to “indigenous magic” (D’haen 198), inviting readers to apply their

Juicy Mangos, Sexy Spices 145 stereotypical ideas of native forms of magic to fictional texts in order to overcome Western epistemological constraints which might pose barriers to interpretation. Huggan’s concept of strategic exoticism seeks to demonstrate that such approaches are partly ironised in the texts themselves in ways which expose their exoticist prejudice, and the following quotation from Midnight’s Children illustrates this technique well; however, it simultaneously shows how expectations of magic in an exotic context influence the supernatural code and facilitate its implementation. The passage describes Amina Sinai’s visit to the seer Shri Ramram Seth, who will prophesise her son Saleem’s birth and life. Amina’s encounter with Shri Ramram Seth starts with a pseudo-supernatural event which demonstrates clearly how Rushdie both teases his readers by exposing their exoticist gullibility and exploits this very gullibility in constructing the supernatural code: A small room, on the far side of the roof. Light streams through the door as Amina enters . . . to find, inside, a man the same age as her husband, a heavy man with several chins, wearing white stained trousers and a red check shirt and no shoes, munching aniseed and drinking from a bottle of Vimto, sitting cross-legged in a room on whose walls are pictures of Vishnu in each of his avatars, and notices reading, writing taught, and spitting during visit is quite a bad habit. There is no furniture . . . and Shri Ramram Seth is sitting cross-legged, six inches above the ground. (Children 84; ellipses in original) This description of the seer “floating in mid-air” (Children 86) is preceded by Amina’s journey through the corridors that lead her to Shri Ramram Seth’s flat, a journey that takes her past a plethora of orientalist emblems, prominently displayed and hence complicit in activating exoticist stereotypes. Figures that resemble “monkeys dancing; mongeese leaping; snakes swaying in baskets” (84) are all present, accompanying Amina on her path towards the prophecy as semiotic signals that prepare the ground for the smoother introduction of magic. Yet the magic is fake, a mere trick employed by the seer, who is really sitting on a little shelf, creating the impression of levitating in a marketing strategy supposed to lend him a constructed mask of authenticity. Together with Amina—“I must admit it: to her shame, my mother screamed” (84)—readers are fooled by their exoticist expectations, shamed by having been tricked into revealing their orientalist paradigms by Saleem, the “Orientalist merchant” (Huggan 72) par excellence. And still the situation is not as straightforward as it is made to appear, for the seer eventually succumbs to the myth of authenticity in spite of himself, fulfilling orientalist expectations when he fi nally utters the prophecy. The ensuing confusion of his cousins—a clear instance of ironised exoticism— amply demonstrates that what orientalism classifies as “authentic” is, in the context of Rushdie’s modern India, not merely inauthentic, but highly

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unsettling. Hence the deep perturbation of the alleged representatives of authentic India, “snake-charmer mongoose-dancer bone-setter and peepshow-wallah” (Children 87), when their “cousinji” (87) makes what undeniably sounds like an actual prophecy. Their reaction—“‘Deo, Shiva, guard us!’” (87)—defi nes this event as not only unusual but unwelcome, revealing that for them, exoticism functions merely as a mask which lends itself to profitable exploitation as a marketing strategy, without bearing any resemblance to their actual reality. Nevertheless, the reader’s exoticist expectations are, in this scene, ultimately confi rmed, since in making a prophecy the seer fulfils precisely the role which orientalism allots him. Hence the reinforcement of the associative link between the exotic and magic, which Rushdie exploits in the construction of his magic realist fictional worlds, but which he simultaneously also helps cement. In this respect, the role of the manner in which his texts are marketed is also worth considering.

PACKAGING MAGIC REALISM: THE PARATEXT I will now shift my focus to the material aspect of Rushdie’s novels, and I will analyse the fi rst contact between Rushdie’s reader and his books through a discussion of their covers,12 paying particular attention to how this initial stage of connection is significant for Rushdie’s texts and potentially pre-determines the reader’s approach to his fi ction. As in the preceding section, my argument is twofold: I will examine the activation of exoticist paradigms through the covers of Rushdie’s books both for the expectations it raises in his readers and for the role it plays in the context of the commodification of Rushdie’s postcolonial fiction on the literary market.

Exotic Packaging and Magic Realism Just as in my discussion of exoticist signals in Rushdie’s texts, my contention that the covers of Rushdie’s novels influence the reader’s perception of his fi ction is based on a connection between exoticist elements and the reader’s increased tolerance of magic. The exotic markers displayed on the covers evoke exoticist expectations in the readers, and since mystery and magic are integral parts of such expectations, these markers can induce readers to designate the books as potentially magic, hence facilitating the development of the supernatural code of Rushdie’s fi ction already in the fi rst encounter between book and reader.13 A brief description of the cover designs of Rushdie’s magic realist novels will highlight the sheer plethora of orientalist markers displayed on the books, as well as the particular variety of exoticist clichés which they exploit and perpetuate.

Juicy Mangos, Sexy Spices 147 In the 1990s, Vintage, an imprint of the Random House Group, created a very specific design for one of its paperback editions of Rushdie’s novels, whose particular colour coordination and pictorial structure allows three of them—Grimus (see figure 6.1), Midnight’s Children (see figure 6.2), and Shame (see figure 6.3)—to be identified as works by Rushdie immediately.

Figure 6.1

Grimus. London: Vintage, 1996.

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Exploring Magic Realism in Salman Rushdie’s Fiction

Figure 6.2

Midnight’s Children. London: Vintage, 1995.

Juicy Mangos, Sexy Spices 149

Figure 6.3

Shame. London: Vintage, 1995.

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Exploring Magic Realism in Salman Rushdie’s Fiction

The equivalent cover design of The Satanic Verses (see figure 6.4) is similar in its colour scheme, and one could almost argue for the existence of a “Rushdie line” if it were not for the utter incongruity of the covers of The Moor’s Last Sigh (see figure 6.5) and The Ground Beneath Her Feet (see figure 6.6).14

Figure 6.4

The Satanic Verses. London: Vintage, 1998.

Juicy Mangos, Sexy Spices 151

Figure 6.5 The Moor’s Last Sigh. London: Vintage, 1996 (first British edition; Jonathan Cape, 1995).

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Figure 6.6

The Ground Beneath Her Feet. London: Vintage, 2000.

Juicy Mangos, Sexy Spices 153 Nevertheless, with the exception of The Ground Beneath Her Feet, one can, in the cover illustrations of these editions, perceive the typical details of a style of packaging Rushdie’s—and also other postcolonial writers’— magic realist novels, which thrives on the appeal of oriental art. The covers of Grimus, Shame, and Midnight’s Children display in the foreground the painting of a single dominating object that is set off against a background of lush colours. Grimus sports a dark blue triangle, presumably a symbolic representation of Calf Mountain, the main setting and focus of desire in the novel, against a background of deep red. The cover of Midnight’s Children depicts a large golden clock against a dark blue backdrop which seems to symbolise a night sky, pointing to the hour of Saleem’s and the midnight children’s birth. Shame, fi nally, displays an animal that represents Sufiya Zinobia as the white panther against a bright yellow background. In all three cases, the objects displayed in the foreground bear some relation to the texts of the novels. The style in which they are depicted, however, is reminiscent of oriental art, and this is also true of the background of the cover illustrations. The rich colours that dominate the cover designs—deep red, dark blue, rich golden/yellow—are in themselves reminiscent of clichéd views of the Orient as distinguished through the sensual excess of colours,15 and such exoticist associations are heightened by a plethora of orientalist markers. The clock on the cover of Midnight’s Children is adorned with various oriental letters and symbols, most prominent among which is the painting of a manyarmed figure which is attached to the clock by a long vertical staff and depicted in a style reminiscent of oriental pictorial archetypes. The orientalness of the figure is emphasised by the shape of its eyes, its posture, the jewellery it wears, and its blue skin, which suggests that it might be a portrayal of the god Krishna. Corresponding staff s holding similar exotic emblems also play a decisive role in exoticising the covers of Grimus and Shame. The Arabic symbol and the little orientalist emblems in the bottom foreground of the cover of Grimus, the decorative exotic flowers and other signals of what one might, in analogy with Stanley Fish, call “boutique exoticism” on the cover of Shame, the mythical fi gure and the reference to the hour of midnight on the cover of Midnight’s Children—all of these elements create an orientalist fl air and prepare readers for magic rather than purely realistic forms of representation. If in the case of the Vintage editions of Grimus, Midnight’s Children, and Shame readers’ exoticist paradigms are activated through allusions to oriental art, Vintage’s The Moor’s Last Sigh (see figure 6.5) and the Picador edition of The Ground Beneath Her Feet exploit another aspect of exoticism for the designation of Rushdie’s novels as exotic. The cover illustrations of these two novels play with anthropological orientalist stereotypes,

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depicting paintings and photographs of people whose facial features are clearly oriental. The cover illustration of The Moor’s Last Sigh, (which, with the exception of the latest Vintage edition, is virtually identical in all available editions of the novel) shows on the left the face of a figure whose gender is not quite clear but whose racial affiliation is obvious, clearly marked as oriental through its conformity with exoticist clichés: the shape of the figure’s eyes is stereotypically Eastern, and their position in the very centre of the cover secures their impact as a prime focus of attention, with the black eyelashes, eyebrows, and hair, the full lips and the golden skin consolidating the orientalist effect. A highly similar strategy is employed on the cover of the Picador edition of The Ground Beneath Her Feet, which displays the portrait of a woman designated as exotic in corresponding terms. The only visible part of her face are her eyes, which thus again form the focus of the exotic face and are marked as oriental in shape and colour. The woman holds a broken record which half covers her face and which can be read as a visual metaphor for both a fan and a burqa. Both these readings foreground the Easternness of the figure, albeit in diametrically opposed manners: whereas an interpretation of the record as a fan puts emphasis on exotic sensuality, expressed through the furtively inviting look of the female figure and the allure of her ambiguous position as half exposed and half hidden—a crucial element of the appeal of the exotic in general—a reading of the broken record as a metaphorical burqa highlights cultural/religious hostility to the open display of sensuality. In addition to such exotic markers, fantastic and mythical elements feature prominently on both covers. The right half of the cover illustration of The Moor’s Last Sigh is taken up by a sultan on a horse, probably Boabdil, one of the two characters to which the “Moor” in the title of the novel refers, who is not only markedly exotic in both his outfit and his wild demeanour but, in the way in which he and his horse seem to grow out of fi re and merge with the enigmatic face displayed on the left, evocative of the supernatural. Slightly more subtly, the supernatural is also present in the mythical figure of the three-headed Cerberus displayed on the broken record on the cover of The Ground Beneath Her Feet, which conjures up a wealth of classical myths. The Ground Beneath Her Feet is a novel with a dual appeal; it is both a rewriting of the Orpheus myth and a celebration of popular culture. The various editions of the novel do credit to this fact, emphasising one or the other, or even both, of these two aspects in their cover designs. Whereas the Cerberus figure displayed on most of the editions of the novel plays on the mythical resonances of the story,16 the Vintage edition (see figure 6.6) presents the novel as a product of popular musical culture.17 Another edition representative of this trend of packaging The Ground Beneath Her Feet is the fi rst British edition of the novel, described above (see figure 6.7).

Juicy Mangos, Sexy Spices 155

Figure 6.7 The Ground Beneath Her Feet. London: Jonathan Cape, 1999 (first British edition).

156 Exploring Magic Realism in Salman Rushdie’s Fiction In both of these cover designs, the lyre is presented as a signifier of trendy popular culture rather than mythology. In the case of Midnight’s Children, we are faced with a similar situation: here, too, various marketing trends exist which can be traced back to the multifaceted appeal of the novel. In fact, the various methods of packaging Midnight’s Children seem to be related to the two main strands of criticism which Rushdie’s oeuvre has attracted—the postmodern and the postcolonial. As evident from the preceding analysis, most of the cover illustrations of Rushdie’s novels I have managed to sample highlight their alliance to non-Western cultural traditions, indicating that Rushdie is mainly promoted and received as a postcolonial author, and it is these covers that corroborate the connection between the exotic and magic realism. Orientalised covers label Rushdie’s texts as “other,” and this seems to be a category that, from the perspective of the cultural outsider, not only the exotic but also magic can conveniently fi ll. Magic is “the other” of reading experiences shaped by a realist tradition, and as such the designation of Rushdie’s novels as “different” proves, in its exploitation of the connotative affi nities of the categories “exotic,” “magic,” and “other,” an effective marketing tool. In emphasising the interconnections between exotic and magic literatures, it allows each category to profit from the other: the exotic aspect becomes even more alluring in its allusions to magic worlds, and the attractiveness of the magic aspect is enhanced by the added exotic fl air. I know of only three exceptions to this general trend, two of which are editions of Midnight’s Children, and the other the fi rst edition of Shalimar the Clown (see figure 6.9). The lack of exotic signals on the editions of Midnight’s Children, in particular, is conspicuous, because it occurs on two editions of the novel which occupy prominent positions—the fi rst British edition and the Jonathan Cape Booker 25th Anniversary edition of the novel. Published to celebrate the success of Midnight’s Children as winner of the Best of Bookers award for the best novel to have won the Booker Prize in its fi rst twenty-five years, this edition focuses exclusively on the status of the novel as a Booker Prize winner. The cover is completely de-ethnicised: Rushdie’s name and the title of the novel are set off in black letters against a uniformly white background, which lends the cover an air of deliberate exclusiveness. The cover discloses nothing about the novel, emphasising only its status as a prize winner. Even more noteworthy in its sheer uniqueness is the fi rst British edition of Midnight’s Children (see figure 6.8), indicative of a trend entirely different from that of the main corpus of Rushdie editions in its virtual lack of exoticist and inclusion of postmodernist markers. Far from conjuring up postcolonial paradigms, the cover design is reminiscent of surreal paintings in the style of Salvador Dalí, and is, as such, ideal for the packaging of a magic realist novel. The illustration on the

Juicy Mangos, Sexy Spices 157

Figure 6.8 edition).

Midnight’s Children. London: Jonathan Cape, 1981 (first British

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Exploring Magic Realism in Salman Rushdie’s Fiction

front of the dust jacket is emphatically non-realistic, hence preparing readers for, or rather leading them to expect, a not quite realistic story: four half dials bearing the upper left quarters of the faces of a man and a woman retreat into the background of the painting where they are erased by the sun emerging from the sea. The dreamscape-like quality of the illustration is enhanced not only by the fact that the eyes of the two faces in the foreground are closed and the figures seem to be asleep, but also by the manner in which the various clocks reflect each other in a visualised mise en abyme. In addition to its surreal appeal, the dust jacket contains a variety of signifiers which align it with postmodernism. The motif of the repeated dials emphasises the significance of time and highlights the transitoriness of existence, an effect which is still increased as the faces are literally inscribed onto the clocks. The subtle changes that transform the clocks as they retreat into the background of the painting represent the changes wrought by the passage of time and the uncertainty of memory, one of the main concerns of both postmodernism and Midnight’s Children. Also part of the postmodern tradition are the fusion of human subject and mechanical object, the mirror-effect created by the repetition of the clocks, and the slight slippages which turn the dials into representations of difference through sameness.18 The postmodern quality of the cover illustration is highly revealing, since as the packaging of the fi rst edition of Rushdie’s fi rst internationally acclaimed novel, the work with which Rushdie entered the international literary scene, this dust jacket suggests that Rushdie’s publishers initially intended to promote him as a fi rmly postmodern author. In highlighting the postmodern aspects of the novel, they chose to ignore, at least on the peritextual level, the postcolonial elements of Midnight’s Children, marketing it instead as a product of postmodernist culture, at that point probably more trendy. Hence Rushdie’s annexation by postcolonial studies can be regarded as a direct consequence of the reception of his novel(s) and as a development that only commenced after the publication and success of Midnight’s Children.19 That the publishing industry reacted to this phenomenon virtually immediately is evident in the rapid emergence of exotically inspired covers for Rushdie’s novels, prompted by orientalising marketing strategies to be examined in what follows.

Exotic Packaging and Commodification We saw earlier that the texts of Rushdie’s novels simultaneously undermine and perpetuate exoticist clichés. Their covers are more unambiguously in tune with such stereotypes, since although they tend to reproduce thematic aspects of the novels, these are, once decontextualised, represented through the lens of exoticism. The cover of Shame provides a good illustration of

Juicy Mangos, Sexy Spices 159 this phenomenon, as it shows how shocking material can be rendered harmless through the influence of exoticising elements. The cover of Shame (see figure 6.3) is thematically inspired (it shows Sufiya Zinobia as the white panther, as well as mutilated hands which relate to Raza’s re-introduction of Islamic law, and to the general goriness of the story), but in the fi rst contact between novel and reader this thematic link is negligible, since the actual thematic significance of the various contextual elements on the cover is not revealed, and their narrative function remains veiled. Through the introduction of additional decorative emblems the cover is aestheticised and exoticised, and the threatening impact of the illustration is minimised. Shame is a dark and sarcastic critique of Pakistani politics, which it condemns for its arbitrary brutality and senseless bloodshed. On the cover of the novel, however, symbols of barbarity are transformed into mere exotic markers and lose their political content; they become harmless. Once more we are reminded of Huggan’s characterisation of exoticism as a strategy that manages to conceal the political subversiveness of “the other.” A similar process can be observed in the comparison of various editions of Shalimar the Clown. The cover illustration of the fi rst edition of this novel (see figure 6.9) is interesting insofar as Shalimar was Rushdie’s fi rst magic realist novel since Midnight’s Children not immediately marked peritextually as exotic. The cover depicts what is probably a soldier running through fog on a mountain path. Does this indicate the inception of a new, non-exotic trend of marketing Rushdie’s novels? The new Vintage edition of Rushdie’s novels mentioned above makes such a conclusion seem highly unlikely. What seems more likely is that due to their topicality at the moment of the publication of Shalimar the Clown, war and terror were recognised as excellent marketing devices that lent themselves well to the recruiting of a new readership for Rushdie’s novel(s). The new cover of Shalimar the Clown (see figure 6.10) is as exotically marked as all the other novels in the latest Vintage edition, and even though large parts of the novel are set in Los Angeles and various parts of Europe, it is, of course, the pre-confl ict Kashmiri episodes of the story which have inspired the design. The cover illustration shows two dancing figures in traditional costume, hence privileging what is a relatively short part of the novel—the depiction of traditional Kashmiri festivals and art—and ignoring the textual focus on terrorism. Again, what is a fairly pessimistic and disillusioned novel about violence, destruction, and terror is packaged with exotic allure. The defusion of subversiveness is, arguably, also an effect of the imitation of typical features of traditional oriental art on postcolonial book covers, which betrays their complicity in the construction of postcolonial literary products as “authentic.” Despite its problematic nature, authenticity is a powerful commercial tool, a reliable means of attracting readers, for whom it seems to hold special allure. It is, furthermore, a

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Figure 6.9 Shalimar the Clown. London: Jonathan Cape, 2005 (first British edition).

Juicy Mangos, Sexy Spices 161

Figure 6.10

Shalimar the Clown. London: Vintage, 2006.

VINTAGE

'A brilliant symphony ...Exceptional... One of Rushdie's best novels yet' Independent

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particularly profitable marketing strategy for magic realism, since magic realist literature, in promoting “other” perceptions of reality, is often perceived as an authentic form of Third World literature opposed to Western traditions. Magic realist novels, then, tend to be doubly marked as authentic, by their packaging and by their very genre. Hence the path is free for readers to approach magic realist literature as “genuine,” that is, in terms of a “familiar, domesticated difference” (Huggan 159) which provides them with a paradigm for easy consumption. Reading a gory and sarcastic magic realist tale such as Shame or a war novel such as Shalimar the Clown as authentic to another culture allows readers to satisfy their voyeuristic sensationalism from a safe distance, which ensures that subversive tendencies are safely contained in the category of the “genuine other” while readers’ own cultures, and their perceptions thereof, remain untouched. The close yet uncomfortable association of magic realist fiction with authenticity—still emphasised by orientalist packaging—is thus effective not only as a commodifying strategy but also in terms of the reduction of the politically explosive content of novels such as Shame. The subversive agenda of texts that challenge postcolonial hegemonies is neglected in favour of their promotion as “ethnographic realism” (Muecke qtd. in Huggan 160), which promises insights into genuinely exotic societies. Although such marketing strategies might increase the attractiveness of magic realist and other “exotic” literatures on the popular Western literary market, they simultaneously deny such literatures any broader representativeness. It would be nonsensical, of course, to overestimate the impact of paratextual elements and suggest that the manner in which books are read is dictated by their cover illustrations. But such illustrations do provide one of the fi rst clues as to what kind of text lies hidden between front and back cover, and as such they are able to raise certain initial expectations in readers, thereby steering them in particular directions. If it were not for my contention that the supernatural code of magic realism profits from the presence of exotic markers on book covers, my evaluation of the obvious orientalisation of the peritext of postcolonial magic realist books would be fairly negative. That postcolonial literatures still need to fl aunt exotic allure in order to increase their marketing potential is frustrating. That they are complicit in the perpetuation of exoticist clichés is worrying. And yet, maybe my own stance is too Eurocentric to appreciate the ambiguity of those peritextual symbols which I have categorised as exotic. After all, the covers of Indian editions of Indian literature are not necessarily particularly different from their international counterparts, suggesting that what I have classifi ed as exotic denotes, perhaps, mere cultural familiarity to Indian readers. 20 And occasionally even book covers demonstrate playful engagement with the instability of the exotic. The dust jacket of The Enchantress of Florence (see figure 6.11) is a case in point.

Juicy Mangos, Sexy Spices 163

Figure 6.11 The Enchantress of Florence. London: Jonathan Cape, 2008 (first British edition).

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At fi rst glance, the cover design is dominated by details from Mughal paintings, and it seems easy to categorise it with other cover illustrations which feature oriental art. Closer scrutiny, however, reveals that in the case of The Enchantress of Florence the iconographic signals are more complex. Although a number of figures from Mughal works of art are reproduced on the cover, the rear inside flap of the dust jacket also sports a detail of three male figures from an Italian Renaissance painting, isolated in similar fashion and thus brought into direct conversation with their more oriental counterparts. Even more interestingly, the ornaments which adorn the cover and which might at fi rst sight simply be interpreted in connection with the general oriental setup are actually taken from the parchment of a Medici Psalter, as the source references on the back cover indicate. Hence the painting of a Mughal girl receiving a lover is supported by two cherubs on the front of the dust jacket, and Romanesque heads wreathed in laurel as well as more cherubs peer out of the ornamental frame in an act of ironic hybridity. As in the passages quoted above, the exotic is shown to be a matter of context and of perspective.

A POSTCOLONIAL AESTHETICS? RECUPERATING “THE EXOTIC” The preceding sections of this chapter have engaged with questions of subversion and complicity which characterise the troubled relationship between exotic markers and exoticism in Rushdie’s fiction. I have suggested that Rushdie’s texts do both: although they undermine exoticist discourse and expose exoticist mindsets, they simultaneously perpetuate them. At this point, however, it is necessary to acknowledge a lacuna at the heart of my argument, a lacuna constituted by my failure so far to address a fundamental question that goes to the very heart of the exotic: the question of where the exotic originates. This question opens up a different dimension of the preceding discussion of exoticism, since it holds the potential to radically shift the emphasis of the critique of exoticism. When we read a text and fi nd it exotic, where does the exotic actually reside—in the text itself (or in its author) or in us, its readers? This is a crucial question, since it forces us to reconsider our own stance towards, indeed our own role in, the postcolonial exotic. I touched upon this issue earlier when I suggested that markers which are interpreted as signs of the exotic by Western readers might be closer in function to the reality effect for readers originating from the culture portrayed. Indeed, what appears as exotic to some readers might be mere everyday objects to others. Saris, spices, chutneys, and mangoes are markers of specific cultural traditions, but why need they automatically also be markers of exoticism? Given that these are indeed elements of everyday life and, hence, completely devoid of exoticist connotations for many readers, we need to inquire how they come to refer to the exotic in the context of some literary

Juicy Mangos, Sexy Spices 165 texts. Do writers highlight such objects in a specific way, hence rendering them noticeably exotic? Or is it the specific context in which they appear in certain texts that gives them an exotic flair? Or else, perhaps, is the exotic an effect of certain readings? Although I have, up to now, contemplated the exotic through the agents of author/publisher and text, the remaining part of this chapter will shift its focus onto the role of text-reader interaction in the exoticisation of literature. To be precise, I will concentrate on how even the critique of exoticism can be regarded as a symptom of readerly exoticisation more than as a challenge to it. This chapter has, so far, sought to elucidate the manner in which Rushdie’s magic realist novels relate to the discourse of exoticism. Such a critique, however, itself risks becoming a further symptom of the postcolonial exotic if it omits to subject its own position to scrutiny. As readers, critics of the exotic have to contemplate also what their readings reveal about themselves, and their own relations to the subject of critique. Specifically, they need to acknowledge that they are faced with the same dilemma as other readers, namely the dilemma of how to avoid perpetuating the exoticising gaze. The acute danger for readers and critics for whom saris and mangoes are not normal everyday objects lies in their tendency to single out such objects as special and classify them as “other.” This constitutes a strategy of aesthetic colonisation, a strategy by which signals of specific cultural traditions are read against the allegedly neutral background of Western globalised culture and come to be condemned because they are conflated with the exotic. Hence this form of aesthetic colonisation seeks to spread an aesthetics that excludes markers of postcolonial cultures which might be construed as exotic, and so attempts to purge postcolonial literatures of exoticist connotations. This means, however, that, as so often in the history of colonial relations, the power to decide which elements of other cultures are acceptable and which are not is claimed by the former coloniser. With these considerations in mind, Rushdie’s fictional worlds emerge in a rather different light. If we ignore all thoughts of the exotic, the plethora of allusions to Indian cultures that we find in his novels are precisely that: signals which ground Rushdie’s texts in an Indian tradition and contextualise his fiction as non-Western. Or rather, since Rushdie refers to Western culture as much as to Eastern culture, the ease with which markers from different cultural traditions sit next to each other renders his novels truly transcultural. So far, I have treated cultural referents which lend themselves to exoticisation as negatively marked elements, exposed to satire. Yet if the strategic use of exoticism reveals the desire to expose stereotypical and limiting attitudes towards the nature of the East, Rushdie’s writing also pursues a different aim—the de-problematisation of cultural markers which from a Western reading position might be classified as exotic. Rushdie seeks to free such cultural markers from the baggage of exoticisation with which they

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have been burdened during the long history of colonial East-West encounters. What is at stake here is the purging of everyday cultural objects from the stigma of “the exotic.” Hence, in addition to objects that actively proclaim their own exoticness, Rushdie’s fiction is also full of objects that do not parade their otherness, but instead highlight their alliance with the cultures portrayed precisely by not drawing attention to themselves. Throughout the novels, cultural markers such as specifically South Asian clothes, fruits, and spices are often mentioned merely in passing, and it is such references to South Asian cultures rather than the more exotically marked objects that construct a culturally recognisable context in which the events of the novels can unfold. The same objects that elsewhere might be treated as conspicuously exotic or used together with similar objects to create an effect of exotic excess, also make inconspicuous appearances in their capacity as everyday objects in the culture portrayed. George Miranda’s “rolled-up kurta sleeves” (Verses 53), Zeeny’s “beaten-up Hindustan” (Verses 54), the “wall of cardamom sacks” which separates the two parts of the da Gama household (Moor 42), the “saffron flowers” wreathed around corpses (Children 245), and the “hot khichri” Amina is tempted to pour over her husband’s cousin Zohra’s head (Children 70) are just a few examples of the many different types of referents which help construct markedly South Asian fictional worlds, and hence anchor Rushdie’s characters and their stories in their cultural contexts. Such cultural markers resist exoticising readings and help recuperate a realm in which the East can be represented without threat of exoticisation. The urge experienced by informed readers to purge postcolonial literatures of allusions to what they interpret as exotic is an expression of a veiled and perhaps subconscious desire to Westernise them. Their objection to the cultural markers which they read as exoticising shows that they take exception to the very features which anchor texts most promptly and, on an aesthetic level, perhaps even profoundly in their respective cultural contexts. Paradoxically, this urge arises precisely because readers are conscious of the continued problem of exoticisation and hence worried about appearing to ignore it. Striving to avoid a reduction of the Orient to the exotic in a colonial manner, readers feel the need to suppress the allure of the exotic, and thus to reject altogether everything that might facilitate exoticisation. Unfortunately, this rejection entails hypercorrection: in extreme cases, any reference to specifically Eastern objects might be interpreted as conjuring up the exotic and might, therefore, be regarded with suspicion. Hence the insistence in postcolonial literatures on cultural markers that might be read as exotic by Western readers is not only a form of pandering to a global market hungry for the exotic, but also a manner of resistance to pressures of homogenisation. In addition, it is a strategy of recuperating everyday objects typical of specific cultures from the charge of exoticisation. It is thus an attempt to free references to postcolonial cultures of associations with the exotic and to establish such references as a part of a postcolonial

Juicy Mangos, Sexy Spices 167 aesthetics. A postcolonial aesthetics in this sense could entail the construction of assertively postcolonial fictional worlds, marked as culturally contingent but not as exotic. The repetition of referents explicitly linked to specific postcolonial cultures to an extent to which any charge of exoticism launched against them appears ridiculous is, therefore, not only necessary but vital. Postcolonial cultural markers need to be free from the stigma of exoticism, need to be unproblematic in their function as providers of context. After all, why should the fact that characters in Indian fiction tend to wear saris rather than skirts, eat spicy dishes and chutneys rather than hamburgers and chips, and have mango- rather than pear-shaped breasts invite the classification of such fiction as exotic? All of these idiosyncrasies should be acknowledged as cultural rather than exotic markers. What is called for in this respect is a de-exoticisation of reading practices, since exoticising readings are limiting and do not allow texts to unfold their full impact, subversive or not.21 Rather than automatically indict and condemn postcolonial writers’ use of specific cultural markers as a form of reactionary exoticisation that panders to the tastes of a Western market, we need to subject our own approach to these cultural markers to close scrutiny and awaken to our own exoticising tendencies. Due to the highly dialectic relation between literary representation and reader, to disentangle what is exotic per se about a depiction of a postcolonial cultural setting from what is rendered exotic by an exoticising reading, will, in most cases, be nearly impossible. It is all the more important that we direct the critique of exoticisation also against ourselves and that we remain ever alert to the exoticist traps which loom not only in literary texts and other cultural products, but also—and most persistently—in our own minds.

7

Magic Realism and the Politics of Ambivalence

The political, aesthetic, and subversive potential of magic realism has been a matter of serious debate. Whereas some critics regard magic realist literature as a powerful form of “writing back,” for others, it offers pure escapism. Among those assuming a positive view of magic realism are Maggie Ann Bowers, Wendy Faris, Stephen Slemon, Lucie Armitt, Richard Cronin, and Homi Bhabha. Indeed, Bhabha’s celebration of magic realism as “the literary language of the emergent post-colonial world” (“Introduction” 7) is mirrored in Cronin’s contention that Indian reality can only be depicted in literature through the inclusion of supernatural elements (8). Such sweeping generalisations are rightly challenged by Aijaz Ahmad, who describes Bhabha’s statement as “doubtful, of course” (69). Ahmad, in fact, is more than sceptical of the politically subversive function of magic realism, as is Sara Suleri, for whom magic realism constitutes a mode of writing in which political content can “hide” (175). Similarly, John McLeod clearly separates Rushdie’s magic realism from his ideological agenda by referring to The Satanic Verses as “a multitudinous and polyvocal novel— part fantasy, part ‘socio-political’” (148). In such arguments, magic realism is cast as an escapist mode of writing that jeopardises the recognition of political injustices by couching them in the context of the unreal. This manner of representation is seen as detrimental to the development of a critical stance towards the historical situations and social issues portrayed, since it disguises the actuality and reality of historical, political, social, and gender inequalities. The attractiveness of the magic components of magic realism, its critics suggest, invites readers to approach magic realist writings as fairy tales and to ignore the historical and social realities behind their magic fi reworks. In the light of such contradictory approaches to the subversive potential of magic realist fiction, it seems worthwhile to reconsider the role of magic realism in Rushdie’s politics. This is particularly relevant since Rushdie has become one of the most political literary figures of our age, although not only due to his fictional writing. In what follows, I want to examine precisely what implications Rushdie’s employment of magic realism has for his political agenda, and I will suggest a few ways in which his particular

Magic Realism and the Politics of Ambivalence 169 brand of magic realism can be regarded as intricately connected with, indeed as instrumental to, the political quality of his fiction. Overt dialogue with socio-political issues is a trademark feature of Rushdie’s novels, but I am not primarily interested in the thematic level here. Instead, I will argue that it is the structural peculiarity of Rushdie’s magic realism that engenders a more subtle but potentially also more productive engagement with the socio-political realities his fictions depict. Thus this chapter demonstrates that ideological issues are intimately linked with the fundamental ambivalence at the core of Rushdie’s magic realism, and it hence points to the inextricability of the aesthetic and the political in his fiction. READING RIDDLES, READING BACK As discussed in Chapter 1, the ambivalence that emerges from the battle of the two incompatible codes in Rushdie’s magic realist novels destabilises the texts and “forestalls the possibility of interpretive closure” (Slemon 410) since any conclusive reading position is, ultimately, deconstructed. Rather than simply bearing witness to structural incompatibilities, however, the preclusion of “interpretive closure” has far-reaching consequences. Not only is the ontological nature of—seemingly?—supernatural events kept at bay, but readers, in the absence of conclusive last words on the conundrums constructed by the texts, fi nd it difficult to “close” texts which insist so emphatically on remaining open. Through the presence of essentially irresolvable contradictions, magic realist texts hence resist closed readings, and this continuous deferral of closure in turn prompts particularly active and prolonged forms of reader engagement. Frequently, the events subjected to ambivalence are of central importance within the fictional universe of the novels, and so their uncertain ontological status affects the credibility of the entire text; after all, readers’ ability to make sense of magic realist writing often hinges on their interpretation of its magic aspects. For instance, it makes a decisive difference whether readers of Midnight’s Children believe that the midnight’s children actually exist or whether they regard them as a figment of Saleem’s imagination; the fact that the children can be read in both ways, therefore, significantly complicates the reading process. In an interview with Malavika Rajbans Sanghvi, Rushdie himself has acknowledged the possibility of reading the midnight’s children as a figment of Saleem’s imagination: Sanghvi: Your book works on many levels. At one level, the midnight children could just be an exaggerated fantasy, the companions of a neglected, ugly child. Rushdie: Yes, that’s right, exactly! It could just be that he (Saleem) is an isolated child who dreams it up. If you want to take it at that level, then you can.

170 Exploring Magic Realism in Salman Rushdie’s Fiction Sanghvi: What would you prefer it your readers took it as? Rushdie: I’d prefer them to see the levels. And I don’t think that they have to select one. (Rushdie, “Fight” 40–41) Rushdie here explicitly draws attention to the presence of contradictory codes and “levels” of meaning in the text, and he concedes that the performativity of their opposition is crucial for his novel—the “levels” should be seen, not hidden. As I have already suggested, the initial mention of the children is surrounded by consciously highlighted clues to Saleem’s unreliability. He fi rst talks about them during his delirium, and his claims challenge even Padma’s capacity for belief, which generally stretches to a considerable degree: she refuses to accept Saleem’s story at face value and views the children as the result of Saleem’s hallucinations. Indeed, Padma’s behaviour in this scene potentially discredits Saleem’s tale before he has even begun his account of the children: “‘My God.’ Padma is rushing for a towel to wet in cold water, ‘your forehead is on fi re! Better you lie down now; too soon for all this writing! The sickness is talking; not you’” (195). Seeking to free his tale from possible discredit in the light of such responses, Saleem merely manages to provide the reader with a further reason to doubt his story: “Don’t make the mistake of dismissing what I’ve unveiled as mere delirium; or even as the insanely exaggerated fantasies of a lonely, ugly child” (200). By rejecting loneliness as a cause of his possible invention of the children, Saleem, of course, invites us to read them in precisely these terms. Although Rushdie claims that there is no necessity for his readers to opt for one code, and although this might be true of the example of the midnight’s children, I believe that it is more often impossible for his readers to choose one explanation. Moreover, I want to argue that it is precisely the deferral of a solution, and hence the refusal to endorse one version of events and thus sanction the reader’s choice of any one version, which constitutes one of the most political gestures in Rushdie’s fiction. The importance of this refusal is particularly glaring in the case of the “Ayesha Haj” (488) in The Satanic Verses.1 I have already referred to the “feminization of prophecy” through the figure of Ayesha (Suleri 205), but in order to discuss the entire episode in more detail, a brief contextualisation of the role of Ayesha and her Haj seems necessary. Ayesha is the female protagonist of the Titlipur sections of the novel, and she is associated with the extraordinary and the symbolic from the fi rst. She feeds on butterflies, and the fact that the butterflies fly into her mouth willingly highlights Ayesha’s strong metaphorical link with death and rebirth. We fi rst encounter Ayesha through the eyes of Mirza, the male protagonist of the Titlipur chapters, through whose gaze Ayesha is also defi ned as the epitome of female sexual attractiveness. As Suleri notes, Ayesha’s “extraordinary desirability is matched by her chastity, and by her insistence on feeding herself only on butterflies” (203). As such, Ayesha is symbolically connected with ancient prophetesses and priestesses, whose divine calling has always

Magic Realism and the Politics of Ambivalence 171 been linked with an institutionalised chastity. This is also implied by the fact that Ayesha suffers from epilepsy, another ancient mystic signifier for communion with the gods. Indeed, a prophetic stage is precisely what Ayesha seems to be at the point of entering when Mirza fi rst encounters her. After having diagnosed Mirza’s wife Mishal with terminal cancer (a diagnosis soon to be corroborated by medical science), Ayesha becomes, or so she claims, the spokeswoman of the archangel Gibreel, and hence the medium of divine revelation in the direct tradition of Mohammed. According to Ayesha, Gibreel has commanded the entire village to go on a Haj on foot, and the completion of this Haj is the only possible way in which Mishal can be saved. Due to Ayesha’s charisma and her association with the supernatural (the butterflies which are viewed as the guardians of the village of Titlipur are said to have returned after a long absence in the year of Ayesha’s birth), the Haj soon develops into an undertaking which unites almost the entire village. The central ambivalence which surrounds this episode concerns the question of whether the Arabian Sea parts for the pilgrims. This is Ayesha’s promise: that when the pilgrims reach the coast of the Arabian Sea, the waters will part in order to allow them to enter Mecca on dry foot. 2 When the pilgrims arrive at the Arabian Sea, however, nothing seems to happen. The waters remain immobile, and the pilgrims are confronted with the impenetrable sea, and hence with what might well be the end of their pilgrimage. In the face of flagging faith, however, Ayesha starts to walk into the sea, and most of the pilgrims, rallying around their prophetess, eventually take the cue from her lead. What follows is unclear, since through the simultaneous implementation of both codes, the novel presents two contradictory accounts. Whereas the realistic version of events ends with the pilgrims’ deaths, the supernatural version suggests that they reach their goal. The realist code is installed in the text through the drastic depiction of the corpses of the drowned pilgrims, which are gradually washed up on the beach. By contrast, the supernatural code emerges from the evidence of the surviving members of the Ayesha Haj, who all agree in a manner which cannot be dismissed as accidental: with the exception of Mirza, Ayesha’s profoundest sceptic and opponent, all of the survivors saw the waters part and witnessed the passage of the pilgrims across the bed of the Arabian Sea towards Mecca. Once again, both codes are activated and neither manages to unhinge the other. Indeed, although it is tempting to opt for a symbolic solution to this episode by arguing that even though the pilgrims die, in dying on the Haj they have also reached the fulfi lment of their faith, and that the realist and the supernatural codes hence fail to arrange themselves in full opposition, such a spiritual reading fails to stand up to closer scrutiny on a purely textual level. The fact remains that the stories the various survivors tell are fantastic in their very uniformity. Without having had the opportunity to synchronise their accounts, all the survivors apart from Mirza tell one and the same story up to the last detail. And it is, of course,

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precisely the sceptics who failed to believe in Ayesha and her divine function and who, therefore, refused to enter the sea with her, who are now turned into the keepers of a miracle of which they could not partake. But this discrepancy, that is, the fact that the very characters previously unable to accommodate the supernatural should suddenly have become advocates of the miraculous, suggests a more directly supernatural rather than a spiritual-metaphorical explanation of the events by the Arabian Sea.3 Hence the reader is unable to fully decode the situation, and the episode eludes integration into one interpretative scheme. For the evaluation of the entire Titlipur episode, and in particular of the principles underlying Ayesha’s decisions, the categorisation of the end of the Haj as either a catastrophe or a miracle is crucial. For Ayesha is thematically and structurally tied to a whole set of figures in The Satanic Verses who revolve around the same basic opposition or question, a question that concerns the relative merits of purity and hybridity, and of the value of compromise. The fi rst reference to this question occurs in Navleen the hijacker’s self-justification: ‘When a great idea comes into the world, a great cause, certain crucial questions are asked of it,’ she murmured. ‘History asks us: what manner of cause are we? Are we uncompromising, absolute, strong, or will we show ourselves to be timeservers, who compromise, trim and yield?’ (81) Navleen’s answer to this question is one of radical clarity. Deciding to follow her cause to the end, she proceeds to detonate the bomb, explode the hijacked aircraft and kill all its passengers rather than betray her “great idea” through compromise. As such, Navleen’s purity and her single-mindedness directly lead to violence and bloodshed, and they are represented as clearly negative. Although Navleen’s fanaticism is unambiguously rejected by the text, however, the problematic choice between unyielding determination and compromise is dramatised further in other episodes of the novel, a narrative gesture which suggests that the evaluation of Navleen’s act does not constitute the novel’s last words on this issue. Rather, the text is reluctant to show a definite preference for any of the possible answers to Navleen’s question that various other characters provide. Hind, the exiled Imam, Mahound, and Ayesha all refuse to compromise, the latter two after an initial period of doubt. Embracing purity, they stick to their beliefs, turning them into rigid systems from which there can be no deviation. Although the characters thus mirror each other in the basic structure of their world views, they nevertheless exemplify various degrees of severity; whereas Hind eats the liver and heart of her adversary (361), and whereas Ayesha allows an illegitimate baby to be stoned to death because it obstructs her mission (496–97), the exiled Imam, although frightening, is also profoundly ridiculous in his mounting obsession with the notion of purity, leading, as it does, to his decision to drink nothing but water

Magic Realism and the Politics of Ambivalence 173 purified “in an American filtration machine” (209). Mahound, fi nally, is different from the others in that he shows more tolerance and spares at least some of his former enemies (375). In addition, in his case the espousal of purity seems partly sanctified by the further development of his faith: the text depicts the rise of Islam out of Mahound’s exile in the dream chapters, and it emphasises its importance as one of the main world religions in the rest of the novel. And even though one cannot call Mahound a positive figure, his refusal to compromise and accept the existence of other gods next to God is presented far more favourably than his behaviour in the episode of the satanic verses, which is portrayed as scandalous. Hence the choice between purity and compromise which Ayesha faces is played out in various constellations and versions throughout the novel. Although this multiplicity in itself subtly counteracts any fi nal declaration of Ayesha’s refusal to compromise as right or wrong, the resulting indeterminacy is given its fullest expression in the ambivalences surrounding the Arabian Sea episode. In refraining from resolving the riddle at the heart of Ayesha’s Haj, Rushdie in The Satanic Verses prevents his readers from coming to a fi nal conclusion as to whether Ayesha’s endorsement of purity is to be approved of as necessarily fi rm or rejected as monolithic and authoritarian. According to the realist code, Ayesha’s pilgrimage has failed, and her fanaticism needs to be condemned as the source of the death of not only a single baby but of hundreds of pilgrims. According to the supernatural code, however, the uncompromising strength of Ayesha’s faith seems admirable, having managed to alter the laws of the universe. With the absence of any conclusive answer to this central question, therefore, the evaluation of Ayesha’s endorsement of purity over compromise must forever remain suspended. By resisting closure, the text encourages its readers to reject both a purely realist and a purely supernatural solution, and thus to effect compromise through reading. In preventing closed readings, such crucial ambivalences at the core of Rushdie’s novels call for active decoding strategies that potentially go beyond the actual reading and which, therefore, foster the reader’s prolonged engagement with the novels. It is in this process that I would locate a significant element of the political impact of Rushdie’s fiction. When reviewing the ambivalences created by the opposition of codes in Rushdie’s magic realist texts, readers are constantly encouraged to shift their positions and to reconsider their own classification of characters and events. This in itself is an intrinsically political act; political neither in the sense that it encourages activism nor in the sense that it promotes malleability and arbitrariness, but in the sense that it requires readers, and thus endorses their ability, to restructure their arguments in the face of new and contradictory evidence. On another level, readers’ prolonged engagement with the text holds the potential of simultaneously triggering more intense involvements with its themes and issues. Classic realist narratives tend to be “ultimately reassuring” (Belsey 49); their “movement . . . towards closure ensures the

174 Exploring Magic Realism in Salman Rushdie’s Fiction reinstatement of order” (Belsey 75). Rushdie’s magic realist narratives, by contrast, produce open readings, thus encouraging more active forms of reader participation that extend the process of meaning creation beyond the moment at which a book is closed. Moreover, Rushdie’s novels force readers to engage in autonomous strategies of meaning formation, since the type of “order” to which Belsey refers is precisely what they refuse to offer. In the presence of enigmas which forever elude clear solutions, readers have to resign themselves to the impossibility of ever arriving at fi nal answers that would support the re-installment of order in the texts. Whereas some critics would argue that this endless deferral of meaning is exactly what deprives Rushdie’s novels of their political significance, I believe that any insistence on defi nite answers and fi xed meanings would, in fact, go a long way towards defusing the ideological impetus of Rushdie’s fiction. Even though the expression of unambiguous political messages in literature is occasionally fruitful and necessary, the endorsement of clear ideological positions simultaneously entails the reinstitution of some kind of order, and as such it potentially curtails the reader’s interaction with the text. The extension of the reading process and the fostering of active engagement with literary texts and the issues they raise, however, can in themselves be crucial for the development of ideological awareness, and it is in this sense that Rushdie’s embracing of ambivalence emerges as a highly effective counter-discursive method. Mita Banerjee calls for a more active re-inscription of the lacuna left by deconstructed master discourses than poststructuralists are willing to provide. Identifying Rushdie’s creative oeuvre with the blend of postmodern/poststructuralist and postcolonial literary theories in the vein of Homi Bhabha, which she criticises as politically futile, she accuses Rushdie of not addressing the political reality of the postcolonial condition. Authors like Rushdie, she argues, neglect the actuality of the ongoing oppression of postcolonial subjects in favour of dealing with the migrant condition on a metaphorical level. Hence they celebrate the symbolic value of migration as liberation while disregarding the often dismal real-life problems of immigrants to the First World. Such a refusal to tackle reality constitutes, for Banerjee, the heart of the problem of postmodern playfulness (see particularly 142–49, and her Chapter 5). Although Banerjee’s accusation of poststructuralist figureheads of postcolonialism as complicit in the preclusion of a politically explosive discourse might be partly justified, I believe that in her indictment of Rushdie’s fiction she overshoots the mark. His novels display a very pronounced awareness of the plight of the (post)colonial subject, and they promote an anti-hegemonic agenda throughout. That his severe criticism of the political situation in postcolonial countries as well as of the deterioration of the rights of immigrants in Thatcher’s Britain has hit home is evident in the number of countries where Rushdie’s novels have been banned.4 Hence Rushdie’s refusal to provide clear alternatives to debunked master-discourses is not

Magic Realism and the Politics of Ambivalence 175 necessarily a shortcoming; quite on the contrary, it can also be regarded as a pronounced asset. Refusing to re-inscribe the very lacunae left by the master-discourses which his fiction seeks to deconstruct, Rushdie creates room for his readers to engage with the issues presented by his texts in more freedom. Doubtless his novels promote certain values, but rather than confronting his readers with pre-constructed counter-discourses, Rushdie leaves gaps which call for an active form of negotiation between text and reader, thus encouraging his readers to draw their own conclusions as to the problems presented by his novels. In Teverson’s appraisal, “we must abandon the idea that Rushdie is, or sets out to be, a politically transformative writer, and accept instead that he is, in Shame at least, a reactive writer” (207–08). Rather than merely following the author’s mode of writing back, readers are stimulated towards a form of engagement that we might call “reading back.” Such a reading back entails the construction of counter-discursive modes of interpretation out of the very gaps created, in our case by the clash of the two magic realist codes. The lacunae in the magic realist text become sources of oppositional readings which constantly have to reshape themselves in accordance with new data and which are, therefore, non-hegemonic in their very structure. Although the basic pattern of reading back is obviously guided by the interaction between the two magic realist codes, and although its impetus is thus not, strictly speaking, autonomous in itself, as a reading strategy it is defi ned by its realisation of a multiplicity of interpretative choices. Hence reading back challenges master discourses through its adoption of a plethora of interpretative stances. In reading back, readers do not construct unified individual readings but create interpretations which are by defi nition split in themselves; as such, reading back is an emphatically deconstructive gesture which evades the danger of inscribing new master discourses precisely because it is torn in itself. Rather than offering clear-cut ideological agendas, Rushdie’s magic realist texts encourage practices of reading and thinking that accommodate difference. In provoking readers to read back to the discourses he challenges as much as to the discourses of his own novels, the structure of Rushdie’s magic realist narratives counteracts the didacticism that occasionally surfaces in his texts. Indeterminacy hence engenders subversive reading strategies which a more explicit political commentary seems to preclude. Indeed, it is those passages in Rushdie’s fiction in which hegemonic discourses are rejected not through—more or less—subtle deconstruction, but through a fervid criticism and in which didacticism interferes with interpretative liberty which seem least able to trigger political awareness. This phenomenon can be observed in Shame, which might well contain the most blatant and undisguised critique of a political regime in Rushdie’s fiction; yet I doubt that this critique is also Rushdie’s most efficient one. Shame, and especially those parts dominated by the narrator, is characterised by a lack of ambiguity of tone that renders its counter-hegemonic discourse hegemonic in

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itself. The political situation in Pakistan which forms the subject of the novel certainly needs to be criticised, but the tedious sarcasm of the narrative voice often smacks of self-righteousness, and the one-dimensionality of the novel seems a poor weapon against the intolerance it attacks, as well as against the fervent endorsement of the notion of purity which it seeks to debunk. Although the text is highly explicit with regard to which alternatives to the current political situation in Pakistan it would promote, it is also unconsciously complicit in the perpetuation of the very discursive strategies which it intends to discredit. As no creative work on the part of the reader is needed, the readers of the novel are cast in a passive role, and their active subversive investment in the story remains slight. The discursive differences between this situation and the episode of the Ayesha Haj are, of course, striking. In general, The Satanic Verses is a novel written in a suggestive rather than assertive mode, but—as became painfully obvious through the events leading up to and following the declaration of the fatwa on 14 February 1989—this strengthens rather than obscures its social and political explosiveness. With the exception of a few scenes, most prominent among them the Brickhall riot scene, 5 the narrator avoids direct political commentary, and the subversive force of the novel is deconstructive rather than re-inscriptive. Although my discussion of the Ayesha Haj above demonstrates how the recurrence of one and the same set of questions in various parts of the novel prevents their thematic resolution and discursive closure, it is important to acknowledge the general preference for hybridity and compromise rather than monolithic purity displayed by not only The Satanic Verses, but by Rushdie’s fiction in general.6 In The Satanic Verses, this tendency is particularly noteworthy in the treatment of the two protagonists, since in the portrayal of Gibreel and Saladin the text does not seek to disguise its appreciation of hybridity over purity. Rather, the text complicates the very distinction between the two. Whereas Gibreel, the Muslim actor playing Hindu deities and working-class orphan-turned-superstar, is initially associated with hybridity, Saladin, the passionately anglicised Indian full of contempt for his own race, is associated with cultural essentialism and purity. Thus, in the fi rst chapters of the novel, Gibreel’s extravagances are presented as enjoyable whereas Saladin’s primness and the zeal with which he endeavours to become more English than the English are gently ridiculed. This is, of course, particularly striking in the juxtaposition of Gibreel’s and Saladin’s behaviour during their fall from the exploding aircraft (3–10). Yet things change once Gibreel and Saladin enter England after the Bostan disaster and are faced with the task of coming to terms with experiences of culture shock and discrimination. Confronted with the culture of the former coloniser, a culture that he perceives of as dramatically inferior to his own, Gibreel proves unable to adapt to his new surroundings in the slightest degree. His interaction with the British and their culture is characterised by feelings of contempt and superiority, and by a general intolerance that

Magic Realism and the Politics of Ambivalence 177 keeps him from engaging with his new environment in any productive form. Hence Gibreel’s refusal to engage with British culture amounts to a betrayal of his hybrid nature, and he gradually becomes an avatar of purity. Quite the opposite development takes place in Saladin’s case. With the growing awareness of racism which accompanies his reintroduction into British society comes an appreciation of his cultural origins, as is apparent in his gradual identification with the Asian immigrant community. Rather than ignoring and rejecting his Indian past, Saladin learns to recognise and eventually reconcile his Indian and his English histories, a process that culminates in his fi nal return to India as a man who sees himself as the hybrid product of both cultures no longer governed by the desire to suppress the influence of either. Many of Rushdie’s novels before as well as after the publication of The Satanic Verses are centrally concerned with the merits as well as the feasibility of hybridity, but in his later texts the early confidence in hybridity seems to tip towards a more qualified and at times nostalgic engagement with this erstwhile ideal. In Shalimar the Clown, for instance, the notion of Kashmiriyat or “the belief that at the heart of Kashmiri culture there was a common bond that transcended all other differences” (110) is evidently based on the notion of hybridity. This is particularly obvious in the manner in which Kashmiriyat is realised in the village of Pachigam as a transgression of communal boundaries and a celebration of a common tradition to which all religious and cultural groups of the population contribute equally. But although Kashmiriyat fi nds its most triumphant expression in the public endorsement of the union between the Muslim Shalimar and the Hindu Boonyi, it does not survive the pressure of outside forces—no matter whether they come in the form of the Indian occupation of the country, the Pakistani-sponsored guerrilla warfare, or U.S. capital, weapons, and politics. Thus Kashmiriyat survives in the novel only in the form of a nostalgic vision, and in the elegiac discourse of a narrator who cannot, fi nally, accept, and therefore attempts to un-say, its destruction in the devastation of Pachigam.7 The text which has been identified most persistently with this shift is The Moor’s Last Sigh, which is generally read as a dark lament over the destruction of hybridity and multiplicity by singularity. This interpretation largely rests on the development of Aurora’s art and the ideals it upholds and symbolises. In Chapter 6, I discussed Aurora’s style of painting, which clearly reflects the magic realism of the novel itself, but which constructs a harmonious vision of the intersections between realism and magic at odds with the oppositional relation between magic and realism typical of Rushdie’s fiction. Indeed, it seems as if the structure of the magic realism we fi nd in The Moor’s Last Sigh itself attempted to embrace the stylistic principles which Aurora’s art promotes. As I have argued in my introduction, the opposition between the two codes in The Moor’s Last Sigh is weakened, and in the early parts of the novel in particular, the text seems eager to

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avoid all too violent clashes between the natural and the supernatural, veering instead towards what is almost a synthesis of the two codes. Bizarre events happen, but the realist code strives to translate them into its own manner of representation. By suppressing the supernatural code, therefore, the novel develops in the direction of a mono-codal text. What the text hereby demonstrates is that synthesis and hybridity are not merely inclusive; in synthesis something is also lost. Thus Aurora’s artistic vision, although it is clearly supported by the novel’s own aesthetics, is described as “a romantic myth” (227) whose feasibility is questionable and which always runs the danger of becoming escapist: “it was easy,” Moor claims, “to dance to the music without caring for the message in the song” (227). Evidently, the hybrid ideals that Aurora’s art promotes are not fully endorsed by the novel from the beginning. Rather than lamenting the destruction of hybridity by fundamentalism, therefore, The Moor’s Last Sigh draws attention to the faultlines within hybridity itself. Through his treatment of hybridity in his fi rst post-fatwa novel, Rushdie is reported to have said that he wanted to show that “there’s a flipside to pluralism” (Maes-Jelinek 176), and indeed, it is obvious in the novel that hybridity itself already contains “the seeds of its own destruction” (D. Ahmad 12). Nowhere does this become clearer than in the depictions of the development of Aurora’s art, which “conveys both the power and also the possible shortcomings of an aesthetic that celebrates hybridity” (D. Ahmad 6). Although the novel also shows how the hybrid ideals Aurora wants to uphold are jeopardised by the increasingly fundamentalist context in which her art evolves, as well as by its gradual institutionalisation, it is the contradictions at the core of Aurora’s hybrid vision itself which are most interesting in relation with the novel’s engagement with hybridity. Aurora’s art and its involvement with Indian politics are intricately bound up with the slow disintegration of Aurora’s family. Hence her growing disillusionment with the Indian nation is closely related to personal disappointment and tragedy. In the aftermath of her daughter Ina’s death, Aurora’s paintings become increasingly apocalyptic, depicting a world which has lost its flexibility and fluidity. Initially, the loss of the triumphant note of hybridity in Aurora’s art is expressed through a choice of colour symbolism which does not need any further comment: in a dramatic shift from her earlier explorations of colour, her paintings now become black-and-white, thus giving way to a starkly oppositional aesthetics that is only occasionally relieved with a touch of grey. Even more significantly, however, the permeable land-sea frontier so crucial for her vision is now closed and the two states of existence which it separates can no longer flow into each other. Rather than a flexible contact zone, the dividing line between land and sea is now a dangerous abyss, which actively sucks in both the ocean and the land. The result is violent chaos instead of productive hybridity, as is particularly noticeable in the “Moor-in-exile” series, through which Aurora attempts to imaginatively accompany her son Moor into the underworld of

Magic Realism and the Politics of Ambivalence 179 Bombay. This series depicts a frightening world which opens up different perspectives on hybridity. Hybrid beings here are no longer beautiful but horrifying: people are fragmented, they have lost various body parts, and they are scavenging for replacements. The Moor figure, former “standardbearer of pluralism” and “symbol . . . of the new nation” is now a “figure of decay” and “creature of shadows,” a “black Moor” (303). Always eager to spell things out, Moor highlights the connection between the dark Moor paintings and Aurora’s disillusionment with hybridity: Aurora had apparently decided that the ideas of impurity, cultural admixture and mélange which had been, for most of her creative life, the closest things she had found to a notion of the Good, were in fact capable of distortion, and contained a potential for darkness as well as for light. (303) By lamenting the “distortion” to which her hybrid ideals can be subjected, however, Aurora, in fact, demonstrates the limitations of her own would-be inclusive worldview rather than a sudden shift in hybridity itself. From Aurora’s highly privileged vantage point, the chaos below seems distasteful, but what this demonstrates most of all is the selectiveness of her celebration of the hybrid. Indeed, what becomes apparent here is that Aurora’s version of hybridity is, like Zeeny’s in The Satanic Verses, “not entirely the same” (Warnes 113) as Bhabha’s. Whereas Bhabha’s notion of hybridity is associated with “perplexity (“DissemiNation” 314), and even “panic” (Location 296), Aurora welcomes hybridity only in what she perceives as positive and tolerable. She thus shows herself unable to grasp the very diversity she is aiming at. Indeed, she is incapable of understanding that by interpreting what she fi nds repulsive as “distortion” she effectively demonstrates her own intolerance; in Moor’s words, “[w]hat she missed in herself was the snobbery that her contemptuous rage revealed, her fear of the invisible city, the Malabar-ness of her” (304). Hence the novel shows that hybridity, as it is practised and promoted in Aurora’s art, has its own preferences and limitations. This is also the reason for which Aurora has to exclude her own son from her life when he joins Mainduck’s hitsquad. Unable to understand, let alone accept, the violent and uncivil component of his character, in her pictures she depicts Moor as a figure trapped in hell. What she fails to understand, however, is that for Moor, this “hell” is liberating, whereas their hybrid and seemingly liberal family home for him was limiting. She thus ignores the fact that the destruction of hybridity is already foreshadowed in her own art and worldview. What is at stake here, then, is not just the “tragedy of multiplicity destroyed by singularity” (408); hybridity has also become a form of “singularity” in itself. Although ekphrasis in The Moor’s Last Sigh reveals that, contrary to Aurora’s interpretation of events, hybridity is already selective in its very inception, the novel itself juxtaposes the lamentation over the apparent loss

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of hybrid ideals with the adoption of a different type of magic realism— the more antagonistic combination of realism and magic that is typical of Rushdie and that we also fi nd in the Benengeli section of the narrative. It is here that the supernatural code fi nally reasserts itself and enters into direct opposition with the realist code. This process already starts the moment Moor boards the plane to Spain and is accosted by a stewardess who might or might not be a “phantom of the air” (383). From then on, the text veers between realist and supernatural events and explanations. Benengeli, where Moor has come in order to retrieve his mother’s last paintings from Vasco Miranda, is a place where the natural and the supernatural constantly clash; people continuously contradict themselves and each other, objects change dramatically between fi rst and second sight, situations are constantly cast into new and disturbing light, and time seems indefi nable and ungraspable. Through this chaos stumbles Moor, confused and unable to make sense of a world which seems to be constituted by nothing but ruptures and ambivalence, and which is hence impossible to decipher. Unable to reconcile the various different versions of reality facing him, Moor falls for the (mis)translations of others, and thus fi nally arrives at Vasco’s Little Alhambra, or the space of singularity disguised as hybridity. At fi rst it seems that Moor has entered the magic landscape of Aurora’s paintings which Vasco has sought to re-create in his “mad fortress” (3). Yet his admiration of Vasco’s creation is of short duration, for the flaws in the design soon emerge. The proportions of the building are poor, the colours garish, and the entire fortress is, at the end of the day, simply “an ugly, pretentious house” (409). The creative power and compelling magic of Aurora’s artistic vision are irretrievable, and what remains is the living mockery of hybridity in Vasco’s copy. Fittingly, it is here, inside the confi nes of Vasco’s Little Alhambra, that Moor is confronted with singlemindedness and singularity in concentrated form: Vasco’s single aim is to destroy the last of the Zogoiby line (412); Aurora’s last painting, stolen by Vasco, when x-rayed shows the face of her alleged assassin and hence what is believed to be the defi nite solution to the riddle of her mysterious death (416–17); and Aoi Uë, Moor’s fellow prisoner in the Little Alhambra, writes postcards to her friends which, when deciphered correctly, contain a single truth, the truth about her abduction (421). Moor himself, fi nally, is similarly obsessed with fi nding the truth beneath layers of family history, and it is this urge that has even led him into Vasco’s trap. The Moor’s Last Sigh, then, is not a novel which simply records and laments the destruction of hybridity by other forces; rather, it faces up to the shortcomings of the notion of hybridity itself. Although Aurora’s version of hybridity is dismantled, however, the magic realism of the novel provides an alternative vision. In its development from an almost monocodal to a more disharmonic structure, the text suggests that where “unity in diversity” (412) is impossible to obtain, opposition in unity (as performed by the welding together of the two magic realist codes in one text)

Magic Realism and the Politics of Ambivalence 181 can at least work against the establishment of monolithic discourses and thus prevent the installation of master narratives. It is precisely the tension existing between the two magic realist codes that points to the continued positive potential of hybridity. In constantly contradicting each other, the two codes not only counteract the emergence of one single truth; they also draw attention to the coexistence of a multiplicity of worldviews, truths, and, indeed, realities which needs to be taken into account by any productive political agenda. Hence Rushdie’s magic realism challenges any attempts to privilege one version of reality over the other, thus completing an inherently political gesture.

FABULATING THE UNREPRESENTABLE “Forget those damnfool realists! The real is always hidden—isn’t it?— inside a miraculously burning bush! Life is fantastic! Paint that” (Moor 174). Such is Vasco Miranda’s advice to Aurora in her period of indecision, when she is torn between two traditions of painting—naturalism, or the version of the world according to her husband and most prominent postindependence socialist Indian intellectuals, and fabulation, or “her true nature” (174). Aurora’s uncertainty is more than a mere artistic crisis; her uneasy veering between realism and fabulation betrays a profound confusion “about the nature of the real itself” (173), and, linked to this, a fundamental uncertainty about the political subversiveness and fruitfulness of the two respective traditions. After all, her crisis is intrinsically connected with the desire to create an appropriate artistic vision for the new Indian nation, and it comes at a moment when naturalism is promoted as the more “patriotic” form: “many thinkers believed that the poignancy and passion of the country’s immense life could only be represented by a kind of selfless, dedicated—even patriotic—mimesis” (173). Art here becomes a vehicle for a national agenda, as evident also in “Abraham’s dogmatic insistence on the importance, at that historical juncture, of a clear-sighted naturalism that would help India describe herself to herself” (173), an “insistence” that seeks to turn art into a form of identity politics. Aurora’s dilemma in this magic realist novel also provides a metafictional comment on the respective merits of realism and fabulation in literary modes of representation. The question of merit, of course, is a matter of recurring concern for magic realists—or at least for their critics—and few modes have so consistently been simultaneously praised as counterauthoritarian and condemned as escapist.8 Indeed, that magic realism is, to some extent, open to escapist readings seems beyond dispute. Its fabulist exuberance can barely avoid offering distance and escape to readers happy to ignore the wider implications of a particular narrative. In principle, however, and as discussed in Chapter 2, magic realist writing remains grounded in the reader’s tangible world, and its extra-textual alliances are obvious.

182 Exploring Magic Realism in Salman Rushdie’s Fiction The supernatural elements, then, in disrupting and alienating realism, seek to provoke different understandings of reality. As Moor puts it in a passage that reads like an echo from Roh, magic realism—or rather, in this case, Aurora’s “epic-fabulist manner” of painting—attempts to acknowledge and express “the dream-like wonder of the waking world” (174). In Rushdie’s novels, as well as in the work of others, magic realism becomes a means of conveying not only the “dream-like wonder” but frequently the nightmarish horror of the “waking world.” The manner in which it does so, however, has elicited critical reproach. Magic realist devices can have an aestheticizing effect, and as such they can seem to appeal to the escapist tendencies to which magic realism is accused of catering by some critics. As this is one of the most popular points of criticism of magic realism,9 it is worth lingering over, and I will do so by discussing an example of metaphoricalisation from The Satanic Verses. In the scene quoted below, Gibreel Farishta wanders through a burning district of London: Little buds of flame spring up on the concrete, fuelled by the discarded heaps of possessions and dreams. There is a little, rotting pile of envy: it burns greenly in the night. The fi res are every colour of the rainbow, and not all of them need fuel. He blows the little fi re-flowers out of his horn and they dance upon the concrete, needing neither combustible materials nor roots. Here, a pink one! There, what would be nice?, I know: a silver rose.—And now the buds are blossoming into bushes, they are climbing like creepers up the sides of the towers, they reach out towards their neighbours, forming hedges of multicoloured flame. It is like watching a luminous garden, its growth accelerated many thousands of times, a garden blossoming, flourishing, becoming overgrown, tangled, becoming impenetrable, a garden of dense intertwined chimeras, rivalling in its own incandescent fashion the thornwood that sprang up around the palace of the sleeping beauty in another fairytale, long ago. (462) The “world of fi re” depicted here (462) is the result of racial unrest and will presently become the source of death for the owners of the Shaandaar Café, Saladin’s fi rst resort and one of the centres of Brickhall immigrant life. Yet focalised through Gibreel’s disturbed mind, it emerges as enticing and beautiful. Escapist readings of this passage are, of course, possible. The narrative revels in its own baroqueness, and what it creates here is the image of an enchanted garden rather than disaster. But is this trivialising or ideologically problematic? I would suggest that Rushdie teases, perhaps even taunts his readers here, leading them on but ultimately withholding the expected fairy-tale plot: “No sleeping princess, but a disappointed woman, overpowered by smoke, lies unconscious here” (462). If the narrator is fl ippant in the portrayal of the xenophobic attack, this flippancy comes at the cost of the reader. I agree with Hutcheon, who denies that Rushdie’s and

Magic Realism and the Politics of Ambivalence 183 García Márquez’s “postmodern fiction” is “simply a case of novels metafictionally revelling in their own narrativity or fabulation; here narrative representation—story-telling—is a historical and a political act. Perhaps it always is” (51). Escapist readings are partly invited, but they are also brought up short—although “the unpredictability of the reader’s reception of magical realism” (Bowers, Magic(al) 127) is certain to turn what is an interpretative dead end for some readers into a fl ight of stairs for others. Lyotard ends The Postmodern Condition by highlighting the importance of the treatment of the unpresentable in attempts to distinguish between a modern and a postmodern aesthetics. Whereas a modern aesthetics, for him, is “an aesthetic of the sublime, though a nostalgic one” which “allows the unpresentable to be put forward only as the missing contents” (81), the postmodern has different strategies of approaching the unpresentable: The postmodern would be that which, in the modern, puts forward the unpresentable in presentation itself; that which denies itself the solace of good forms, the consensus of a taste which would make it possible to share collectively the nostalgia for the unattainable; that which searches for new presentations, not in order to enjoy them but in order to impart a stronger sense of the unpresentable. (81) This is, in fact, also an apt description of magic realism and its engagement with particularly problematic facets of history. The forced sterilisation of the midnight’s children is a case in point, as the text resorts to the supernatural in order to convey the intrinsic barbarity of this crime. From the very beginning of the sterilisation passage, the futility of resistance is highlighted through the depiction of Indira Gandhi’s officials as supernatural beings. The members of the “Sanjay Youth Central Committee” (Children 429), who perform the sterilisations mercilessly and without any qualms of conscience, are, in the novel, transformed into clones of Sanjay Gandhi and his wife Menaka, a metaphorical representation which accounts for their unreflecting serfdom. At the same time, the idea that the government agencies are run by clones powerfully conveys the effects of the abandonment of democratic principles such as freedom of opinion during Indira Gandhi’s Emergency: the clones are a potent sign of the inhuman self-granted supremacy of Indira Gandhi’s regime. Without explicitly and directly criticising Indira Gandhi’s attempts to force into line all elements of power, therefore, Rushdie, through metaphoricalisation, effects a critique of Indira Gandhi’s political regime that owes none of its ardency or potency to realist forms of representation. In addition to depriving the children of their reproductive organs, the sterilisation also entails drainage of their magical gifts and, as such, “[s]perectomy, the draining-out of hope” (437). The knives that excise the children’s supernatural powers simultaneously cut the bonds that connected them with one another, hence destroying their magical community,

184 Exploring Magic Realism in Salman Rushdie’s Fiction the former symbol of the potential of the independent Indian nation. When the children are fi nally released from the Widows’ Hostel, they disperse, shunning each other’s company for the painful memories it evokes (441). “Sperectomy” is the severest blow of all, since it crucially affects the children’s self-understanding as the embodiment of the hope of the entire country, the miracle of midnight. Hence the traumatic experience of forced sterilisation becomes symbolic of India’s draining of hope, and of the fi nal destruction of the chances of independence through the renunciation of democratic principles during Indira Gandhi’s Emergency. The barbarity of this process is conveyed through a drastic appeal to the senses in which familiar cultural markers are arranged in a new and disturbing context: What Saleem smelled in the evening of January 18th, 1977: something frying in an iron skillet, soft unspeakable somethings spiced with turmeric coriander cumin and fenugreek . . . the pungent inescapable fumes of what-had-been-excised, cooking over a low, slow fi re. When four-hundred-and-twenty suffered ectomies, an avenging Goddess ensured that certain ectomized parts were curried with onions and green chillies, and fed to the pie-dogs of Benares. (440; ellipsis in original) In an instance of literalisation, the midnight’s children’s reproductive organs, and, with them, the positive potential of the country, are thrown to the dogs. Rushdie teases his readers with familiar images whose particular impact here emerges from their decontextualisation. By provoking expectations which are emphatically at odds with the context of sterilisation, the culinary vocabulary used in this passage catches the reader unawares. The comforting associations frequently connected with representations of food in postcolonial literatures are subverted, and replaced with an ironic distance. The cannibalistic and supernatural overtones here convey the utter helplessness of the midnight’s children. The Widow’s Hand—or perhaps the Widow herself—is referred to as “an avenging Goddess,” and any resistance against such a supernatural being is, of course, futile. This is a stock characteristic of magic realist literature—faced with the supernatural, characters are deprived of productive agency. Sufiya Zinobia’s gradual metamorphosis into a beast in Shame is a case in point. Sufiya, a mentally handicapped girl who should have been a boy, throughout her life sucks up the shame that should be felt by her utterly shameless family. In her childhood, she as yet only blushes for her family, even though her blushes are already so intense that they burn the skin of those attempting to touch her. As her family’s shamelessness grows, however, so do Sufiya’s supernatural powers. At the same rate at which her father Raza’s and her uncle Isky’s political regimes become increasingly authoritarian and terrible, a process of beastification takes place in Sufiya. Eventually, she becomes so

Magic Realism and the Politics of Ambivalence 185 dangerous that she constantly needs to be kept under narcotics because she is too powerful to be contained when awake. Her transformation from a pure and innocent mentally handicapped young girl into a bloodthirsty monster thus represents the increasing radicalisation and dehumanisation of Pakistani politics in a particularly vivid manner: the increasingly oppressive atmosphere of terror that pervades the country is reflected in the novel by the latent and, in its unpredictability, particularly terrifying threat which Sufiya Zinobia poses to all the citizens of Pakistan, as she roams the country in the form of a white panther, always on the prowl but highly elusive. Her gruesome habit of tearing off her victims’ heads in order to draw their intestines up through their necks, as well as her incredibly potent hypnotic abilities, which frustrate any attempts at self-defence, mirror the barbarian cruelty and overarching power of Isky and Raza’s authoritarian regimes, and convey the horror to which the population is subjected during their rules of terror. Sufiya’s victims are completely helpless and defenceless, but so, interestingly, is she herself. Sufiya has no control over the forces that dominate her body and transform her into what is depicted as a killing machine. Instead, her metamorphosis explicitly robs her of her Sufiya-ness. It is the beast parasitically invading her body that attacks the Pakistani population, rather than Sufiya herself, who is as much a victim of the forces that work through her as those she destroys in the process. It is fitting, therefore, that after having caused the death of those monsters which inhabit the story in human form, Sufiya perishes in the very fi restorm which she herself has unleashed. Similar issues are at stake in The Satanic Verses in the portrayal of immigrants to Britain, who are depicted as powerless in their relation to the Metropolitan Police. The text is very explicit about the Metropolitan Police’s racism and their complicity in the construction of a negative image of the British-Asian community, and it metaphorically conveys immigrants’ helplessness in encounters with the police by suggesting that the police practise black magic. Allegations that members of the Metropolitan Police form “witches’ covens” (452) not only highlight the sinister nature of police practices by insinuating that the police are invested with supernatural powers,10 they also emphasise the immigrants’ underprivileged state, as they cannot hope to defend themselves against black magic. As such, the association of the Metropolitan Police with witchcraft also constitutes a reversal of cultural stereotypes: here, it is the white executive forces operating at the heart of white economic and political power that yield black magic, whereas the immigrants are utterly unfamiliar with what is traditionally and stereotypically encoded as “primitive” practices. The identification of realism with Western and magic with Eastern cultures does not hold. Saladin’s metamorphosis into a devil is the most obvious manifestation of black magic in the novel. Ironically, it is not only caused by but also the cause of more British racism; although the chauvinistic prejudices of the white majority population form the basis for the construction

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of the stereotype to which Saladin succumbs, once he surrenders to this stereotype and transforms, British racism—now apparently justified—is unleashed upon him with its full force. Nowhere is this more drastic than in his encounter with the immigration police, whose outrageously brutal treatment sends Saladin straight to the hospital ward of a detention centre. There, he is forced to experience the full misery of the unwelcome immigrant and to acknowledge that his own metamorphosis is no special case. That the hospital is full of mutants like Saladin blatantly shows that racism is part of the everyday immigrant experience. Even though not all immigrants are warped by racist encounters in the manner of Saladin, all have their specific traumatic experiences to deal with. The literal dehumanisation to which Saladin is subjected expresses this in a particularly vivid manner: he is robbed of his humanity, dignity, and the capacity to seize control of his own life. His experiences as a goat-like devil thus become representative of the immigrant’s plight in a hostile environment: faced with a particular version of reality created by the majority population, immigrants are expected to conform to pre-constructed roles and modes of behaviour. Rushdie’s depiction of such an enforced appropriation, a process pre-determined by racial prejudice, fully conveys its dehumanising impact, since the metamorphosis of immigrants into bestial chimeras powerfully exposes the inferior position which the dominant majority seeks to assign them. But the purpose of magic is not only to convey the futility of resistance against discrimination. Far from it; although Saladin’s experiences render tangible the helplessness of those subjected to racism, he is also the character in the novel who eventually fi nds the most productive way of resistance by subverting the very strategies employed to thwart him by perpetrators of racial violence. In his case, the supernaturally imposed transformation is, ultimately, empowering. Similarly, the trope of the iron mullahs in Shalimar the Clown at once highlights the threat posed by religious fanatics and metaphorically defuses their power over the populations from which they recruit their followers. Legend has it that the iron mullahs spring from the military junk poured into Kashmir by the Indian army, and hence they are, literally, killing machines, avengers risen from the very weaponry used against Kashmiri Muslims. The fact that they cannot be shot and are, as such, near invincible in battle, adds to the frightening power of the iron mullahs and turns them into a potent symbol of the destructive consequences of injustice and violence, as well as the tenacity and danger of religious fanaticism. Simultaneously, however, the iron mullahs are also a source of irony, and the threat they pose is defused by disrespectful laughter: not only are the iron mullahs said to drown when they fall into water, they also stink— the only iron mullah to actually appear in the novel smells “like dragon’s breath” (116) and, despite claiming for himself the name of a dead saint, is hence swiftly renamed as Bulbul Fakh, “bad-odour” (117). But the iron mullah is most effectively ridiculed through the manner in which he proves his supernatural character: “his response to Yambarzal’s dismissive remark

Magic Realism and the Politics of Ambivalence 187 was to remove the turban from his head, clench his right hand and rap his knuckles smartly on the bald dome of his head. Everybody present heard the hard metallic clang and many women and several men dropped instantly to their knees” (116–17). The sarcasm of this passage is as hilarious as it is unmistakable, and it is directed not only at the hollow-headed mullah himself, but also at the characters who are impressed precisely by the acoustic signal of intellectual emptiness. Through his particular employment of the supernatural, Rushdie exposes the bizarreness of the workings of fanaticism, which, although shown to be profoundly dangerous, is nevertheless also rendered ridiculous in this depiction. It is fitting that after breeding the beginnings of communal trouble, the iron mullah is chased away, although, as it turns out, not for good, by a consciously grotesque gesture on the part of the village headman Bombur Yambarzal. Armed with kitchen utensils rather than weapons, in his march against Bulbul Fakh and his mosque Bombur Yambarzal seizes on a metal of his own in order to stir up a great clamour that frees the villagers of Shirmal from “the powerful hypnotic spell woven by the harsh seductive tongue of Bulbul Fakh” (125). Defeated by kitchen spoons, and hence, metaphorically, also by the culturally and religiously hybrid Kashmiri cuisine, the iron mullah disappears. Clearly, this scene from Shalimar the Clown shows that twenty-four years after he ridiculed religious frenzy in his depiction of a staunch Catholic biting off a dead saint’s toe in Midnight’s Children (281), and sixteen years after the fatwa, Rushdie had not lost his gusto for challenging religious fanaticism with Bakhtinian laughter. I have shown that Rushdie’s magic realist fiction is partially complicit with commodification and exoticism; that it is occasionally escapist or at least lends itself to escapist readings; and that it exploits cultural and gender stereotypes in a manner not always relieved by irony. But if, as Stephen Slemon expresses it, “fiction that astonishes is inherently political fiction,”11 then Rushdie’s fiction surely qualifies. Fictions in which minarets scream out the horrors of wars (Children 346 and 377), in which Indian businessmen turn white as they acquire the attitudes and methods of the former coloniser (179), in which a woman’s disappointment and bitterness is such that it causes her to become literally infl ated with all her unvented feelings and unfulfi lled dreams (59), in which the protagonist and his grandfather literally crack up and fall apart as the various religious communities of their country become ensnared more and more deeply in the politics of segregation and old ideals of communality fade (36–37, 275, 384); fictions in which a boy ignites “of his own accord” because he has managed to unlock the force of energy and anger within himself (Shame 117), in which a young girl’s sensitivity to shame and her inability to cope with her family’s crimes are so unbearable that they eventually result in her transmutation into an inhuman avenging beast;12 fictions in which immigrants’ attempts to defend themselves against racism are futile from the fi rst since their assailants are invisible (Verses 250),

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and in which the anonymity and loss of individuality of immigrants are so great and their rights so few that their faces are erased, depriving them of all possibilities of expression or communication;13 fictions in which political upheavals and wars of secession provoke earthquakes (Ground 217, 450–51) and in which the neglect of basic rules of humanity leads to the metamorphosis of young people into animals (Ground 391); fictions in which a young woman and her cuckolded husband-turned-terrorist remain telepathically connected across the spaces of time and distance in order to facilitate her murder (Shalimar 258), and in which a murderer escapes from a high-security prison by mentally erasing the difference between air and matter (394); fictions in which water whispers into an emperor’s ears the secrets of his subjects (Enchantress 84), in which beautiful women are male fantasies come true, and in which men want to keep their beloveds alive by turning them into vampires (Enchantress 137); fictions, fi nally, in which newly colonised parts of the world gradually succumb to the discursive power of the colonisers and begin to change in tune with their wishes (Enchantress 338–39)—such fictions possess the power to astonish, and out of this power grows a subversiveness that cannot—and should not—be ignored or denied.

8

Conclusion A New Trend?

The purpose of this book so far has been to explore magic realism by analysing its manifestations in Salman Rushdie’s oeuvre. Focusing my discussion on the fictional work of this one writer has enabled me to sketch a picture of magic realism that differs quite considerably from generally accepted defi nitions of the mode. Where the majority of magic realist critics stress the harmonious integration of different representational systems, I highlight ambivalence; where they locate the liberating potential of magic realism in its tendency to give room to various epistemologies, I emphasise the importance of the gaps and contradictions between these in fostering strategies of reading back. But what, then, of other magic realist writers? If most general books on magic realism discuss a group of rather than individual writers, and my analysis is restricted to Rushdie, does this mean that the type of magic realism this book explores is an isolated phenomenon? In order to pursue this question further, in this concluding chapter, I will probe a few texts by other writers for similarities with what until now I have treated exclusively as specificities of Rushdie’s magic realism. This chapter sets out to uncover whether these are indeed mere peculiarities of Rushdie’s novels, or whether they are indicative of a hitherto largely disregarded trend in magic realist writing.

GABRIEL GARCÍA MÁRQUEZ, TOMSON HIGHWAY, AND JEANETTE WINTERSON Latin American magic realism is often cited to demonstrate how the harmonious integration of the two magic realist codes works, and it is, of course, on the work of Gabriel García Márquez and others influenced by his fiction that the defi nition of magic realism in terms of the matter-offact acceptance of the supernatural is based. And yet, even within García Márquez’s narrative universe, characterised as it is by the discursively harmonious cohabitation of realism and the supernatural, one can detect occasional instances of friction. When Aureliano, Úrsula and José Arcadio’s

190 Exploring Magic Realism in Salman Rushdie’s Fiction second son in One Hundred Years of Solitude, for instance, prophesises that the pot of soup Úrsula has just put on the table is going to spill and the pot follows suit immediately, Úrsula is “alarmed,” although her husband is unconcerned and ready to see this “as a natural phenomenon” (15)—after all, he is “always too absorbed in his fantastic speculations” (16). Similarly, when Remedios the Beauty lifts off the ground and disappears forever, some people think that the family are “trying to save her honor with that tale of levitation” (243). But the sceptics are only “outsiders,” and most other inhabitants of Macondo “believed in the miracle” (243).1 Mostly, the novel refrains from highlighting the unusualness of the many supernatural events that happen, and the narrative voice remains typically dead-pan, relating outrageous occurrences without any sense of the extraordinary. The situation is slightly different in Tomson Highway’s 1998 novel Kiss of the Fur Queen. An example of “cross-cultural magical realist literature” (Bowers, Magic(al) 59), Highway’s novel mixes Roman Catholic and Anglo-Canadian with indigenous Cree belief systems and mythologies. The novel deals with the caribou hunter Abraham Okimasis’s family, and in particular with the lives of his two sons, Champion/Jeremiah and Ooneemeetoo/Gabriel Okimasis. It follows the two brothers’ developments from their childhood in an Indian reserve in the north of Canada to Gabriel’s death from AIDS in 1987. Tracing their intertwined histories, the text circles around questions of racial, cultural, and sexual identity and maps the brothers’ attempts to reconcile their indigenous heritage with their Anglo-Canadian Roman Catholic education, as well as to carve out a niche in which to live as Cree, and in Gabriel’s case, homosexual, artists. As the narrative shifts among a Cree “dreamworld” (Fur Queen 237), the mysteries and rituals of Roman Catholicism, and realist depictions of the dreary situation of the Cree population in urban Canada, supernatural events are mostly related in a matter-of-fact manner. The story weaves in and out of various discourses, but the clash among these discourses is related on the level of plot, in the form of the confusing cultural influences with which the two Okimasis boys have to grapple, rather than in the narrative fabric of the text itself. Supernatural occurrences are clearly linked to Cree perceptions of the world, as well as to Roman Catholic mysticism, but as such they are mainly accepted as manifestations of different strata or extensions of reality, and they are not epistemologically troubling. This also appears to be the case in the following scene, which depicts the Roman Catholic ritual of holy communion through literalisation: Flailing for his soul’s deliverance, the priest thrust out a hairy, trembling hand. And by immaculate condensation or such rarefied event, a length of raw meat dangled from his fi ngers. What was a humble caribou hunter’s son to do? He exposed himself. And savoured the

Conclusion 191 dripping blood as it hit his tongue, those drops that didn’t fall onto the angel’s paten below. “The body of Christ,” said the wizard. But the instant the flesh met Gabriel’s, a laugh exploded where his “Amen” should have been. (181) Gabriel is not shocked or even disconcerted by the literal transformation of the host into human flesh, but he is amused by the self-important seriousness of the ritual he witnesses. Thus it is not the fact of transubstantiation as such that provokes his laughter, but the entire context of the mass. The scene is more complex than it at fi rst appears, however, since we cannot be sure to what extent the literal transubstantiation Gabriel witnesses is an effect of his imagination. After all, when his brother Jeremiah receives the host seconds before Gabriel, the ritual is safely couched in metaphorical terms: “The body of Christ,” the priest confided, and deposited the host. “Amen,” replied Jeremiah, swallowed, and rose. (180) There is nothing miraculous about this scene, and the literally cannibalistic overtones Gabriel’s own consumption of the host assumes might in fact spring from his keen awareness of the bizarre aspects of the ritual of communion, which for him is a “joke” and “sham” (181); they might hence originate solely in narrative focalisation. Although it introduces the supernatural as ordinary, therefore, the novel simultaneously playfully teases us by introducing slight discrepancies of perception—but always after it has made us accept the extraordinary as normal through its matter-of-fact narrative discourse. Consider Mariesis’s mystic experience during the conception of her son Champion/Jeremiah: Suddenly, the light was coming from the Fur Queen’s eyes. Mariesis half-closed hers and let this moment take her, out the little window above the bed, out past the branch of the young spruce tree bending under its weight of snow, out to millions of stars, to the northern lights: the ancestors of her people, ten thousand generations, to the beginning of time. Dancing. And somewhere within the folds of this dance, Mariesis saw, through tears of an intense joy—or did ecstasy inflict hallucinations on its victims?—a sleeping child, not yet born but fully formed, naked, curled up inside the womb of night, tumbling down towards her and her husband. (18–19) Recognising that Mariesis’s experience is inflected by indigenous Cree mythology, the reader readily accepts her vision as part of the epistemological framework of the novel. But if such easy integration is initially invited, it is swiftly put in perspective. Mariesis’s self-questioning sentiment—“or

192 Exploring Magic Realism in Salman Rushdie’s Fiction did ecstasy inflict hallucinations on its victims?”—confronts readers with interpretative problems. Is Mariesis’s entire experience here characterised as a hallucination, or is this a moment of reliable psychic connection with her ancestral world? Is it merely her vision of the baby soon to be born that is hallucinatory, engendered by sexual ecstasy? The situation is complicated further by the following passages, which describe the “spirit baby” (20) as it lands on earth and makes its way through the forest to its mother in order to be born. Once more, this is related in a matter-of-fact style of narration that invites us to accept the baby’s bizarre journey through the woods without hesitation. A mere ten pages (and three years) later, however, when little Chichilia Okimasis fetches the midwife because her next brother, Gabriel, is about to be born, Little Seagull Ovary whiles away the duration of their walk across the country by telling the young girl the indigenous “tale of newborn babies falling from beyond the stars” (32). By describing this tale as an “ancient yarn” that is “embellished” by the midwife (32), the narrator clearly brands this version of events as a story, hence alerting readers to its relative truth-value; a “yarn” is clearly not reality. It is in such ways that the novel subtly plays with various versions of reality. Whereas the characters in the story are obviously at home with epistemological frameworks that exceed scientific and factual rationality, readers who are unfamiliar with indigenous views of reality but clearly included in the intended audience of the novel—note the glossary of Cree words and phrases at the end of the book—are challenged by such minute discrepancies. Through discrete shifts in its narrative discourse, the novel forces readers to constantly readjust their views of the intratextual universe. In other, more recent, magic realist novels of different geographic and cultural settings, doubt about magic events is introduced in a typically postmodern fashion. Jeanette Winterson’s work is a good example, as it “overtly addresses the issue of reader hesitation” (Hegerfeldt 92). In her novel The Passion, for instance, the mantra of the two fi rst-person narrators—“I’m telling you stories. Trust me.” (5)—immediately arouses the reader’s suspicion, as any appeal to trustworthiness in postmodern literature can only elicit scepticism. In combination with the supernatural occurrences in Winterson’s novel, the narrators’ reliability is precarious. The Passion is set in France and Italy during the period of the Napoleonic Wars, and it follows two characters, Henri and Villanelle, both of whom serve as narrators and both of whom join Napoleon’s army, although in different capacities. From the beginning, supernatural events in the novel are marked as unusual. When Henri, the male narrator, introduces us to his friend Patrick’s telescopic left eye, he has to admit that the stories of “the miraculous properties” of Patrick’s eye were initially viewed sceptically as “old wives’ tales” and “hearsay” (21). Even though Henri urges us to believe in Patrick’s telescopic sight and describes how he was tested and his extraordinary visual powers were proven genuine, therefore, the story

Conclusion 193 of Patrick’s eye continues to smack of the tall tale. This is strengthened by passages such as the following: Looking out from the pillar I let Patrick describe to me the activity on deck beneath the English sails. He could see the Admirals in their white leggings and the sailors running up and down the rigging, altering the sail to make the most of the wind. There were plenty of floggings. Patrick said he saw a man’s back lifted off in one clean piece. They dipped him in the sea to save him from turning septic and left him on deck staring at the sun. Patrick said he could see the weevils in the bread. Don’t believe that one. (23) What we are not supposed to believe here is unclear—only that Patrick saw “weevils in the bread” or the entire episode? Surely, it is just as hard to believe that anybody’s back can be “lifted off in one clean piece” through flogging as that somebody can see weevils in bread from a distance. Henri’s injunction here “shows just how subjective, perhaps even arbitrary, the line between narrative plausibility and implausibility is, for from a realist perspective, all of Patrick’s claims are equally fantastic” (Hegerfeldt 93). By giving out such contradictory signals, the narrator counteracts our unhesitating acceptance of the supernatural. And although many of the supernatural events described by both narrators are eventually confi rmed, it is clear that the supernatural is perceived as harmonious at no point in the narrative: “Even while presenting fantastic occurrences as unquestionable fact, the text draws attention to their implausibility” (Hegerfeldt 92). When Villanelle fi rst brings up the tale of Venetian boatmen’s webbed feet, for instance, she clearly marks it as extraordinary: “Rumour has it that the inhabitants of this city walk on water. That, more bizarre still, their feet are webbed” (49). When Henri and his miraculously-eyed friend Patrick later interpret the legend of webbed feet as a hilarious joke that only superstitious Poles are prone to believe (104), it is obvious that the characters in the novel are not ready to admit the veracity of such bizarre qualities, which can hence not be integrated into their vision of reality without friction. Even though there is no simultaneous installation of both magic realist codes in The Passion, no unsettling of the narrative through irresolvable oppositions, there are many contradictions which surface in the shape of doubt and disbelief. That one of the two narrators, Henri, ends up in the Venetian madhouse on San Servolo does not completely discredit everything we have heard before—Villanelle’s narrative, after all, is just as full of the supernatural as Henri’s, but her sanity is not doubted—but it does add another layer of doubt. Whereas in The Passion, therefore, the status of the supernatural is always slightly ambivalent, in Winterson’s novel Sexing the Cherry, the magic realist universe appears purely harmonious for most of the text. DogWoman, the female giant who narrates part of the story, is the only one of

194 Exploring Magic Realism in Salman Rushdie’s Fiction her kind and, as such, marked as different from all other characters. But even though her appearance is unusual, and even though some of the other characters show fear of her extraordinary physique and strength, none exhibit surprise. The mere possibility of the existence of giants is not a matter worth debating in Winterson’s novel, and the Dog-Woman’s presence as such is neither disturbing nor particularly remarkable. In the same vein, Jordan, the Dog-Woman’s adopted son and second narrator of the novel, relates the many bizarre events he witnesses on his journeys around the world without any sense of the extraordinary. If the main part of the novel, however, constructs a world in which the supernatural combines harmoniously with the ordinary, and fantastic occurrences are easily integrated into familiar accounts of British history, the last thirty pages of the text put the earlier sections into perspective by radically challenging their reliability. Suddenly, we are introduced to two additional narrators, Nicolas Jordan and an unnamed woman, both living in contemporary Britain, and thus existing in a completely different period from the other two narrators, who are at home in seventeenth-century England. How these two pairs of narrators relate to each other is not clear. In its earlier sections, the novel already juggles different time periods, and Jordan disputes the feasibility of distinguishing between the past, present, and future. As such divisions are openly challenged, we cannot be sure whether the contemporary narrators are entirely unrelated to the seventeenth-century narrators, which is rendered unlikely by the male narrators’ similar names, whether they are their reincarnations, or whether they are their inflections on a different time plane. Or perhaps they have dreamed up the seventeenth-century sections of the narrative—after all, the contemporary female narrator introduces herself in the following unsettling manner: “I am a woman going mad. I am a woman hallucinating. I imagine I am huge, raw, a giant” (121). Such a statement necessarily undermines the reader’s trust in the female giant’s narratorial reliability and thus in most of the story so far, as it suggests that the parts of the novel narrated by her might be pure fantasy, created by the contemporary narrator’s hallucinatory imagination. Indeed, this interpretation is strengthened by the manner in which the contemporary female narrator proceeds: When I am a giant I go out with my sleeves rolled up and my skirts swirling round me like a whirlpool. I have a sack such as kittens are drowned in and I stop off all over the world filling it up. Men shoot at me, but I take the bullets out of my cleavage and I chew them up. Then I laugh and laugh and break their guns between my fingers the way you would a wish-bone. (121–22) Reminiscent of an earlier passage in which Dog-Woman reacts to being shot in a suggestively similar manner—“I fell over, killing the man who was poised behind me, and plucked the musket ball out of my cleavage” (66),

Conclusion 195 the contemporary female narrator’s words here invite us to identify the latter’s fantasies with Dog-Woman, and they hence insinuate that Dog-Woman might, in fact, be nothing more than a creation of the unnamed narrator’s disturbed mind. But if this implies that Winterson’s novel is nothing more than an ordinary example of the fantastic in which the riddle is eventually solved, I would argue that things are more complicated. In fact, there is no riddle here until the second female narrator suddenly steps forward with her extraordinary claim. Prior to this moment, readers have no reason to doubt the veracity of events as related by Jordan and Dog-Woman. Due to the continuous construction of a hitherto harmonious universe, the sudden introduction of ambivalence comes as a complete surprise. In Winterson’s novel, we are not faced with the fantastic; instead, we witness an example of harmonious magic realism abruptly tipping over into ambivalent magic realism. Because the harmonious integration of the supernatural and the ordinary has, up to now, been upheld so consistently, it is the realistic explanation of what we have been induced to accept as unproblematic that now becomes unsettling. Having been persuaded to believe the extraordinary events that have dominated the first 120 pages of the narrative, the reader experiences the introduction of a possibly realist background to the story as disturbing. Hence Winterson radically unsettles the hierarchy between the rational and the irrational.

TONI MORRISON AND ANGELA CARTER If Winterson’s two novels veer among full harmony, doubt, and more fundamental textual contradictions, Toni Morrison’s Beloved and Angela Carter’s Nights at the Circus more fully provide examples of the same irresolvable opposition between contradictory codes characteristic of Rushdie’s magic realist fiction. Both novels exhibit the typical oscillation between representational systems, and both contain central riddles whose irresolvability produces interpretative lacunae. Beloved is set in the second half of the nineteenth century in America, and it tells the story of Sethe, a former slave who flees her abusive slave-holder Schoolteacher. When Sethe reaches her mother-in-law, she is granted a few weeks of respite and freedom, despite the after-effects of the incredible hardships she had to endure on the run and despite not knowing her husband Halle’s whereabouts. Reunited with her two sons and daughter, and newly delivered of her baby-daughter Denver, she is just about to recover when Schoolteacher arrives in order to retrieve her. Desperate and unable to bear the thought of her children having to live through the same abuse and traumatic experiences she herself had to endure, Sethe attempts to save her children from a life as slaves by trying to kill them. She manages to murder her two-year-old daughter, but is intercepted before she can kill the others. The story sets in years later, with the arrival of Paul D., a former

196 Exploring Magic Realism in Salman Rushdie’s Fiction slave and friend of Sethe’s from their slave-holder’s farm. Paul D. and Sethe are just about to start a new life as a couple when a mysterious young woman who calls herself Beloved suddenly appears on their doorstep. The novel follows the manner in which Beloved’s disturbing presence forces the other characters to relive their traumatic past and to acknowledge that “the past coexists with the present” (Phelan 714). Beloved’s arrival and acceptance into Sethe’s house influence other characters, in particular Sethe, Denver, and Paul D., in extraordinary ways, and it is, therefore, not surprising that one of the central questions of the novel concerns Beloved’s identity. This is also what I will focus on in what follows, as Beloved’s identity constitutes the main riddle in the text. To determine who Beloved really is becomes one of the reader’s central quests, and it remains so even once the main characters seem to have resolved this issue for themselves. From the beginning, Beloved is connected with mystery. Where she comes from is extremely hazy; in fact, it seems as if she had appeared out of nowhere: a fully dressed woman walked out of the water. She barely gained the dry bank of the stream before she sat down and leaned against a mulberry tree. All day and all night she sat there, her head resting on the trunk in a position abandoned enough to crack the brim in her straw hat. Everything hurt but her lungs most of all. Sopping wet and breathing shallow she spent those hours trying to negotiate the weight of her eyelids. The day breeze blew her dress dry; the night wrinkled it. Nobody saw her emerge or came accidentally by. (50) If Beloved’s sudden and completely unobserved appearance “out of the water” is at least unusual, the mysterious atmosphere that surrounds her arrival in Sethe’s family is strengthened by the bizarre events that accompany her discovery by Sethe, Paul D., and Denver. When they fi rst notice Beloved, all they can see is “a black dress, two unlaced shoes below it” (51), and together with Denver’s question—“What is that?” (51)—this perception of Beloved as an empty bunch of clothes is a signal of her unstable humanity from the start. In addition, this fi rst view of Beloved as a dress links back to Denver’s vision of a white dress that embraces her mother’s waist, interpreted by her as a manifestation of her dead sister’s ghost and related to us just a few pages earlier, although chronologically removed from the present moment in the story by an indefi nite number of years (29). In a similarly suggestive vein, as soon as she has realised Beloved is a young woman, Sethe is overcome by the urgent need to urinate, and she later interprets the forceful emptying of her bladder as a metaphorical breaking of water (202). Cleary, Beloved is associated with the supernatural from her fi rst appearance. In addition to her own behaviour, Beloved’s influence on others

Conclusion 197 exceeds normal bounds, suggesting that she is a ghost in the flesh rather than a real person. Paul D., for instance, feels that Beloved gradually pushes him out of Sethe’s house, where he has just begun to feel at home. Slowly and against his will, he is mysteriously forced out of one room after the other, with an ever-increasing spatial distance opening up between him and Sethe (114–16). Eventually, he has to leave the house and live in the cold house, still against his own wishes but unable to stop the powers that move him: “He wasn’t being nervous; he was being prevented” (116). If Paul D’s experience can nevertheless be traced back to a subconscious fear of dependence and therefore explained away as a manifestation of his aversion to emotional commitments, such a psychological explanation of the supernatural is not satisfactory in the following scene, in which Beloved disappears while Denver and she are playing hide-and-seek in the cold house: There is no sight or sound of Beloved. Denver struggles to her feet amid the crackling newspaper. Holding her palm out, she moves slowly toward the door. There is no latch or knob—just a loop of wire to catch a nail. She pushes the door open. Cold sunlight displaces the dark. The room is just as it was when they entered—except Beloved is not there. There is no point in looking further, for everything in the place can be seen at fi rst sight. Denver looks anyway because the loss is ungovernable. (122) Inexplicably and suddenly, Beloved has disappeared: “Just as she thought it might happen, it has. Easy as walking into a room. A magical appearance on a stump, the face wiped out by sunlight, and a magical disappearance in a shed, eaten alive by the dark” (123). Denver accepts the supernatural unquestioningly, as she is already certain that Beloved is her sister returned from the dead. Indeed, such events are not exactly unusual for a girl who has grown up in a world in which the existence and actual presence of ghosts are taken for granted. Hence Denver is relieved but not surprised when Beloved returns, just as swiftly and mysteriously as she had disappeared: “No footfall announces her, but there she is, standing where before there was nobody when Denver looked” (123). The supernatural here is not shocking, but rather an aspect of everyday reality. What is curious is that even though the existence of ghosts is entirely ordinary in the fictional universe of Morrison’s novel, Beloved’s identity is nevertheless a matter of profound ambivalence. The novel at fi rst conflates the identities of Beloved and Sethe’s deceased daughter. Beloved appears to be about the same age as the murdered girl would have been; she arrives shortly after the disembodied baby ghost has been exorcised by Paul D.; she seems to remember snippets of Sethe’s past; and her body looks completely new, with the exception of her scar in the exact spot where Sethe cut her daughter’s throat. But once Beloved’s identity seems solidified, and

198

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both characters and readers have started to accept that Beloved is the baby ghost come to life, the novel begins to introduce other possibilities. Stamp Paid, for instance, suggests that Beloved might be a certain black girl who had been abused and imprisoned by a white man since childhood, and who disappeared shortly before Beloved’s mysterious arrival (235). This is the explanation Sethe prefers before she becomes convinced that Beloved is her daughter (119). In fact, this version ties in with many indications from Beloved’s monologue and other speeches. She repeatedly mentions having been locked up in a place where she could only crouch (210), and refers to “men without skin” (211)—her term for white men (262)—who abused her: “he hurts where I sleep he puts his finger there” (212). Later, when Sethe and Beloved are already locked in their struggles over guilt, suffering, and justification, Beloved describes her memories of what Sethe and Denver interpret as some kind of limbo or afterlife in terms that also point towards sexual abuse: “She said when she cried there was no one. That dead men lay on top of her. That she had nothing to eat. Ghosts without skin stuck their fi ngers in her and said beloved in the dark and bitch in the light” (241). Thus the realist code reasserts itself and Beloved’s status becomes ambivalent. Although Paul D. and Denver’s experiences reveal Beloved’s supernatural powers, and although she has physical and emotional attributes that coincide with those of Sethe’s daughter, the similarities between what Beloved reveals about her life prior to her arrival at Sethe’s and what we know about the black girl who was abused are too striking to be ignored. This is by no means the only way in which the realist code is implemented. For Horvitz, Beloved is a representative of “every African woman whose story will never be told” (157), and Bowers proposes that Beloved can be connected with the Yoruba myth of abiku children (Magic(al) 86). Phelan cites a few of the other theories Beloved’s obscure identity and function have inspired, among them interpretations of Beloved as a vessel for the “psychokinetic energy” of all other characters (Witt qtd. in Phelan 710). Out of these various possible explanations, Elizabeth House’s reading of Beloved’s inner monologue as an indication of her experiences on the Middle Passage is particularly compelling, and it provides a persuasive interpretation of this opaque passage in the novel (House 18–22). Phelan himself interprets Beloved as an example of “stubborn recalcitrance,” that is, “recalcitrance that will not yield” to critics’ longing for interpretative resolution: “Despite the best efforts of many careful readers, her character escapes any comprehensive, coherent account” (714). Even though Phelan approaches the novel from the perspective of rhetorical reader-response criticism and never connects the contradictions with which he grapples to the magic realist mode of the novel, this interpretation is, of course, in tune with views of disharmonious magic realism as a site of the clash between incompatible codes. The main difference is that whereas Phelan focuses on the “recalcitrance” of Beloved as a character, in my magic realist reading of Beloved, it is the entire novel rather than just the character Beloved

Conclusion 199 that resists unifying approaches. I would suggest that by introducing ontological discrepancies into a narrative that could just as easily continue in a harmonious structural mode, Morrison confers responsibility on her readers. In resisting interpretative closure, the text activates a reading back in which the complex questions of guilt and suffering can be—and need to be—renegotiated ad infi nitum. Any interpretation of the text has to remain split because contradictory evidence has to, but cannot be, accommodated. Hence Morrison’s novel demands a reading strategy that is aware of its own shortcomings. As is the case with Rushdie’s fiction, the structural incompatibilities of Beloved open up a dialogic space in which any interpretative choice remains aware of its opposite and of its own failures. In sight of the complex, myriad forms of guilt, no last word can ever be said about the horrors of slavery which Morrison’s text depicts, and it is this impossibility of reaching any conclusion that is expressed through the clashes of the two codes and their concomitant resistance to unification. As a ghost, Beloved’s appearance signifies the continued presence of the needy past, and the impossibility of atonement. But as a survivor of the Middle Passage or victim of sexual abuse, Beloved’s expulsion through the black community only complicates the web of injustice and guilt, as it is the former slaves themselves who maltreat a mentally disturbed and heavily pregnant young woman, forcing her to relive Sethe’s experiences. Decidedly more playful and celebratory in tone, Angela Carter’s novel Nights at the Circus confronts the reader with a similarly pronounced clash between codes. Indeed, her female protagonist has teasingly co-opted this clash as her marketing strategy and openly flaunts her taunting slogan “Is she fact or is she fiction?” (7). The novel tells the story of Fevvers, a female “aerialiste” claiming to have real wings (7), and Walser, a sceptical journalist trying to expose her as a fraud or, alternatively, to convince himself of the authenticity of her wings. The narrative follows their picaresque journey from London to Moscow and Siberia, where, after separate learning processes and bizarre experiences in the wake of a train accident, they are fi nally united as husband and wife. The main riddle at the centre of the novel is constituted by the question of whether Fevvers’s wings are genuine, a riddle that is complicated by the existence of a plethora of hints at both possibilities. As they progress, readers are constantly forced to readapt their evaluation of Fevvers to new developments in the narrative, and, together with Walser, who serves as the reader’s fictional stand-in, they continually have to integrate various contradictory allusions into their interpretation of the text. Fevvers’s story, as related by herself in the fi rst part of the novel, bears clear resemblances to the tall tale and as such seems to be of only limited reliability. For instance, the strong indications that she and “her familiar” Lizzie (52) are interfering with time during Walser’s interview in London suggest an alliance with the supernatural, hence rendering her bizarre physique more feasible. Contradictory evidence is woven through the text, and it exceeds the presence of

200 Exploring Magic Realism in Salman Rushdie’s Fiction mere contrasting clues. Just as in Rushdie, there are passages which present alternately one or the other of the two possible solutions to Fevvers’s riddle as the correct one, and these incompatible assertions frustrate the reader’s every chance of arriving at interpretative closure. The authenticity of Fevvers’s wings is asserted in Siberia, itself a magical space in the novel. When the circus which employs Fevvers and with which she is travelling through Siberia is stranded in the middle of nowhere after a train accident, Fevvers claims she has broken her wing in the crash: I have broken my right wing. As the fi rst shock passes, I feel the pain. It hurts. Hurts as much as a clean fracture in the forearm. But no more. A lot to be thankful for. I can still keep the use of my right arm, even though the wing is broken. God, it hurts. Could be worse. Keep a stiff upper lip, girl; keep on telling yourself how it could be worse! (205) If this seems to be an assertion of the impossible—that Fevvers really has wings—there is still a loophole for readers’ hesitation. After all, the passage above is told by the fi rst-person narrator Fevvers herself, and readers have had ample opportunity to ascertain that she is entirely unreliable. Even though Fevvers’s description of the pain she feels in her broken wing is persuasive, the suspension of disbelief she demands of the reader is still too great to accomplish on the ground of her own dubious evidence alone. Yet the situation changes when the authorial narrator intervenes: “Although, from a distance, she could still pass for a blonde, there was a good inch of brown at the roots of Fevvers’ hair and brown was showing in her feathers, too, because she was moulting” (271). From the moment Fevvers’s “moulting” is mentioned, her hybrid nature as half-woman, half-bird becomes a fact. Asserted by the authorial narrator, the genuineness of Fevvers’s wings can no longer be doubted. And if the reader is rather surprised, because the answer to the riddle (“Is she fact or is she fiction?”) is so suddenly disclosed, and in such an understated way at that, another piece of off-hand “proof” is provided by the authorial narrator almost immediately: “Her fractured wing, broken again in her last attempt to fly, was now strapped securely up with the Maestro’s fishing-lines” (272). Again, the narrator’s reference to Fevvers’s “broken” wing leaves no doubt about the fact that Fevvers is what she claims to be—a true bird woman. If readers believe that they have, at last, solved the riddle surrounding Fevvers, however, they are mistaken. At the very end of the novel, just after having learned that Fevvers, indeed, does not seem to have a navel—a fact providing further proof of her having been hatched from an egg even though Walser, previously so interested in fi nding out whether Fevvers has a navel, is now wisely “no longer in the mood to draw any defi nite conclusions from this fact” (292), the entire situation shifts again. For here, in the very last lines of the novel, the very opposite, namely the fact that Fevvers does not have wings, is asserted as well. When Walser asks her why she

Conclusion 201 took such trouble to persuade him of her hybrid nature, Fevvers’s answer is confidence-shattering: ‘Fevvers, only the one question . . . why did you go to such lengths, once upon a time, to convince me you were the “only fully-feathered intacta in the history of the world”?’ She began to laugh. ‘I fooled you, then!’ she said. ‘Gawd, I fooled you!’ She laughed so much the bed shook. ‘You mustn’t believe what you write in the papers!’ she assured him, stuttering and hiccupping with mirth. ‘To think I fooled you!’ . . . The spiralling tornado of Fevvers’ laughter began to twist and shudder across the entire globe, as if a spontaneous response to the giant comedy that endlessly unfolded beneath it, until everything that lived and breathed, everywhere, was laughing. Or so it seemed to the deceived husband, who found himself laughing too . . . . ‘To think I really fooled you!’ she marvelled. ‘It just goes to show there’s nothing like confidence.’ (294–95) There are, of course, various possible explanations for Fevvers’s laugher, 2 but on one level it certainly implies that her wings are fake, like so much else about her.3 Having just reconciled themselves to the fact that Fevvers has wings, readers now are compelled to accept the very opposite as well. For even though Fevvers’s reaction clearly suggests that she is a fraud, due to the intervention of the authorial narrator we also know that she is real. As a result, readers are faced with an interpretative dilemma which eludes resolution: through the clash of the two magic realist codes, incompatible opposites are true at the very same time. The description of the tornado here emphasises the manner in which the oscillation between the two codes that marks the ending of Nights at the Circus is performatively rendered by the text. The vision of Fevvers’s laughter which encompasses the “entire globe” like a “tornado” is at fi rst presented as factual information. In the very next sentence, however, it is put in perspective: the qualification “Or so it seemed to the deceived husband” (295) introduces a sudden shift which suggests that the “tornado of Fevvers’ laughter” is just a figment of Walser’s imagination. Ambivalence here results from the mixed narrative situation, but even the authorial narrator is at times evasive: Her laughter spilled out of the window and made the tin ornaments on the tree outside the god-hut shake and tinkle. She laughed so loud that the baby in the Shaman’s cousin’s house heard her, waved its little fists in the air and laughed delightedly too. Although he did not understand the joke that convulsed the baby, the Shaman caught the infection and started to giggle. The bear panted sympathetically; he would

202 Exploring Magic Realism in Salman Rushdie’s Fiction have laughed if he could have. The Shaman’s cousin caught Lizzie’s eye and they both doubled up. Even the young mother in her peaceful bed of reindeerskins smiled in her sleep. . . . It seemed this laughter of the happy young woman rose up from the wilderness in a spiral and began to twist and shudder across Siberia. It tickled the sleeping sides of the inhabitants of the railhead at R.; it penetrated the counterpoint of the music in the Maestro’s house; the members of the republic of free women experienced it as a refreshing breeze. The Colonel and the Escapee, snug in a smoking compartment on the way to Khabarovsk, caught the echoes and found abashed smiles creeping across their faces. (294–95) The narratorial evasiveness in this passage reinforces the oscillation between the two different codes. There is not a single instance in which a decision for either the supernatural or the realist code as a sole basis for interpretation would be justified, because both codes seem to have been fully implemented. All the reader can do is accept the paradox: the description of the effects of Fevvers’s laughter is at once pure imagination and pure fact. Like Rushdie’s fiction, and like the other novels discussed in this chapter, Carter’s text hence “permits a dance of possibility” (Armstrong 273). It creates a powerful symbol of female liberation, but simultaneously parodies the manner in which male observers seek to co-opt the metaphorical manifestation of female independence as sexual stereotype. At the end of the day, Fevvers’s laughter and Walser’s ability to join in show that whether Fevvers has wings is unimportant. What is important, however, is her ability to resist categorisation—and this is what the text urges its readers to re-enact.

TO RETURN TO RUSHDIE . . . What my analyses of the magic realist novels discussed in this chapter suggest is that the form of magic realism I have uncovered in Rushdie’s fiction does not actually constitute a new trend, but that it is a trend which needs to be newly recognised. Defi nitions of magic realism as a harmonious combination of supernatural and realist representational codes ignore the productive tension created by epistemological incompatibilities and clashes. The construction of ambivalence is not a side-effect but a central component of some magic realist texts, and continuing critical neglect of its importance perpetuates the failure to do justice to a substantial portion of the magic realist corpus. This book has highlighted the significance of magic realist incompatibilities by focusing on the manner in which ambivalence is created on an intratextual level. In this concluding section, I will address the manner in which resistance to closure can also be observed in the intertextual relations of Rushdie’s novels to one another. Hence I

Conclusion 203 will concentrate on the specific kind of interpretative openness which arises from the manner in which Rushdie’s novels comment on and challenge one another, and which carries ambivalence even across the individual texts. Rushdie’s novelistic work is marked by a high degree of self-referentiality; as we read his novels in chronological order, we are faced with an ever greater number of allusions to his earlier texts. Places and characters re-appear, thus conveying the impression that they exist in a textual universe which transcends the boundaries of Rushdie’s individual novels. For a regular reader of Rushdie’s fiction, his characters seem to inhabit a separate fictional world, a world of which various novels show short glimpses and in which a character from one novel might well stroll into another—although mostly at his or her peril. The self-referentiality of Rushdie’s fictional oeuvre ranges from minute details and allusions to more dramatic references to events that explicitly change individual stories from earlier novels. The former and less noticeable type of self-referentiality is vital for the creation of a continuous textual universe in Rushdie’s novels, as can be observed most clearly in Rushdie’s portrayal of Bombay. In Rushdie’s fiction, Bombay is mainly represented by a few landmarks that tend to re-appear throughout Rushdie’s oeuvre, rendering specific areas of the city familiar to his readers by sheer repetition. Among these are Malabar Hill, where quite a few of Rushdie’s protagonists live,4 Chowpatty Beach, Juhu Beach, Marine Drive, Cuffe Parade, Warden Road and Scandal Point, as well as the hospitals in which most of Rushdie’s protagonists are either born, nursed, or work—Breach Candy Hospital and Maria Gratiaplena Nursing Home. In addition, the recurrence of the names of rich Bombayites (Moor 180 and Ground 19), and references to various projects and events in the history of city and country5 serve to create the vision of a very specific Bombay that becomes recognisable to Rushdie’s readers, regardless of whether they actually know the city or not. Rushdie’s fictional version of Bombay not only contains recognisable landmarks, it is also populated by a cast of characters that, once created, tend to re-appear in subsequent novels. That this phenomenon should be most pronounced in The Moor’s Last Sigh and The Ground Beneath Her Feet is to be expected, since Shame, Fury, and, to a slightly lesser extent, The Satanic Verses are concerned with Bombay only peripherally, if at all, and The Enchantress of Florence is set in an entirely different period. In The Moor’s Last Sigh and The Ground Beneath Her Feet, however, we encounter a plethora of familiar names. In The Moor’s Last Sigh, these names include Wee Willie Winkie (100), Lord Khusro Khusrovani (163, 347), the Sabarmati affair (264), Dim Minto, and Aadam Sinai from Midnight’s Children, as well as Zeeny Vakil6 and a reference to the Chamchawalas from The Satanic Verses (197). The Ground Beneath Her Feet features Homi Catrack, William Methwold,7 Pia Aziz (50), Saleem’s real mother Vanita (45), and the Sabarmati affair from Midnight’s Children

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(151), as well as Ute Schaapsteker and Sister John (25), Aurora Zogoiby (50, 52), and Fadia Wadia from The Moor’s Last Sigh (191). All of these characters’ re-appearances contribute to the transformation of Rushdie’s fictional Bombay into a hybrid space, populated by characters and stories that seem to change slightly with each re-emergence. Whereas in some instances, however, these slight shifts go almost unnoticed, in others they are truly disturbing, heightening the ambivalence of earlier novels by suggesting that episodes from previous texts need to be re-interpreted in the light of further developments in later novels. Leaving aside more harmless instances of such ambivalent episodes, such as the contradictory resolutions of the Sabarmati affair offered in Midnight’s Children (258–67) and The Moor’s Last Sigh (264), I will discuss two episodes from The Moor’s Last Sigh which significantly alter the endings of Midnight’s Children and The Satanic Verses, respectively. Midnight’s Children ends on an ambiguous note, balancing Saleem’s pessimistic vision of his own fragmentation and death with the prospect of a tentative renewal of the miracle of midnight, as personified by Saleem’s, apparently magically gifted, son. Thus the hope that the second generation of magical children might provide a new impetus for the development of India lingers at the end of the novel. Yet the re-appearance of Saleem’s son Aadam Sinai alias Adam Braganza alias Zogoiby in The Moor’s Last Sigh radically frustrates such hopes, as Aadam re-emerges as an entirely negative figure. Although Saleem is aware of faults in Aadam’s character even in Midnight’s Children, and although he realises that the value system of the second generation of midnight’s children differs emphatically from his own, the utter unscrupulousness of Adam in The Moor’s Last Sigh nevertheless comes as something of a shock. Adam has become a chameleon-like figure whose sole interest lies in the pursuit of his own profit and whose female counterpart is the would-be murderess Uma. Thus the idealism of Saleem’s generation is exchanged for pragmatic callousness in a devastating appraisal of the changes the Indian nation has undergone since its independence. This also prompts the question of whether in the light of Aadam’s transformation into Adam we can ever again read the ending of Midnight’s Children in the more hopeful vein that its original text suggests. After all, our awareness of the further development of Adam as a symbol of the deterioration of the values of idealism, hybridity, and tolerance in India is irrevocable. In showing that Aadam will not fulfi l Saleem’s cautious hopes, The Moor’s Last Sigh, therefore, adds a second ending to Midnight’s Children that co-exists with the original text. The manner in which the ending of The Satanic Verses is potentially affected by an episode in The Moor’s Last Sigh is even more disturbing. The Satanic Verses has—surprisingly for this novel, as well as in the context of Rushdie’s entire oeuvre—a comparatively happy ending: Saladin returns to India, is reconciled to his dying father, and starts a new life together with Zeenat Vakil. His re-integration into Indian society, as well as his prospects

Conclusion 205 of a new beginning, largely depend on Zeeny’s influence and affection, a fact that imbues the news of her violent death in The Moor’s Last Sigh with a particular significance as a comment on Rushdie’s hitherto only happy ending. In tune with the general atmosphere of Rushdie’s fi rst post-fatwa novel for adults, Zeeny’s death appears as a pessimistic reflection on the ideals of hybridity, tolerance, and eclecticism promoted through her character. Hence readers are once more faced with the question of whether this development should affect their interpretation of the ending of The Satanic Verses. Can The Satanic Verses still be said to end happily despite the subsequent tragic subversion of this ending? The question of the extent to which phenomena such as Zeeny’s death should be perceived as casting a shadow over the ending of previous novels seems difficult to resolve; beyond doubt, however, is the fact that such instances of self-referentiality counteract attempts to achieve interpretative closure even further. Although the novels as such already frustrate reading strategies that do not accommodate contradictions and incompatibilities, the self-referentiality of Rushdie’s oeuvre enhances the resistance to closure displayed by the individual texts. Both ambivalence and the deferral of closure re-emerge on an intertextual level, at once reflecting and amplifying the open structure of Rushdie’s novels. With the publication of Fury in 2001, Rushdie seemed to have abandoned magic realism. The surprise displayed by readers and critics alike showed to what extent we have come to associate his work with this literary mode. Indeed, it seems that it is not only Rushdie’s fiction as such but also its success that is intricately connected with magic realism. The reception of Fury was less than enthusiastic, and although this was certainly not due exclusively to Rushdie’s choice of a different mode, his abandonment of magic realism might well have influenced reactions to the novel. Although this points once more to the commodification of magic realism, it simultaneously shows that much of the persuasive creative power of Rushdie’s novels emerges directly from his particular engagement with magic realism. The fact that Rushdie has since returned to magic realism, therefore, is less a sign of his inability to fi nd new ways of poetic expression than a logical move. Logical not because magic realism guarantees sales figures, but because the political impetus behind Rushdie’s fiction is productively articulated in the friction characteristic of his magic realism. Ambivalence, in Rushdie, does not betray an inability to choose, but rather encourages us to acknowledge our partial perception of the world. In an interview recorded shortly before the fatwa was announced, Rushdie himself explicitly defi ned the foregrounding of alternative world views as one of the key powers of the writer: One of the things that a writer can do is to say: Here is the way in which you’re told you’re supposed to look at the world, but actually there are also some other ways. Let us never believe that the way in

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Exploring Magic Realism in Salman Rushdie’s Fiction which the people in power tell us to look at the world is the only way we can look. (qtd. in Appignanesi and Maitland 23)

In his own writing, Rushdie goes further than this, flagging up not only the existence of world views different from those held by “the people in power,” but the great multiplicity of possible, complimentary and contradictory versions of reality as such. His fiction encourages us to acknowledge the possibility of “look[ing] at the world” in a variety of ways, and to appreciate the discrepancies even within ourselves, and within our own approaches to reality. Difference and variety, he suggests, can be demanding, can unsettle, but we can only lose by reinterpreting them as threats. Reading Rushdie has the potential to foster an increased willingness to accommodate difference. It therefore calls for, but also helps develop, a skill which is becoming increasingly valuable in a world poised between the demands of globalisation and nationalism, hybridity and purity. If reading Rushdie increases our tolerance of variety without allowing us to lose sight of the differences, it invites a reality that is not exuberant or wonderful or magic, but simply liveable.

Notes

NOTES TO THE INTRODUCTION 1. In Magic(al) Realism, Maggie Ann Bowers clearly delineates the various terms—magic realism, magical realism, magic(al) realism, etc.—from one another. However, I use the term “magic realism” for purely linguistic reasons. Since for me, ambivalence is central to Rushdie’s magic realism, I prefer the epithet “magic,” as opposed to “magical.” Due to the ambiguous grammatical function of the word “magic,” the oxymoronic clash characteristic of the mode is already inscribed in the very term “magic realism.” 2. See, for instance, Faris, Faris and Zamora, Bowers (Magic(al)), Hart and Ouyang, and Warnes, as well as the anthology of magic realist writing edited by Young and Hollaman. 3. To talk about a Latin American variety of magic realism is, of course, a huge generalisation, since it presupposes a degree of uniformity within Latin American magic realist writing which is completely illusory. I refer to a “Latin American variety” of magic realism purely as a reaction to defi nitions of the mode which posit the dominance of precisely such a variety, but am aware of the fact that this term glosses over the differences which exist among, for instance, the magic realism of Gabriel García Márquez, Alejo Carpentier, and Miguel Angel Asturias to which Bowers draws attention: The difference of style between the writing of Carpentier and García Márquez’s magical realist writing reveals the full extent of the problem of assuming that Latin American magical realism can be discussed as one uncomplicated category. Carpentier’s writing is predominantly realist with some magical happenings that are treated with awe such as a slave rebel flying away from his prospective killers witnessed by his amazed and delighted followers, whereas García Márquez’s writing has an overwhelming atmosphere of nostalgia, and magical happenings such as the birth of a child with a tail occur as a matter of everyday reality. (Magic(al) 39) When I refer to Latin American magic realism, I have in mind the Márquezian strand of this variety. See Bowers, Magic(al) (33–47) for a succinct analysis of the main distinctions between Latin American writers of magic realism. 4. See Bowers (Magic(al)), Cooper, Hinchcliffe and Jewinski, Shair, Strelka, Walter, and Warnes, who discuss particular geographical and even individual forms of magic realism. 5. The postmodern, I believe, does not automatically need to imply a “decontextualizing vantage point” (Sangari 181). Nevertheless, in contextualising Rushdie it is important to keep in mind that he writes from a variety of geographical and cultural contexts; after all, he refers to himself as an

208

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international writer, and he is quite explicit about the various cultural traditions which have influenced him (Homelands 20–21). 6. The Moor’s Last Sigh is, actually, somewhat of a magic realist borderline case. For large parts of the novel, magic realism seems to be limited to the presence of the unreality effect, and while a magic realist atmosphere pervades the text, it is almost devoid of magic occurrences. Those rare moments when we are faced with potentially magic events tend to be characterised by the coexistence of two possible explanations rather than a true oscillation between two codes. Both Faris (Enchantments 13) and Laura Moss, in fact, read the novel in terms of a satirical engagement with magic realism. The characters of The Moor’s Last Sigh, however, are typical of Rushdie’s magic realism, as are its themes and linguistic devices. The last part of the novel, which is set in Benengeli, moreover, is obviously and fully magic realist.

NOTES TO CHAPTER 1 1. Scheffel cites this date as the year in which the term was fi rst used by Roh as a synonym for post-expressionism (7), but critics do not always agree on the precise origins of the term. Maggie Ann Bowers concludes that it suffices to say that “the term was coined around the early 1920s, in relation to a particular group of painters based in Germany, sharing a similar vision” (Magic(al) 11). 2. For the following, see Scheffel (13–16). 3. See Scheffel on the importance of precise depictions in magic realism as conceived by Roh and Bontempelli (8, 16). 4. For an account of Uslar-Pietri’s role in the development of magic realist literature in Latin America, see Maggie Ann Bowers (Magic(al) 15–16). Uslar-Pietri’s magic realism seems to have been strongly influenced by the defi nitions of Roh and Bontempelli, as is suggested by the fact that it “emphasized the mystery of human living amongst the reality of life rather than following Carpentier’s newly developing versions of marvellous American reality” (Bowers, Magic(al) 15). It was Carpentier rather than Uslar-Pietri, however, who ultimately shaped Latin American magic realism both in his creative and in his theoretical writing. 5. Bowers traces the emergence of the term “magical” rather than “magic” realism back to Flores’s essay, and argues that magical realism combines “aspects of both magic and marvellous realism” (Bowers, Magic(al) 16). 6. What such a reading presupposes—more or less implicitly—is the presence of an interpretative stance which holds magic and realist elements distinct. 7. According to Faris, “Leal refers here to the Hispanic American movement of ‘Modernismo,’ to be distinguished from European and North American modernism, and closer to symbolism” (Leal 124n6). 8. Consider, for instance, Coppola’s explanation of the difference between original and contemporary meanings of the term, which suggests an unproblematic relationship between ontologically different elements for the latter: “Roh did not intend the term magischer Realismus to imply a blending of the fantastic, the absurd, and the grotesque with everyday reality, as it has become to be understood today” (795). Zamora and Faris promote a similar point of view, as implied in the introduction to their collection of essays on Magical Realism: “In the magical realist texts under discussion in these essays, the supernatural is not a simple or obvious matter, but it is an ordinary matter, an everyday occurrence—admitted, accepted, and integrated into the rationality and materiality of everyday realism. Magic is no longer

Notes

9. 10.

11.

12.

13.

14.

209

quixotic madness, but normative and normalizing” (3). This description is clearly in tune with Brian McHale’s discussion of Midnight’s Children as a novel in which “the miraculous comes to appear routine” (77) and in which, therefore, “contrastive banality is carried to its logical extreme” (77), and it suggests that in magic realist texts, supernatural and realist elements coexist without tension. See, for instance, Todorov’s statement that the fantastic “may evaporate at any moment” and “seems to be located on the frontier of two genres, the marvellous and the uncanny, rather than be an autonomous genre” (41). The example par excellence of such disintegration is, of course, what is probably the most famous magic realist novel, One Hundred Years of Solitude, which concludes with the destruction of Melquíades’s prophecy (that is, the narrative of the Buendías family which, in an instance of mise en abyme, constitutes the very text itself) and of the town of Macondo. Reminiscent of this is the whirlwind with which the new century chases across Siberia at the end of Angela Carter’s Nights at the Circus, even though in this novel havoc has already been wreaked and, partially, overcome before its ending. Other examples that come to mind include Saleem’s projected disintegration at the end of Midnight’s Children, which, due to Saleem’s constant highlighting of his own central position, equals the disintegration of the narrative itself; the destruction of the novel the protagonist’s father is reading in Michael Ondaatje’s Running in the Family, which, in another mise en abyme, is undoubtedly Running in the Family itself; and the willed combustion of Tita and Pedro with which Laura Esquivel’s Like Water for Chocolate ends. The relation between the natural and the supernatural here is clearly complicated by the allegorical significance of the midnight’s children and Saleem’s life in general. As I discuss in Chapter 4, allegory introduces a completely different level of meaning to which the natural-supernatural distinction does not apply. In addition to the allegorical content of Midnight’s Children, however, the text also presents the children as an ontological problem on the level of plot. As we can see from Padma’s reaction, it is to this level that the ambivalence between the realist and the supernatural codes applies. See Saleem’s fi rst comment on his sister’s “gift,” where he claims that it was common knowledge among the inhabitants of his childhood home: as all the servants and children on Methwold’s Estate knew, she had the gift of talking to birds, and to cats. Dogs, too: but after she was bitten, at the age of six, by a supposedly rabid stray, and had to be dragged kicking and screaming to Breach Candy Hospital, every afternoon for three weeks, to be given an injection in the stomach, it seems she either forgot their language or else refused to have any further dealings with them. From birds she learned how to sing; from cats she learned a form of dangerous independence. (Children 151) See the narrator’s remark on the improbability of two people talking and singing while falling through the skies: “Let’s face it: it was impossible for them to have heard one another, much less conversed and also competed thus in song. Accelerating towards the planet, atmosphere roaring around them, how could they? But let’s face this, too: they did” (Verses 6). Ironically, however, the narrator seems to be perturbed by the two characters’ behaviour during their descent rather than by their descent as such, which might, in fact, be read as a tacit assertion of the supernatural event. See, for instance, the immigration officers’ reaction to Gibreel’s question of what they want: “But at any rate, when Gibreel asked, ‘What do these men want?’, every man there was seized by the desire to answer his question in literal, detailed terms, to reveal their secrets, as if he were, as if, but no,

210

15. 16.

17. 18.

Notes ridiculous, they would shake their heads for weeks, until they had all persuaded themselves that they had done as they did for purely logical reasons” (Verses 142). We are, for example, alerted to the fact that “[t]he temperature continued to rise” (Verses 420) and to “the unending tropical heat” (450). Hirsch (122) misses the point when he claims that the sudden heatwave in London can be realistically explained as a natural meteorological phenomenon. The central issue here is not that such a heatwave is meteorologically possible but that the text insists on the link between the tropical temperatures and Gibreel’s intended tropicalisation of London. Significantly, the old “crone” who helps Aurora sells mushrooms, which constitutes another conceptual link to Flory and her mushroom prophecy. There is, of course, an entire spectrum of interpretative possibilities between the two poles of a full recognition of the coexistence of the two codes and the complete lack of any such recognition. In one of the many scenarios possible within this spectrum readers might, for instance, not classify the two codes as diametrically opposed and hence display a greater willingness to include magic occurrences into the realist code, or vice versa.

NOTES TO CHAPTER 2 1. Faris refers to this effect as a sign of the “strong presence of the phenomenal world,” which she sees as one of the main characteristics of magic realism (Enchantments 14). 2. This “recognition effect” (Hall 75) also exposes the fragility of the distinction between what is intra- and what is extra-textual. For readers entirely unfamiliar with Bombay or the other settings Rushdie describes, the places in which he locates his fictions are exclusively constructs of language, and as such entirely fictional. Strictly speaking, of course, references to the world outside the literary text can by defi nition never be extra-textual. 3. See, for instance, the Bombay-Central passages in The Moor’s Last Sigh (285–90). 4. See Rodiek’s term “‘hypothetische’ Vergangenheit” (25), and Wesseling 100. 5. The writer creates a uchronia, a utopia of past times. He writes history, but not the one that was, but the one that could have been. (My translation) 6. As Mondal suggests, these earthquakes can be read as a metaphor for globalisation: “the unstable earth, which results in ever more frequent earthquakes, signifies the seismic shift represented by globalisation and its paradoxical effects” (171). 7. A uchronian text, of course, presupposes a certain knowledge on the part of the recipient. It functions on the basis of implicit “cultural knowledge” which is systematically violated by the counterfactual data. As such, the uchronian text is addressed to a specific audience. (My translation) 8. As Mondal points out, such substitutions and changes can only work as a “postcolonialising gesture” (177) if one presupposes the centrality of Western culture in the fi rst place: “if the novel purports to offer such a displacement but assumes that non-Western readers recognise it then it indeed confirms that Western culture, both high and low, does have a universal cultural purchase” (178). 9. Note, for example, the following passage, in which the authors of famous novels are consistently exchanged for characters from their own or other works of fiction: “Books by famous American writers, Sal Paradise’s odes to wanderlust, Nathan Zuckerman’s Carnovsky, science fiction by Kilgore

Notes

10. 11. 12.

13. 14.

211

Trout, a playscript—Von Trenck—by Charlie Citrine, who would go on to write the hit movie Caldofreddo. The poetry of John Shade. Also Europeans: Dedalus, Matzerath. The one and only Don Quixote by Pierre Ménard. F.Alexander’s A Clockwork Orange” (Ground 280). Mazerath clearly refers to Oskar Mazerath from Günther Grass’s Die Blechtrommel, while F. Alexander is not the author but the narrator and hero of Anthony Burgess’s A Clockwork Orange. Dedalus is Stephen Dedalus, the protagonist of James Joyce’s The Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man and Ulysses, and Pierre Ménard is the fictional author of Don Quixote in Borges’s “Pierre Ménard, Author of the Quixote” (see Ciompi 218). The other references are explained by Maxwell. Internal uchronia. (My translation) Speculation within speculation. (My translation) The list of bands and songs evoked is an intricate mixture of fact and fiction: In the soundproofed music room he listens with excitement and pleasure to the 200 Motels album by Uncle Meat, a live tape of the already legendary tour performances by Zoo Harrison’s Caledonia Soul Orchestra, Eddie Kendricks singing “Just My Imagination,” the Plastic Ono Band’s “Imagine” (Ground 367). As Nicholas Maxwell explains, 200 Motels was indeed an album by Uncle Meat, Frank Zappa’s moniker. It is still unclear who Zoo Harrison is, although Van Morrison, with a similar name, did play with the 16-piece Caledonia Soul Orchestra. Eddie Kendricks was one of the Temptations, and they did sing Just My Imagination, but not until after Kendricks left the group in 1971. The Plastic Ono Band accompanied John Lennon on his fi rst solo album, but the song ‘Imagine’ is not found on this album. The fi rst-person narrator that occasionally surfaces in The Satanic Verses is much less conspicuous. Warnes similarly draws attention to the manner in which magic realism supports Rushdie’s belief in the linguistic construction of reality: “If Rushdie’s anti-naturalism is founded in the idea that language does not merely represent the world but actively constitutes it in important ways, then his magical realism serves as his most frequent demonstration of this point” (119).

NOTES TO CHAPTER 3 1. See, for example, Zamora in Zamora and Faris (497–550). 2. This inconspicuousness is, of course, lost once these quotes appear as subjects of analysis. 3. In fact, Ormus’s coma might in itself be seen as linked to the “ill-advised simile” (Ground 35) Rai’s mother Ameer chooses to describe Ormus when she fi rst sees him in the incubator on the day of his birth. Describing him as “a snow white in this glass coffi n” (35), she anticipates the fairy-tale manner in which Vina will eventually awaken him from his second death-like sleep, if not by kissing him, then by whispering into his ear.

NOTES TO CHAPTER 4 1. This is Wendy Faris’s term (“Scheherazade” 176). 2. I will ignore possible sub-categorisations of animation (such as personification) in favour of focusing on its general strategies and implications.

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3. Marguerite Alexander uses the expression “magic realization of metaphor” for the same phenomenon, which she sees as characteristic of Rushdie, but which is, in fact, frequently used by other magic realist writers (qtd. in Bowers, Magic(al) 54). Patricia Merivale argues that the “realization of metaphor” is a Grassian influence on Rushdie (qtd. in Bowers, Magic(al) 63). 4. On the aestheticizing effects of metaphoricalisation, see Chapter 7. 5. Significantly, of course, 1001 appears in all of Rushdie’s novels, although in The Enchantress of Florence it has been superseded by the number 101. See also Chapter 6. 6. In fact, the spittoon as an empty signifier here is virtually a simulacrum, “never exchanged for the real, but exchanged for itself, in an uninterrupted circuit without reference or circumference” (Baudrillard 6). 7. In Baudrillard’s words, “[t]here is no real, there is no imaginary, except at a certain distance. What happens when this distance, including that between the real and the imaginary, tends to abolish itself, to be reabsorbed on behalf of the model?” (121). In The Enchantress of Florence, of course, it is never clear which of the two women, the Enchantress or the Mirror, dies fi rst and which is Mogor dell’Amore’s mother. The distance between the two has been “reabsorbed.” 8. A similar “impersonation craze” occurs in The Moor’s Last Sigh, although in the form of a political parody. In this novel, communists worldwide become obsessed with the desire to imitate Lenin. Aurora’s father attempts to set up a troop of Indian Lenin impersonators, whose earnest attempts to imitate Lenin, however, meet with the disgust of the particular Vladimir Ilych come to investigate the credibility and dignity of the Indian Lenins. The scene in which the Indian Lenins provoke the outrage of Vladimir Ilych, himself an impersonator, is one of the most effective carnivalesque and politically subversive scenes in the novel (28–31).

NOTES TO CHAPTER 5 1. As Rushdie and other postmodern and/or postcolonial writers have repeatedly stressed, such techniques really originate in the oral narrative (Mukherjee 112). 2. See Payette’s discussion of Jane Eyre as a model of white womanhood towards which the female colonial subject was encouraged to aspire (Payette 10–11). 3. Consider the narrator’s oft-quoted remark in Shame that “the women seem to have taken over” (173) his story, which, as I argue below, does not really seem to bear any actual relevance for the novel, which remains centred on the lives and fates of three male characters—Raza, Isky, and Omar. 4. Mukherjee relates these features to the notion of gestus, defi ned by Brecht as “a word meaning ‘both gist and gesture; an attitude or a single aspect of an attitude, expressible in words or actions’” (Mukherjee 115). 5. Phrases such as “jolly good” fi rmly link them to a specific English class and educational background (Mukherjee 115). 6. As Mukherjee notes, the centre-parting links Indira Gandhi to Methwold (115). One interpretation that suggests itself in this context is that the re-appearance of colonial Methwold’s centre-parting in Indira Gandhi’s hairstyle highlights her betrayal of the potentials of independence in her dictatorial rule, indicating that she is really just the latest in a long line of exploiters of the Indian populace. 7. This indicates that Rushdie’s characters are caricatures rather than realist even in his non-magic realist novels.

Notes

213

8. Since it is Tai who fi rst alerts Aadam Aziz to the progenitive and clairvoyant powers of his nose, it is only appropriate that his rebellion against what he perceives as Aadam Aziz’s foreign metamorphosis should be directed at his nasal sensitivity, which presents, for Tai, a symbol of native wisdom, the kind of old Indian learning that he rightly discerns foreign-educated Aadam is eager to dismiss as pure superstition. 9. Newly restored to his physical old self, Saladin feels the last of his belief in reality seeping out of him when confronted with the grotesque figures populating television: It seemed to him, as he idled across the channels, that the box was full of freaks: there were mutants—‘Mutts’—on Dr Who, bizarre creatures who appeared to have been crossbred with different types of industrial machinery: forage harvesters, grabbers, donkeys, jackhammers, saws, and whose cruel priest-chieftains were called Mutilasians; children’s television appeared to be exclusively populated by humanoid robots and creatures with metamorphic bodies, while the adult programmes offered a continual parade of the misshapen human by-products of the newest notions in modern medicine, and its accomplices, modern disease and war. A hospital in Guyana had apparently preserved the body of a fully formed merman, complete with gills and scales. Lycanthropy was on the increase in the Scottish Highlands. The genetic possibility of centaurs was being seriously discussed. A sex-change operation was shown. (Verses 405) The fact that a “sex-change operation” is here presented as being on a par with the relics of a “fully formed merman” highlights how precarious and, in particular, how arbitrary the boundary is between the real and the supernatural. A body whose sex has been changed by an operation is not, in essence, less bizarre than the other examples of “metamorphic bodies” listed here. By foregrounding the culturally determined nature of our perceptions of the grotesque, therefore, this passage radically questions the categories natural versus artificial and real versus supernatural. 10. His denomination as “half-man, half-can” is, of course, similarly poised between irony and tragedy, comedy and threat. When Sammy sets out to realise his full potential for violence, he emerges as a character who more than “half-can” destroy Bombay. 11. See Kayser 198–99. Kayser’s term is “Lebensangst” (199). 12. While initially describing grotesque laughter as bitter, Kayser proceeds to put this statement into perspective. Laughter, for him, remains an unsolved issue: Das Lachen stammt schon aus den komischen, karikaturistischen Vorbezirken. Selber schon mit Bitterkeit gemischt, nimmt es beim Übergang ins Groteske Züge des höhnischen, zynischen, schließlich des satanischen Gelächters an. . . . Die Frage nach dem Lachen im Grotesken stößt auf den schwierigsten Teilkomplex in dem ganzen Phänomen. Eine einhellige Antwort läßt sich nicht geben. (Kayser 201) Laughter originates in the comical and caricatural pre-forms [of the satirical grotesque]. Already tinted with bitterness in itself, upon merging with the grotesque it acquires traits of scornful, cynical, and ultimately satanic laughter. . . . The question of laughter in the grotesque concerns the most complex aspect of the entire phenomenon. A conclusive answer does not present itself. (My translation) 13. “The darkness has been sighted, the uncanny discovered, the incomprehensible taken to task. Thus emerges another interpretation: the creation of

214

14.

15.

16. 17.

18.

19.

20.

Notes the grotesque aims to contain and exorcise the demonic in our world.” (My translation) Clearly, Sammy differs significantly from Haraway’s concept of the cyborg, which she describes as “a creature in a post-gender world” that resists “seductions to organic wholeness through a fi nal appropriation of all the powers of the parts in a higher unity” (150). While Sammy becomes indeed associated with “the awful apocalyptic telos of the ‘West’s’ escalating dominations” (Haraway 150–51) in his destruction of Bombay, his revenge stems from frustrated hankering after wholeness rather than a rejection of visions of unity. This is incompatible with Haraway’s argument, as she sees the “cyborg world” as being beyond such a desire for wholeness: “Unlike the hopes of Frankenstein’s monster, the cyborg does not expect its father to save it through a restoration of the garden; that is, through the fabrication of a heterosexual mate, through its completion in a fi nished whole, a city and cosmos” (151). By contrast, Sammy—just like Shalimar in a later novel—is driven by one of the oldest and most conservative impulses in the world: revenge for the rejection by a woman, his dream “mate.” Unlike Haraway’s cyborg, Sammy is still deeply invested in the romantic entanglements of the human world. In this context, it is all the more tragic that the last straw for many British Asians proved to be the publication of The Satanic Verses itself, leading to the kind of street riots described in the novel, but directed against Salman Rushdie as a representative of Western hegemony rather than a speaker for the British immigrant community, whose plight the novel depicts. See Moor’s descriptions of Aurora’s fi rst “‘Moor’ pictures”: “My stunted hand had become a glowing light, the only light-source in the picture” (Moor 220). See Hassumani’s discussions of Bilquìs Hyder (51–55) and Aurora Zogoiby (115–33). Hassumani acknowledges, however, that other critics have criticised Rushdie’s portrayal of women (55). Damian Grant also treats Rushdie’s female characters as convincing individuals and accepts the narrator’s claim of the women’s supremacy in Shame (Grant 64–65). Ulrike Roettjer shows a similar inclination to regard characters such as Aurora, and Rushdie’s mother figures in general, as round and realist (116). Yaqin provides interesting background information to Rushdie’s engagement with sex and female sensuality, commenting on the fact that most critics ignore the fact that in focusing on sexuality, Rushdie parodies the Shariah laws: “Zia deployed the media-led Nizam-e Mustafa (The law of Muhammad) campaign, making sex a public matter mediated by religious law. It is this aspect of Pakistani postcolonial politics that is satirised in Shame: a fact of which most feminist readings remain unaware.” (67). The female character who comes closest to defying male power in Shame is, of course, also the one bearing the physical marks of gender discrimination most clearly: Sufiya Zinobia, the miracle of a fi rstborn son gone wrong. Like Sammy in The Moor’s Last Sigh, Sufiya has been rendered grotesque by encounters with an outspokenly hostile world, but unlike him, she is turned into a beast rather than a cyborg, hence crossing the boundaries of humanity in a different direction. This is significant, since, as so often in Rushdie, in Sufiya’s case as well, female resistance takes an at least partly sexual form. For a discussion of Sufiya’s rebellion, and her role in relation to potentially disempowering aspects of magic realism, see Chapter 7. See Natarajan 166. Mothers who fail to conform to the perfection of the role model that Bollywood circulates include Saleem’s mother Amina Sinai, whose forbidden love for her ex-husband amounts for Saleem to a personal

Notes

215

betrayal; Bilquìs in Shame, who completely rejects her daughter Sufiya as “the wrong miracle” (89); Omar Khayyam’s mothers, also in Shame, whose love for him turns to hatred when he refuses to avenge his brother; and Aurora in The Moor’s Last Sigh, who becomes estranged from her son Moor when he fi nds love elsewhere, and who is rumoured to have been unfaithful to her husband on more than one occasion. 21. Examples of such male Scheherazade figures in Rushdie are Saleem in Midnight’s Children, Rai in The Ground Beneath Her Feet, and Mogor dell’Amore in The Enchantress of Florence. By contrast, a female Scheherazade can be found in Shalimar the Clown, in the character of India/Kashmira, who spends her nights writing hate-mail to Shalimar in prison. This is a negative Scheherazade figure, and while her narrative power is shown to be highly potent it is also fundamentally (self-)destructive. Unlike her literary model, India/Kashmira uses narration not in order to save lives, but to destroy and kill. Rather than seeking to explain herself, she accuses and assigns guilt in a fi rmly non-dialogic manner. However, her role as Scheherazade differs not only functionally but also structurally from her male Rushdian counterparts. While Rushdie’s male Scheherazade figures form the narrative centres of their respective novels, India/Kashmira merely writes letters, but is never given narrative control over the story as such. The content of her letters is reproduced, but she herself remains inflected in the heterodiegetic narrator’s discourse. 22. This is particularly refreshing in light of the fact that Rushdie’s female characters seldom exist outside the whore versus frustrated matron, or else the angelic but frigid maiden, dichotomy. The only alternative in the Jahilia sections of The Satanic Verses, for instance, is Hind, a powerful woman but simultaneously also a liver-eating cannibal obsessed with revenge, and closely associated with the manner in which Indira Gandhi is portrayed in Midnight’s Children. 23. Interestingly, while female character constellations are often conceptualised in terms of the simulacrum, Rushdie’s male characters are more often viewed as each other’s doubles. Consider the relationship between Saladin and Gibreel, Saleem and Shiva, and Raza and Isky as opposed to that between Boonyi and India/Kashmira, the whores in Fatephur Sikri and Florence, Qara Köz and the Mirror, and Vina and Mira. Female characters are rarely granted the same autonomy as male characters.

NOTES TO CHAPTER 6 1. See Haddad 4. As an example of the importance of the oriental tale as a paradigm for postcolonial literatures consider V. S. Prichett’s characterisation of Rushdie as “a master of perpetual storytelling” on the front cover of the 1995 Vintage paperback edition of Midnight’s Children (see Figure 6.7). 2. This same sentiment arguably also informs the following statement by Rushdie, which betrays a similar need to highlight his non-Western alliances: “Most Westerners, Rushdie writes, fi nd that a reliance on fantasy ‘is exceptional. For me it seems to be normative’” (Gorra 126). 3. See Warnes for an account of anthropological theories of different world views (8–11). 4. In connection with this, see also Said’s critique of “the mythology of the mysterious East” (52). 5. My argument provokes the question of why it should not be possible to portray the beauty of Indian female characters without becoming guilty of

216

6. 7. 8. 9.

10. 11.

12.

13.

14.

15.

16.

Notes exoticism while Western women can be described without similar qualms. Yet the problem here is not only that the manner in which Rushdie depicts his female characters invites exoticist readings by a Western audience through constant and ostentatious insistence on their exotic beauty, but also that the clichéd depiction of women in Rushdie in general parades their exotic otherness, and little else. For a recuperation of cultural markers see my discussion of a postcolonial aesthetics below. Clearly, both of these depictions are exaggerated, a fact which subtly subverts the apparent corroboration of exoticist stereotype. Verses 59. For a similar strategy, see also Rai’s reaction to Vina’s frustration with Western methods of birth control and her desire to learn “the more ‘natural’ habits of the women of the East” (Ground 226). The lack of non-romanticised empirical data on the Orient might indeed explain why oriental fairy tales were used as factual evidence in a manner which would never have occurred to readers in their perception of, say, Grimms’ Märchen. See Haddad 4 for this and further information on the rise to popularity of The Arabian Nights. In this respect, consider Said’s concept of “second-order knowledge” on the East and his analysis of how the oriental tale was complicit in creating myths of the East (Said 52–53). The role of The Arabian Nights in this process is, of course, particularly relevant in the context of Rushdie’s fiction, since it constitutes one of Rushdie’s most persistent intertexts. Book covers are an element of the peritext, the material component of what Genette defi nes as the paratext. The paratext also comprises the epitext, or “any paratextual element not materially appended to the text within the same volume but circulating, as it were, freely, in a virtually limitless physical and social space” (344). The two are distinguished according to “purely spatial” criteria (344). As demonstrated by the critical surprise and occasional disappointment engendered by Rushdie’s decision to abandon the magic realist mode in Fury, the epitext, in this case Rushdie’s name, is also crucial in the pre-determining of Rushdie’s novels as magic realist. Since Rushdie’s name is so intricately associated with magic realism, readers tend to automatically presuppose that each new Rushdie novel will be magic realist and their expectations are hence frustrated when he abandons his usual magic realist mode of writing. The trademark-like quality and high commodity status of Rushdie’s name are also confi rmed by the cover of the fi rst edition of The Ground Beneath Her Feet, where it appears as part of a neon sign reminiscent of musical theatre advertisements, and virtually eclipses the title of the novel (see Figure 6.7). In fact, Vintage has now created just such a “Rushdie line.” Prompted by the 25th anniversary of the publication of Midnight’s Children, the imprint has brought out a new paperback edition of Rushdie’s novels, all of which display exotic figures or details and exotic writing. See also Saleem’s corroboration of this cliché in his hyperbolic celebration of the colourfulness of Bombay in Midnight’s Children (297). Mary Anne Stevens highlights the link between such colourful excess and orientalist art when she claims that “for a number of Orientalist painters, exoticism and Orientalism were synonymous with brilliant, explosive colours” (20). The Cerberus figure is particularly prominent on the cover of the fi rst American edition of the novel (Holt 1999), where it forms the only pictorial representation on an otherwise elegantly subdued cover. This clever design allows the image of the Cerberus to unfold its full mythical impact.

Notes

217

17. On the cover of this edition, the lyre is practically divested of its mythological content. The cover is reminiscent of pop art techniques, and the lyre is repeated in an Andy Warhol-like fashion. 18. Even though a cursory glance might, at fi rst, convey the impression that the faces on the clock dials are identical, it soon becomes clear that they are not. Minimal discrepancies distinguish both their hairstyles, as well as the different positions of the clock hands from each other. 19. The fi rst American edition of Midnight’s Children does not show any signs of exoticism either. 20. An internet search of various editions (international and Indian) of Shanghvi’s The Last Song of Dusk is illuminating in this respect. 21. I agree with Brouillette, who criticises Huggan and other academics engaged in what she refers to as a particular “strand of materialist work on postcolonial literature” (19) for positing market readers or “cosmopolitan consumer figure[s]” (15) responsible for exoticising postcolonial texts. She interprets this strategy of transferral as a symptom of “postcolonial guilt”: “I think it is not too much to say that the image of the market reader, like the image of the ignorant and obnoxious tourist, is one inevitable product of postcolonial guilt, a guilt which is one correlate of the ethical challenges presented by analyses of postcolonial cultural markets” (21). Indeed, I believe that it is academics engaged in deconstructing the exotic that are often liable to exoticisation in their very anxiety to distance themselves from exoticising readings. Naturally, I cannot exempt my own work from this tendency.

NOTES TO CHAPTER 7 1. Warnes draws attention to the “multiple distancing techniques” which complicate the status of many of the individual sections of The Satanic Verses. He contends that the Jahilia and Titlipur sections, among others, “are presented as the dreams of a man suffering from severe schizophrenia and therefore doubly unreliable” (102), remarking that “literary criticism ignores details like these at the peril of its own credibility” (103). He reads the Jahilia sections as “not themselves magical realist” (102), but still proceeds to interpret the Ayesha episodes as magic realist, disregarding their framing and defending this discrepancy by arguing that due to their rural perspective, they are “more interesting” (103) as examples of how Rushdie plays with “faith-based magical realism” (105). I have already demonstrated why I see Gibreel’s own status as much more ambivalent than does Warnes, and I would suggest that although these contradictions add a different level of ambivalence to the Ayesha sections, the particular manner in which typically magic realist oppositions are foregrounded invites rather than forecloses their interpretation as magic realist. 2. Suleri elucidates the historical background of the Ayesha Haj, which is based on an actual occurrence (202). 3. Mirza’s death some time after the Haj, which he experiences as a kind of drowning and in which he himself fi nally seems to achieve the crossing of the Arabian Sea, in fact solidifies the reading of the Haj episode in spiritualmetaphorical terms, thus adding an additional level of ambivalence (Verses 506–07). 4. Alexander draws attention to the fact that Rushdie’s fiction is “intended to be taken seriously” despite its “unorthodox” nature (143). As an example, she refers to Rushdie’s apology to Indira Gandhi after the publication of Midnight’s Children.

218 Notes 5. The Brickhall riot scene (Verses 453–69) is a point of (preliminary) catharsis in the novel, as almost all of its protagonists gather in one place and various confl icts are resolved in both positive and negative terms. In two cases, this resolution comes in the shape of death: Mishal Sufiyan’s family are killed in the burning Shandaar Café, while Jumpy Joshi and Saladin’s wife Pamela die in the Brickhall community relations council’s offices. The confl ict between Saladin and the Asian immigrant community is resolved in a more positive manner as he rushes towards the Shandaar Café in order to rescue Mishal’s parents and sister; even though he is unsuccessful, his urge to help them marks the beginning of his re-connection to a social community, and his turn away from cultural essentialism. Some form of reconciliation also takes place between Saladin and Gibreel, as the latter rescues the former from the burning Shandaar Café, thus initiating a process of forgiveness which will eventually enable Saladin—although not Gibreel himself—to come to terms with the past and start a new life in Bombay. The central confl ict that defi nes the riot scenes, however, is the racial and cultural clash between the Asian immigrants and the English, who are represented by the English police force. It is this aspect of the riot scene which elicits the narrator’s political commentary, but even here we are not faced with direct indictments. Rather, political critique takes the form of a change in perspective: presenting the riot scenes from the point of view of a British television camera, the narrator highlights the distortions of news footage (454–57). Thus, even here the narrator achieves political criticism without having to resort to explicit reinscription and didacticism. 6. For a detailed discussion of cross-influences between Bhabha and Rushdie, and for the manner in which Bhabha’s theories of hybridity and Rushdie’s The Satanic Verses, as well as his own comments on his novel, can be read in terms of a mutually productive dialogue, see Warnes (113, 120–22). 7. See Shalimar 306–09, where the narrator attempts to alter the fate of the village by rewriting the story of its destruction, thus offering various contradictory versions as ways of approaching an event whose horror precludes representation. As so often, this passage highlights the manner in which language constitutes reality. 8. Warnes usefully reconciles these two extreme positions. While showing how Rushdie’s postcolonial magic realism productively “reclaims [the fantastic] by showing how it is already present in the language of history in Midnight’s Children, and of identity discourse more generally in The Satanic Verses” (122), he is not blind to the escapist aspects of the mode, conceding simultaneously that Rushdie’s “almost absolute espousal of non-realist forms of narration is made at the expense . . . of an appreciation of the political possibilities of alternative aesthetic choices” (114). 9. See, for instance, Bowers’s discussion of Cooper, Brennan, and Connell (Magic(al) 126–28). 10. The reference to “witches’ covens” might also be a sarcastic metaphorical allusion to the fact that the British police are popularly rumoured to represent a stronghold of Freemasonry, thus constituting an instance of sociopolitical satire. 11. See Stephen Slemon’s appraisal of Wendy Faris’s Ordinary Enchantments, as reprinted on the back cover of that book. 12. See Sufiya Zinobia’s transformation in Shame (throughout). 13. See Gibreel’s journey through the apocalyptically burning immigrant borough of Brickhall, where he sees, in burning houses, “faceless persons . . . at windows waving piteously for help, being unable (no mouths) to scream” (Verses 463).

Notes

219

NOTES TO CHAPTER 8 1. Clearly, this is an instance of ontological magic realism (Bowers, Magic(al) 90–95). 2. Hegerfeldt, for instance, contends that “it remains unclear whether she lied about her wings or her virginity” (77n19). But as Bowers has pointed out, in a novel which insists on highlighting the role of the confidence trick to this degree, the very re-appearance of “confidence” as the last word of the text is in itself suspicious (“Subaltern”). 3. In the fi rst part of the novel, Fevvers confides to Walser that she dyes her feathers, claiming that their colour is the only fake aspect about her (Nights 25). We already know, however, that her eyelashes are “false” (7), and we later learn that she dies her hair as well (271). 4. Among them Saleem Sinai in Midnight’s Children, Moraes Zogoiby in The Moor’s Last Sigh, and Malik Solanka in Fury, who, like Saleem, is a former resident of Methwold Estate. 5. References to the land reclamation scheme in Bombay (Children 133–35, Moor 185), for instance, establish a significant link between Midnight’s Children and The Moor’s Last Sigh, as we learn that Moor’s father Abraham, in the later novel, actively contributed to making the land reclamation scheme fail, thus playing a decisive role in the near ruining of Saleem’s father in Midnight’s Children. 6. For references to Dom Minto see Moor 263, 266, 330–31, and 362; for appearances of Adam Braganza (formerly Aadam Sinai) see Moor 341–43, 348–49, 353–55, and 358; and for Zeenat Vakil, see Moor 329, 337–38, and 373. 7. For Homi Catrack, see Ground 27, 45, and 51; for William Methwold, see Ground 40, 51, and throughout.

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Works Cited 225 Stevens, Mary Anne. “Western Art and Its Encounter with the Islamic World 1798–1914.” The Orientalists: Delacroix to Matisse. European Painters in North Africa and the Near East. Ed. Mary Anne Stevens. London: Royal Academy of Arts; Weidenfeld & Nicolson, 1984. 15–23. Stewart, Melissa. “Roads of ‘Exquisite Mysterious Muck’: The Magical Journey through the City in William Kennedy’s Ironweed, John Cheever’s ‘The Enormous Radio,’ and Donald Barthelme’s ‘City Life.’” Zamora and Faris 477–95. Strelka, Joseph P. George Saikos magischer Realismus. Zum Werk eines unbekannten grossen Autors. Bern: Peter Lang, 1990. Suleri, Sara. The Rhetoric of English India. Chicago: U of Chicago P, 1992. Teißl, Verena, Utopia, Merlin und das Fremde: Eine literaturgeschichtliche Betrachtung des Magischen Realismus aus Mexiko und der deutschsprachigen Phantastischen Literatur auf Basis der europäischen Utopia-Idee. Innsbruck: Verl. d. Inst. für Sprachwiss. d. Univ. Innsbruck, 1997. Innsbrucker Beiträge zur Kulturwissenschaft 102. Teverson, Andrew. Salman Rushdie. Manchester & New York: Manchester UP, 2007. Contemporary World Writers. Thieme, John. Postcolonial Studies: The Essential Glossary. London: Arnold, 2003. Todorov, Tzvetan. The Fantastic: A Structural Approach to a Literary Genre. Trans. Richard Howard. Ithaca & New York: Cornell UP, 1975. Walter, Roland. Magical Realism in Contemporary Chicano Fiction. Frankfurt/ Main: Vervuert Verlag, 1993. Editionen der Iberoamericana Reihe III 48. Warnes, Christopher. Magical Realism and the Postcolonial Novel: Between Faith and Irreverence. Basingstoke: Palgrave Macmillan, 2009. Wesseling, Elisabeth. Writing History as a Prophet: Postmodernist Innovations of the Historical Novel. Amsterdam: Benjamin, 1991. Utrecht Publications in General and Comparative Literature 26. Yaqin, Amina. “Family and Gender in Rushdie’s Writing.” Gurnah 61–74. Young, Robert and Keith Hollaman, eds. Magical Realist Fiction: An Anthology. New York: Longman, 1984. Zamora, Lois Parkinson. “Magical Romance/Magical Realism: Ghosts in U.S. and Latin American Fiction.” Zamora and Faris 497–550. Zamora, Lois Parkinson and Wendy B. Faris, eds. Magical Realism: Theory, History, Community. Durham and London: Duke UP, 1995. . “Introduction: Daiquiri Birds and Flaubertian Parrot(ie)s.” Zamora and Faris 1–11.

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Index

A aesthetics: aesthetic colonisation, 165; and cultural markers, 4, 135, 165–67, 184; postcolonial, 164–67 alienation, 4, 46–48, 63, 114 allegory, 41–42, 108, 209n11 ambiguity. See ambivalence ambivalence, 3, 15, 54, 84–85, 89, 130, 175–76, 207n1; politics of, 4, 19, 168–88; between the realist and the supernatural, 5, 21–22, 33, 48, 49, 55, 59, 61, 64, 73–74, 76, 77, 84, 95–102, 105, 173, 189, 193, 198, 209n11, 217n1, 217n3; and self-referentiality, 33, 202–5 animation, 77–78, 80, 211n2. See also reification antinomy, resolved, 15–16; unresolved, 15–16 Arabian Nights, The: and the number 1001, 85, 138; and orientalism, 130, 139, 144, 216n11; as oriental tale, 52, 138–39, 144, 216n10–11; Scheherazade, 126, 138–39, 215n21 audience. See reader authenticity, 92, 130, 131, 141, 145–46, 159–62; and indigenous concepts of reality, 131

B Barthes, Roland, 3, 34–37, 39, 52–53, 59 Baudrillard, Jean, 212nn6–7 Bhabha, Homi, 130, 168, 174, 179, 218n6 Bollywood, 41, 107, 121, 134. See also women Bombay, 36, 39–40, 68–69, 113, 115, 121, 137–38, 203–4, 216n15, 219n5

Bontempelli, Massimo, 7, 8, 208n3–4 boundaries, 79, 126–27, 178; between animate and inanimate, 3–4, 78; in Aurora’s art, 126–27, 177–78, 181; between literal and metaphorical, 3–4, 83, 101; between real and supernatural, 32, 37, 64, 73, 77, 81, 83, 85, 213n9; and transgression, 3–4, 77, 79, 81, 83, 107, 126, 177, 214n19 Bowers, Maggie Ann, 9, 31–32, 42, 131, 133, 134, 168, 183, 190, 198, 207n1, 207n2, 207n3, 207n4, 208n1, 208n4, 208n5, 212n3, 218n9, 219n1, 219n2 Brennan, Timothy, 86, 108–9, 131

C Caillois, Roger, 14 Carter, Angela: Nights at the Circus, 125, 195, 199–202, 209n10; brothel in, 125; women in, 125, 202 characters: anti-realist, 107; caricatures, 109, 113, 121; dehumanising effects on, 80, 113, 114, 117, 185, 186; female, 81, 91, 118–29, 136–37, 170, 194–95, 202, 214n17, 214n19, 215nn21–23, 215n5; freaks, 4, 109–18, 213n9; gestic, 107; grotesque, 4, 107, 109–16, 118, 213n9, 214n19; in a hostile world, 4, 78–80, 84, 110–11, 113–14, 186, 214n19; megalomaniac, 109, 112; non-mimetic, 107; non-realist, 107; and stereotypes, 4, 111, 115–16, 121, 126, 128–29; types, 107–8. See also women

228

Index

codes: clash between, 2, 5, 15, 22, 25, 27, 28, 39, 175, 199, 201; coexistence of, 15, 16, 20, 21, 31, 33, 105, 132, 210n18; combination of, 13, 16, 18, 21,33, 38, 180–81, 189, 202; cultural, 39, 132; epistemological, 33, 77; incompatibility of, 3, 14, 16, 17, 27, 33, 55, 95, 102, 169, 198; magic realist, 2, 5, 18, 22, 101, 132, 175, 180–81, 189, 201; opposition of, 15, 16, 17, 18, 27, 31, 32, 33, 59, 63, 95, 98, 101, 102, 171, 173, 177, 180, 195, 210n18; oscillation between, 28, 34, 102, 104, 201–2, 208n6; realist, 3, 13, 14, 18, 27, 28, 30, 31, 32, 34–58, 65, 68, 76, 101, 171, 173, 178, 198, 202, 209n11; referential, 39, 53; simultaneous implementation of, 15, 17, 18, 22, 24, 27, 30, 38, 99, 100, 104, 171, 193; supernatural, 3, 4, 13, 18, 25, 27, 28, 30, 31, 32, 38, 39, 40, 59–76, 98, 101, 102, 144, 145, 146, 162, 171, 173, 178, 180, 202, 209n11 commodification, 2; and the boom, 130; and commercial expectations, 131, 146, 205; as exotic, 130–31, 132, 134, 139–40, 158–64, 187; and literary market, 130, 134, 139, 146; of magic realism, 146, 205; of postcolonial literatures, 130–31, 134, 139, 146; and postcolonial subversiveness, 131, 132, 140 competence, cultural. See cultural context context, cultural, 1, 31, 36, 49, 58, 166; cultural background, 31, 133; (trans)cultural competence, 134–35 cyborg, 113, 214n14

D Daisne, Johan, 8 destabilisation: of textual world, 17, 27–28, 33, 77, 78–79, 87, 95, 105, 169 dichotomy, 9, 117; between animate and inanimate, 78–80; between rational and irrational, 9–10

discursive systems. See codes disharmony. See harmony dream, 5, 8, 11–12, 14, 19–20, 33, 57, 68–69, 73, 74, 90, 104, 112, 116, 123, 182; dreamscape, 68–69, 158, 190; nightmarish atmosphere, 40–41, 68–69, 113, 182

E East, the, 10, 26, 53, 70, 111, 131–36, 141–44, 154, 165–66, 216n11; and expectations of magic, 144–45, 185. See also orientalism Enchantress of Florence, The, 33, 39, 55–58, 66, 71, 75, 82, 122, 138, 139, 162–64, 188, 203, 212n5; Akbar the Great, 36, 43, 56–57, 64, 73, 76, 85, 96–97, 98, 124, 142–43; Italy, 5, 36, 43, 58, 164; Jodhabai, 56, 76, 124, 126, 128–29; Mogor dell’Amore, 36, 56–57, 63, 65, 76, 80, 91, 96–97, 98–99, 108, 110, 124, 125, 142, 212n7, 215n21; Mughal, 36, 43, 56, 57, 58, 80, 97, 142, 164; Qara Köz, 56, 72, 91, 96–98, 108, 109, 121, 124, 128, 135, 215n23 epistemology, 10–11, 18–19, 31, 33, 63, 77, 95, 96, 189, 190, 202; epistemological constraints, 145; epistemological frameworks, 31, 191–92 escapism, 9, 87–88, 131–34, 139, 168, 178, 181–83, 187, 218n8 Esquivel, Laura; Like Water for Chocolate, 209n10 essentialism, cultural, 176, 218n5; and homogenisation of readers, 133 exotic, the, 4, 10, 134–35, 139, 142–44, 146, 154, 156, 162, 164–67, 217n21; and female body, 136–37; postcolonial, 139–40, 164–65; and sensuality, 136–37, 153, 154 exoticism, 2, 4, 130–67, 187, 216n5, 216n15, 217n19; commodified, 130–32, 134, 139, 140, 146, 159–64, 187; (cultural) markers as, 4, 135, 138–40, 143, 153, 162, 164–67; as cultural translation, 132; exoticist signals, 134–35, 139, 145, 146, 153, 154, 156, 159, 164, 165; and

Index escapism, 131–34, 139, 187; as matter of perspective, 142–43, 164; in representation of Indian cities, 137–38; strategic, 4, 139–43, 145, 165; and subversiveness, 131, 132, 159, 162, 167; and supernatural code, 4, 144–46, 154, 162; and Western consumption, 131–32, 140, 162, 217n21

F facts, 48, 49; diversion from, 44; and historical information, 42–43, 53, 55 fairy tale, 38, 55, 133, 134, 138, 144, 168, 182, 216n9; formula and conventions of, 3, 28–29, 50–54, 121, 139. See also women faith, 9–10, 122, 171, 173, 217n1; loss of, 41, 74, 103, 171 fantastic, the, 7, 11–16, 18, 32, 33, 60–62, 102, 195, 208n8, 209n9, 218n8; fantasy, 10–12, 39, 168, 215n2 Faris, Wendy, 13, 22, 23, 34, 81–82, 85, 126, 133, 168, 208n6, 208n8, 210n1 Flores, Angel, 10–11 fragmentation, 87; of characters, 4, 93, 111–12, 179, 204 Fury, 5, 43, 109, 203, 205, 216n13, 219n4

G Grimus, 5, 147, 153 grotesque, the, 4, 107, 109–18, 187, 208n8, 213n9, 213n12, 214n13, 214n19; and carnivalesque, 114, 212n8; corporeality, 111–16, 213n9; and discursive strategies, 118; and hostile environments, 110, 111, 113, 114, 186; and laughter, 114, 187, 213n12; Michail Bakhtin, 114, 116, 187; and postcolonial condition, 4, 109, 111–18; and postmodern condition, 4, 114, 118; and racist stereotypes, 111, 112, 115, 185–86; subversive potential of, 114, 115, 118, 212n8; and uncanny, 113–35; Wolfgang Kayser, 114, 213n11, 213n12. See also characters

229

Ground Beneath Her Feet, The, 44–50, 58, 150, 152–53, 154–55, 203; Mira Celano, 68, 94–95, 128, 215n23; music in, 41, 43, 45–46, 48, 103, 112–13, 128, 154, 211n12, 216n13; Ormus Cama, 5, 46–47, 48, 67, 75, 94, 102–4, 109, 110, 118, 128, 211n3; the otherworld, 47–49, 102–5; Rai, 5, 49, 53, 62–63, 67–68, 70–71, 86, 93, 94, 102–4, 110, 138–39, 211n3, 215n21, 216n8; Vina Apsara, 5, 67–68, 70–71, 75, 93–95, 102–3, 107, 118, 121, 126, 128, 211n3, 215n23, 216n8

H harmony, 2–3, 7–8, 9, 10, 11, 12–17, 20, 21–23, 32, 33, 55, 95, 98, 105, 177, 189, 193–95, 199, 202; disharmony, 3, 7–8, 9, 12, 15, 16–19, 180–81, 198 Haroun and the Sea of Stories, 5 hesitation, 14–15, 32, 96, 133, 192–93, 200 Highway, Tomson, 5; Kiss of the Fur Queen, 190–92 history, 1, 39, 41, 99, 109, 110–11, 126, 168, 183; hypothetical, 44, 210n5; of India, 5, 41, 42, 183–84, 217n2; misconfigurations of, 45, 46–49; of Pakistan, 43, 51–55, 110. See also Midnight’s Children; Shame Huggan, Graham, 4, 130–32, 134–35, 139–40, 142, 143, 145, 159, 162, 217n21. See also exotic; exoticism hybridity, 4, 5, 164, 177, 187, 204, 205; of characters, 4, 68, 107–8, 112, 113, 115, 118, 200–1; of magic realism, 17, 131; and singularity, 90, 172, 176–77, 206. See also The Moor’s Last Sigh hyperbole, 77, 84–85, 109, 128

I Imaginary Homelands, 207n5 immigrants: and dehumanisation, 112, 115–17, 186–88; and racist stereotypes, 82, 83–84, 112, 115–17, 177, 185–86, 187; South Asian, 5, 82, 83–84, 107,

230 Index 112, 115–17, 174, 177, 182, 185–86, 187–88, 215n15, 218n5 independence, Indian, 5, 21, 41, 43, 87, 108, 112–13, 126, 181, 184, 204 irrational, the. See rational

K knowledge, cultural, 45–46, 58, 210n7

L Lampo, Hubert, 8 Latin America, 1, 2, 8–11, 33, 130, 189, 207n3, 208n4 Leal, Luis, 11–12 literalisation, 77, 81–83, 84, 184, 190–91 Luka and the Fire of Life, 5 Lyotard, Jean-François, 183

M magic, 5, 7, 8, 20–21, 42, 59, 135, 185, 186, 208n8; ambivalent, 4, 27, 95–105, 192; and exotic wonder, 140–41, 144–46, 146–53, 156, 162; ghosts, 20, 59, 60, 61, 62, 66, 76, 196–99; irreducible element of, 23; perspective on, 8, 10–11, 31–12, 132–33, 134, 169, 208n6, 210n18; tolerance of, 10, 133–34, 140, 144–45, 146, 153, 162; and unreality effect, 3, 59–64, 73–74, 76, 208n6 marginalisation, 4, 80, 82, 109, 132 markers, cultural, 184; as commodities, 135; recuperation of, 4, 164–67. See also aesthetics marketing of magic realism, 2, 4, 105, 130–31, 144, 146–67 Márquez, Gabriel García, 2, 183, 189–90, 207n3; One Hundred Years of Solitude, 189–90, 209n10 marvellous, the, 9, 14–16, 102, 209n9 marvellous real, the, 9–12, 130, 131, 208n5 metafiction, 33, 50, 53, 57–58, 181, 182–83 metamorphosis, 4, 111–13, 191; in Shame, 72, 184–85, 218n12; in The Enchantress of Florence, 57, 108; in The Ground Beneath Her Feet, 104, 118, 188; in

Midnight’s Children, 204; in The Moor’s Last Sigh, 68–69, 108; in The Satanic Verses, 5, 25–27, 28, 40, 82–83, 92, 112, 115–17, 185–86, 213n9 metaphoricalisation, 77, 83–84; and aestheticizing effects, 182–83 Midnight’s Children, 1, 38–39, 79, 82, 111, 121–22, 130, 145–46, 148, 156–58, 166, 187; Indian history in, 5, 41–43, 87, 89, 110, 133, 183–84, 204, 218n8; midnight’s children, 21, 85–86, 96, 112, 140–41, 153, 169–70, 183–84, 204, 209n11; Padma, 20–21, 96, 125–26, 140, 170; Saleem Sinai, 5, 19–22, 36, 37, 40, 41–43, 53, 70, 71, 72–73, 78, 80, 83, 85, 87, 88–90, 91, 96, 107, 109, 110, 112, 118, 125, 135, 137–38, 140–41, 145, 153, 169–70, 184, 203–4, 209nn10–12, 215n21; Saleem’s spittoon as unstable signifier, 87–90, 212n6; sterilisation and sperectomy in, 86, 183–84; Sundarbans in, 19–21, 73–74, 83 Moor’s Last Sigh, The, 39, 43, 115, 121, 150–51, 153–54, 203–5, 214n19; Abraham Zogoiby, 5, 29, 81, 109, 136, 181, 219n5; Aurora da Gama Zogoiby, 29–31, 36, 73, 75, 76, 82, 96, 109, 118, 126–27, 128, 136, 177–79, 180, 181–82, 204, 214n16, 214n17, 215n20; Benengeli, 61–62, 180, 208n6; Bombay Central, 68–69, 113, 210n3; ekphrasis in, 179–80; Flory Zogoiby, 29–30, 210n17; hybridity in, 5, 107, 126–27, 177–81; Larios sisters, 61; Moor/Moraes Zogoiby, 5, 28–29, 30–31, 36, 61–62, 68–69, 81, 85, 96, 107, 109, 110, 113, 118, 178–80, 182, 214n16, 214n20, 219n4; Vasco Miranda, 61–62, 180, 181. Morrison, Ton: Beloved, 195, 199; Middle Passage in, 198, 199 Mukherjee, Arun, 106–7, 108, 109, 212nn4–6 music, popular, 26, 41, 45–46, 48, 128, 154, 211n12

Index mystery, 4, 12, 14, 30, 61, 66–67, 71, 74, 98, 100, 104, 132, 135, 139, 144, 146, 180, 190, 196–98, 208n4; the mysterious, 10, 60 myth, 42, 44–45, 47, 51, 52, 62–63, 110, 117, 138, 141, 145, 153, 154, 156, 178, 198, 216n11, 216n16; mythology, 21, 31, 62, 68, 72, 99–100, 135, 144, 190, 191, 217n17

N narrator, 28, 32–33, 41, 56, 60, 76, 102, 104, 119, 126, 135, 138, 140, 143, 175–76, 177, 182, 209n13; authorial, 20, 200, 201; and authorial reticence, 16, 20, 29, 97; extradiegetic, 28–29, 53, 96, 97; heterodiegetic, 215n21; homodiegetic, 53, 96; intradiegetic, 53, 97; intrusive, 106; and omniscience, 28–29, 96; and unreliability, 22, 24, 31, 50–51, 54–55, 64, 66–67, 84–85, 96–98, 101, 170, 192–95, 200–2, 217n1 number symbolism, 77, 138, 212n5; and excess, 51–52, 85–86

O Ondaatje, Michael: Running in the Family, 141, 209n10 ontology, 4, 10, 13, 15, 18–19, 25, 32, 33, 63, 76, 83, 105, 131, 132–33, 141, 143–44, 169, 199, 208n8, 209n11; ontological magic realism, 219n1 oral tale, 52, 212n1; and story-telling, 52, 55–56, 58, 139, 192 orientalism, 130, 138, 143–44, 156, 158, 162; and clichés, 136–37, 140–41, 145–46, 153, 154, 162, 216n15; markers of, 134–36, 139, 140, 143, 145, 146, 153–54, 162; and the mysterious East, 141, 144, 215n4

P paratext, the, 216n12; book covers, 4, 146–64, 215n1, 216n13, 216n16, 217n17; and magic realism, 153, 156–58, 159–62; and oriental art, 146, 153–54, 156, 159, 162–64; and Rushdie

231

as postcolonial writer, 146, 153, 156, 158, 159; postmodern cover design, 156–58 postcolonial, 87, 127, 139–40, 159, 162, 164–65, 166–67, 184, 217n21; characters, 110–11, 113; condition, 4, 105, 114, 139, 174; magic realism as, 2–3, 16, 17, 19, 105, 130–31, 133, 134, 144, 153, 162; and neo-colonial, 109–10, 115, 118; Rushdie as, 1–2, 4, 134, 139, 146, 153, 156, 158, 174, 212n1, 218n8; subject, 109–10, 111, 113, 115, 174. See also aesthetics; commodification postmodern, 2, 4, 19, 44, 81, 96, 105, 106, 114, 118, 133, 156, 158, 174, 183, 192, 207n5

R rational, the, 9–10, 12–13, 15, 18, 19, 23, 32, 131, 143, 192, 195, 208n8; the irrational, 8, 9, 13, 15, 16, 23, 32, 131, 195 reader: concepts of reality of, 32, 132–33; cultural context of, 31–32, 39, 45–46, 48, 54, 58, 132–34, 135, 140, 162, 164–66, 192, 210n8; expectations, 64, 66, 135–36, 141, 144–46, 162, 184, 216n13; as magic realist factor, 17, 19, 30, 31–32, 132; (trans)cultural competence of, 134–35. See also reading back reading back, 2, 5, 168, 169–81, 189, 199 real, the, 13, 19, 35–37, 39, 52–53, 57, 59, 64, 73, 181, 212nn6–7, 213n9. See also reality realism, 3, 11, 14, 18, 32, 33, 34–58, 68, 106–7, 127, 131, 181, 182, 189; anti-realist, 107, 121; as culturally determined, 31–32, 131, 133, 185; hegemonic tradition of, 107; and ideology, 37, 131, 106–7, 162, 173; magic realism as a form of, 7; non-realist, 3, 8, 13, 18, 34, 55, 107, 121, 158, 218n8; pseudo-realism, 49, 62; realist, 3, 4, 7, 10, 13, 14, 18, 19, 21, 27, 28, 30, 31, 32, 34–58, 59, 61, 65, 66, 67, 68, 76, 95, 98–99, 100–2, 106–7, 119, 133, 156, 171, 173, 178, 180, 183,

232

Index

190, 193, 195, 198, 202, 208n6, 209n8, 209n11, 210n18, 212n7, 214n17; realistic, 15, 16, 18, 35, 36, 38–41, 44, 48, 50, 52, 58, 61, 65, 84, 86, 98, 105, 121, 133, 141, 153, 158, 171, 195, 210n16. See also codes (realist code) reality effect, 3, 34–43, 45, 48–49, 51, 52, 58, 59, 61, 135, 164; and ideology, 36–37, 40. See also unreality effect reality, 8, 14–15, 20, 33, 42, 74, 79, 83–84, 85, 89, 92, 111, 113, 119, 146, 168, 174, 182, 190, 193, 213n9; concepts and versions of, 2, 4, 7, 8, 9–11, 16, 19, 31–32, 33, 38, 42, 57, 59, 63, 95, 131, 132, 162, 180–81, 186, 192, 206, 208n4; construction of, 36–37, 55–57, 81–82, 106, 124, 211n14, 218n7; discourses, 4, 19, 32; everyday, 8, 197, 207n3, 208n8; extra-textual, 39–41, 43, 44, 47, 49, 50, 53, 58, 102; mundane, 8; nature of, 8, 19, 63–64, 76; (un)familiar, 38, 44–47 reception, 2, 158, 205; of magic realism, 133–34, 144, 183; referents, extra-textual, 44, 47, 49–50, 53, 58, 102, 181; and history, 41–43, 58; and popular culture, 41, 58; and urban landmarks, 40, 58, 210n2 reification, 77, 80–81, 82 repetition, 40–41, 77, 85, 86–87, 89–91, 109, 125, 135, 158, 167, 203, 217n17 representation, 2, 3, 4, 17, 18, 32–34, 37, 42, 52, 63, 81, 83, 85, 93–94, 100, 101, 106, 111, 121, 128, 134–39, 140–42, 153, 166, 167, 168, 178, 181–88, 211n14, 218n7. See also code representational system. See codes Roh, Franz, 7–8, 12, 182, 208n1, 208n8

S Said, Edward, 136–37, 143, 216n11 Satanic Verses, The, 42, 43, 72, 99, 105, 143, 150, 168, 203–5, 211n13, 214n15, 215n22, 218n6, 218n8; Alleluia Cone, 25–26, 27, 70, 76, 109;

Arabian Sea in, 171–72, 173, 217n3; archangel Gibreel, 22, 24–27, 41, 128, 171; Ayesha, 85, 90–91, 112,126, 127–28, 170–73, 176, 217n1–2; brothel in, 90, 122–25, 139; devil in, 82–83, 115–16, 117, 118, 185–86; Gibreel Farishta, 5, 22–27, 38, 40–41, 60–61, 70, 74, 75, 79, 86, 91, 107, 110, 112, 117, 128, 171, 176–77, 182, 209n14, 210n16, 215n23, 217n1, 218n5, 218n13; Islam in, 5, 173; Mahound, 90, 122–23, 127–28, 172–73; Pamela Chamcha, 28, 76, 92–93, 109, 218n5; Saladin Chamcha, 5, 24, 26–27, 28, 38, 40–41, 60, 66, 70, 74–75, 82–83, 86, 90, 91, 92, 107, 110, 112–13, 115–18, 141, 176–77, 182, 185–86, 204, 213n9, 215n23, 218n5; tropicalisation in, 25–27, 210n16; Scheffel, Michael, 8 Shalimar the Clown, 39, 42, 43, 64–65, 79–80, 82, 99, 109, 135, 156, 159–61, 162, 218n7; Boonyi, 121, 128–29, 137, 177, 215n23; India/Kashmira, 110, 138, 215n21, 215n23; iron mullahs, 186–87; Kashmir in, 5, 71, 72, 73, 78, 83, 110, 111, 137, 159, 177, 186–87; Kashmiriyat in, 73, 177; Shalimar, 79, 99, 110, 138, 177, 214n14, 215n21; terrorism in, 5, 79, 159 Shame, 39, 42–43, 50–55, 60, 96, 118–19, 136, 147, 149, 153, 158–59, 162, 187, 203; Bilquìs Hyder, 52, 54, 69, 70, 107, 109, 119–20, 214n17, 214n20; history of Pakistan in, 51–55, 110; Iskander Harappa, 5, 136, 184–85, 212n3, 215n23; Nishapur, 52, 79, 101; Omar Khayyam, 52, 69, 72, 79, 80, 84, 100–1, 110, 112, 121, 135, 212n3, 214n20; Pakistani politics in, 5, 50, 52, 53, 55, 110, 159, 175–76, 184–85, 214n18; Raza Hyder, 5, 51–52, 55, 69, 86, 109, 120, 159, 184–85, 212n3, 215n23; Sufiya Zinobia, 52, 72, 112, 119, 153, 159, 184–85,

Index 214nn19–20; Zia ul-Haq, 5, 53, 214n18; Zulfikar Ali Bhutto, 5, 53 signifier, 32, 35, 61, 140, 156, 158, 171; and deferral of meaning, 86, 90, 95; destabilisation of, 95; empty, 86–87, 90, 212n6; floating, 87, 93, 95; and leitmotifs, 87, 89; with quasi-symbolic meaning, 38, 86–87; unstable, 41, 77, 86–95 simulacrum, 77, 86, 91–93, 212n6; gendering of, 128; and signification, 91–92, 95; and women, 91, 93–95, 128, 215n23 Slemon, Stephen, 3, 16–18, 21–22, 32, 168, 169, 187 supernatural, the, 2–4, 7, 8, 10, 12, 13–14, 15–16, 18, 19, 20, 22–23, 28, 30, 32, 33, 38–39, 55, 59–62, 63, 66–67, 68, 70–71, 74, 75–76, 77, 81, 84–85, 100–2, 104, 105, 106, 154, 171–72, 177–78, 180, 183, 184, 187, 189, 191, 193–95, 196–97, 199, 208n8, 209n11, 213n9; pseudo-supernatural, 64–68, 75, 145. See also codes (supernatural code) surrealism, 9, 11, 156 suspension of disbelief, 54, 56, 200

T Todorov, Tzvetan, 14–15, 102, 209n9 transformation. See metamorphosis

U uchronia, 44–49, 102, 210n7; and utopian agenda, 44, 49, 210n5 uncanny, the, 14, 15–16, 102, 113, 114, 209n9; and the grotesque, 113–15, 213n13. See also grotesque unreality effect, 3, 59–76, 208n6; and linguistic signals, 59–60, 64; and magic atmosphere, 59, 61–64, 67, 76; magical cause and effect, 73–75; and supernatural connotations, 60–63. See also magic Uslar-Pietri, Arturo, 8–9, 208n4

W Warnes, Christopher, 9–10, 19, 32, 33, 179, 211n14, 215n3, 217n1, 218n6, 218n8

233

West, the, 2, 4, 10–11, 16, 17, 19, 23, 27–28, 34, 45, 53, 54–55, 111, 116–17, 130–32, 133, 135, 141–43, 144–45, 162, 164–67, 185, 210n8, 214nn14–15, 215n2, 215n5, 216n8 Winterson, Jeanette, 5; The Passion, 192–93; Sexing the Cherry, 193–95 women, 4, 81, 83, 118–29, 212n3, 214n17; Aurora Zogoiby, 29–31, 36, 73, 75, 76, 82, 96, 109, 118, 126–27, 128, 136, 177–79, 180, 181–82, 204, 214n16, 214n17, 215n20; Ayesha, 85, 90–91, 112,126, 127–28, 170–73, 176, 217n1–2; Bilquìs Hyder, 52, 54, 70, 107, 109, 119–20, 214n17, 214n20; and Bollywood, 121, 214n20; Boonyi, 121, 128, 129, 137, 177, 215n23; and eroticised body, 120, 128, 136, 215n5; and fairy tale, 121; and female community, 121, 124, 125; India/Kashmira, 110, 138, 215n21, 215n23; Jodha, 56, 76, 124, 126, 128; and magic realism, 119; and male fantasies, 121, 124, 128, 129, 188; Mira Celano, 68, 94–95, 128, 215n23; Padma, 20–21, 96, 125–26, 140, 170; the prostitute, 91, 121, 122–25, 215n22, 215n23; Qara Köz, 56, 72, 91, 96–98, 108, 109, 121, 124, 128, 135, 215n23; and sexuality, 98, 119, 123, 125, 128, 129, 136–37, 154, 170, 198, 202, 214n18, 214n19; and stereotypes, 4, 121, 129, 187, 202; Sufi ya Zinobia, 52, 72, 112, 119, 184–85, 214n19, 215n20; victimisation of, 119–20; Vina Apsara, 5, 67–68, 70–71, 75, 93–95, 102–3, 107, 118, 121, 126, 128, 211n3, 215n23, 216n8. See also characters (female); simulacrum