Shalimar the Clown: A Novel | Salman Rushdie | Great book, excellent listen

Shalimar the Clown: A Novel | Salman Rushdie | "Why isn't this book included on Oprah's list?"

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Shalimar the Clown...

	Shalimar the Clown: A Novel Salman Rushdie Random House Trade Paperbacks, 2006 - 416 pages average customer review:based on 65 reviews view larger image
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highly recommended

Great book, excellent listen

The book was very well narrated, and the story was captivating. A bit confusing at the beginning as the story jumped from character to character and between seemingly unrelated periods in time and place (from contemprorary San Francisco, to Kashmir in 1960s, to Europe in WWII).. All comes together, of course. The characters were complex, interesting, some, even bordering with mythical.

"Why isn't this book included on Oprah's list?"

I loved this book for its poetic and flowing story of individuals and groups balancing opposing cultures and staying upright until fundamentalists took over by force. The book gave me a strong sense of the paradise that Kashmir used to be. I really appreciated the book's lively prose, use of idioms from different cultures, but most especially its humor. The story showed me that people define their personal problems and usually identify solutions to them within the parameters of their current culture. The book also gave me a better grasp of the history, motivations, role, and depth of Islamic extremism. That,in turn, made me think about the effect of extremist oppression from other sources - at how, for example, Christian fundamentalism is similarly threatening liberal ideals and premises (eg. Darwinism)on our home ground.

At that point in reflecting on the book, the Danish cartoons' furor broke out. What I'd learned from the book gave me a grasp of the cartoons' protests that I would not otherwise have had and that I didn't want! In this way, the book has disturbed me for I now have a sense that what happened to Kashmir is happening in the West, ie. that both domestic and foreign forms of fanaticism are undermining the peaceful co-existence that we eyed with respect and even love before 9/11. In this way, "Shalimar the Clown" both opens my eyes and makes me want to close them!

The book also beautifully portrays the phenomenon of a person becoming 'multiply-cultured' during one lifetime as a result of making his home in more than one country. So, I am perplexed by professional critics (British and American) who say the book is 'too ambitious' or too complex in its coverage of several geographical locations. I don't understand the criticism because breadth and speed are what sell us cars, computers and holidays. And because the book is very easy to read. I suspect some reviewers' may be jealous or disapproving of the fact that some people have no exclusive allegiance to one country and can cope in flrorish in several.

As for the other criticism concerning Rushdie's depiction of Los Angeles through the successes and failures of its icons and values and as perceived by his characters, look at what he says about Kashmiris! This book is a lot of fun.

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A real page-turner

Though I've not read every Rushdie novel, "Shalimar the Clown" is a good, but puzzling entry in his oeuvre. In his masterpieces like "Midnight's Children," "The Satanic Verses" and the underrated "The Ground Beneath Her Feet," Rushdie wonderfully fused wordplay and a celebration of language with metaphor. In "Shalimar the Clown," the love of language is, for the most part, discarded in favor of plotting. This is not necessarily a bad thing, but one of the reasons I cherish Rushdie so much is, I feel, missing from this novel.

What we have here has been touched on by many other reviewers. India Ophuls is the most compelling character here -- one who must create her own identity out of the fragments of her family past that have been given to her. Her father, Max, is a Holocaust survivor who has also been dislocated from his home. Boonyi, India's mother, and Shalimar the Clown, both from Kashmir, are the only characters who have a home. But as political unrest envelops the region, any semblance of home is stripped away, and both characters become desparate shells for their former selves as a result. Again, instead of dwelling on his former aesthetic manipulations of language, Rushdie is first and foremost interested in these human tragedies, resulting from love and revenge, on both personal and international levels. This makes "Shalimar the Clown" Rushdie's easiest read (excepting "Haroun and the Sea of Stories"). While I wanted a little more "art" from him here, I still heartily recommend this novel, which shows off Rushdie's grasp of history, art, language and matters of allegiance, loyalty, and love.

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You will love this book without loving it

The novel is primarily set in a time during which a generation in Kashmir saw a sharp change in its political and religous status quo. The book is laden with the idea of an unjust and unfair world and human suffering stands atop every other theme. The main character Shalimar loses the love of his life- Boonyi. Boonyi makes a daring choice and the consequences are dreadful. Max Ophuls a surviving Jew from WWII lives a tormented life, his wife (also a WWII survivor) is incapable of love, their daughter India has lived a banal existence till the time the book starts. The people of Pachigam and Shirmal change with the tides of their unfortunate land. Beauty transmogrifies to ugliness - this is shown in both the reshaping of the Kashmiri landscape and in the tragic lives lead by the main characters. Rushdie's writing is vivid. He focuses to emphasize the details within the minds of the characters more than the landscape. This gives the reader a tangible immersion into the lives of these people. The ceaseless obvious contradiction of thoughts throughout the narration wonderfully portrays the desperate lives that characters lead. Keeping with the contradictory narration of the book - the characters live at times without living, they die without dying, they love without loving, cheat without cheating, hate without hating and all the tragically untragic events lead up to the violent ending that is not violent.

The book seems to have been surface researched (which is all it probably needs). There are a lot of tie-ins to the current day Islamic fundamentalism and the role of the United States in nourishing it. Certainly allegories could be made that Ambassador Olphus is the United States and Shalimar is the Muslim people that have been cheated, and the rest of the characters all suffer because of the unethical choice made by the White Man. However, the book is so much more and cannot be reduced to an "America is the cause of all evil" diatribe.

This was my first Rushdie novel and I was not dissapointed. Although at times, the reading required a little bit of effort - mostly because of my impatience to indulge the author, the reading pays off in a fulfilling high that only a few authors can provide.

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The Tightrope

The Tightrope

In retrospect, I am wondering if the author was experimenting with some vulgar encryption, regarding the name "Ophuls", as in Max Ophuls, and India/Kashmira Ophuls. At first I thought it was a play on the word "Awful". But the more I think about it, the more I wonder if Rushdie was not trying to tell somebody out there "India, You Fools!", or "Kashmir, You Fools!". Imagine reading in the context of "It's Kashmir, you fools!". Well, you will either get it, or you won't.

I would imagine that people read meanings into this well written novel that weren't part of the author's original intent. Apologist, explanatory, expository, pro this, con that, and what have you. As I passed through the story again, certain phrases appeared repeatedly, like devil, or possession, or possessed by devils, and usually in reference to the Shalimar character. Shalimar the Clown may represent the body of youth wasted through the perverted designs of a six-foot tall, sulfur-breathed demon affectionately called the "iron mullah", an oblique characterization of Osama bin Ladin, who was also briefly mentioned more directly as "Sheikh Usama". This is the devil incarnate, who has taken a bad situation in Kashmir, and made it worse to the satisfaction of his father in Hell. It is easy to feel Rushdie's torment in exile, projected as Boonyi's torment. An edict of death, eviction from the mother land, facing rejection by the very people who are supposed to love you and support you, emotionally. The possession theme is also the eastern homeland to which Rushdie cannot return until it has been successfully exorcised.

Shalimar The Clown goes beyond well researched. Rushdie crosses into an intimate knowledge of his subject at a level that scares me. For a guy who's living under the shadow of a so-called "fatwah" edict, with a bounty on his head in the Muslim world, how did he come to learn so much about the violent backwaters of Kashmir, post Khomeini? He must have an "in".

Unlike Satanic Verses, which I have tried to read, but kept stalling out on, like an airplane in an acute climb, Shalimar the Clown is a highly readable novel with a clear beginning, middle, and an end, which circles back again to the beginning. I'm by no means a Rushdie crooner. Nevertheless, he is an icon, and no one has done a better job at examining the roots of AK-Hate under the microscope. In fact, on NPR, I once heard terrorist suicide bomber survivors, a young woman in the first case, describe how she got sucked into Palestinian suicide terror, and why she didn't go through with it. On another occasion, I heard a young man, a so-called Tamil Tiger from Sri Lanka explain his induction and defection in quite similar terms, and how it was that he had come to see the light, deciding not to chomp down on the cyanide capsule. The short of it is, you can legitimize your rejections and disappointments and poverty by blaming a great Something Else, the Great Satan. These young people have no clue about the thing they are taught to hate, it is an indoctrination, merely a theoretical concept to their impressionable minds. All the while hate, the flip side of love, is really someone you know-- a family member, a scorning lover, a failed employment. Witness the latest Prophet Mohammed Cartoon Riots: In Algeria, Niger, Malaysia, Pakistan, Afghanistan, throngs are burning U.S. flags, and the United States didn't even create the cartoons! The whole flag-burning excuse is, therefore, idiotic, self-deceiving farce, mostly exacerbated by governments and extremists with insidious agendas (re: Iran). On a personal level, these are people who, much as we have been indoctrinated in our own country, can't possibly hate a people we don't actually know. Hate is so easy, like driving a car, and just as much fun, that the Hate Mullahs know how to capitalize on it for their own power trips. You see, hate breaks down upon close scrutiny. We can spend a lifetime projecting our hate on the wrong people, and all the while, the real thief of love is much closer to us, someone we know, sneaking upon us in the black night.

However, Shalimar the Clown does not break down. Page after page builds up to the tragic end that can only be. This is the point. There is no denouement, only the sad truth of the matter. I recognized a silhouette cameo appearance by the author himself; I can't find the exact page, but I'm pretty sure it was in the "Shalimar" chapter. Something about an ex-Kashmiri or Pakistani who lived in France, leading a western existence? Anyway, that was he. There is a chilling aspect to the assassin Shalimar-it is as if Rushdie were rehearsing fantasies of his own presupposed assassination. I hope and pray that never comes to pass.

This book is about the varieties of hate, and how hate is perpetuated. There is one variety that feeds upon itself (the male), and is never satisfied. There is another (the female) that desires to quench its own consummation, a hater of hate, a reconciler of past damnation. Kashmira is Diana, protector of Athens, matron of all that is art, culture, and civilized, as represented by her arrow; Shalimar's blade represents all that is vile and bestial, unforgiving and uncaring. Killing in the name of God is the ultimate contradiction, since life is God's creation and gift. To take blood is to hate God. Therefore, he who takes life in the name of God is really hiding his true motives, which brings us to Shalimar.

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