Shalimar the Clown

SHALIMAR THE CLOWN (Salman Rushdie) - Four Stars

Whoever coined the phrase "time heals all wounds" really got it wrong. Time erases all wounds, as people, empires, and ages come and go, but it doesn't heal them. A person who dies of cancer isn't "healed" by it.

Nearly twenty years passed between the writing of Midnight's Children and Shalimar the Clown, and Rushdie's sardonic, grim outlook on the world from twenty years ago has metastasized into a severely bitter, vitriolic mixture of anger and despair. Rushdie always generates several passages of extreme beauty in his novels; here he seems to build them up for the sole purpose of violating and destroying them in the most horrific ways.

Shalimar the Clown is, supposedly, about the title character, his history, and what leads him from being a circus performer in Kashmir to an international assassin. In reality, the title character is never really delved into that much: the book is more about the events of the world around him that shaped him into what he is. The book focuses heavily on the people of Shalimar's hometown, his wife, an American ambassador and the ambassador's illegimate daughter, and through them, through their actions you kind of get the idea of who Shalimar the Clown really is.

In reality, the book is primarily about the rape of Kashmir by Islamic militants and the Indian army (Rushdie has a lot of issues with the Indian government). The magical fantasy of Midnight's Children makes only muted appearances in Shalimar the Clown: this book is far more about brutal reality, about man's inhumanity towards man (both on the personal and political levels).

This book progresses slowly and was tough to read. It's not a book you can pick up and breeze through. There's very little dialogue in the book, and Rushdie too often indulges in a very florid writing style (there were a few points where I felt like I was having a thesaurus thrown at my head instead of reading a novel). Indeed, four stars almost seems a little high for a ranking, but Rushdie is capable of writing passages of such staggering impact they're impossible to forget. In reality, this is a three-star book with a handful of five-star sections. It is angry and bitter and sad. It is a teary-eyed castigation of mankind.

Who lit that fire? Who burned that orchard? Who shot those brothers who laughed their whole lives long? Who killed the sarpanch? Who broke his hands? Who broke his arms? Who broke his ancient neck? Who shackled those men? Who made those men disappear? Who shot those boys? Who shot those girls? Who smashed that house? Who smashed that house? Who smashed that house? Who killed that youth? Who clubbed that grandmother? Who knifed that aunt? Who broke that old man's nose? Who broke that young girl's heart? Who killed that lover? Who shot his fiancée? Who burned the costumes? Who broke the swords? Who burned the library? Who burned the saffron field? Who slaughterd the animals? Who burned the beehives? Who poisoned the paddies? Who killed the children? Who whipped the parents? Who raped that lazy-eyed woman? Who raped that grey-haired lazy-eyed woman as she screamed about snake vengeance? Who raped that woman again? Who raped that woman again? Who raped that woman again? Who raped that dead woman? Who raped that dead woman again?

Wicked

WICKED (Gregory Maguire) - Four Stars

Really, what an ingenious concept: take a well-known and well-loved fantasy story and "photo-negative" it. The idyllic countryside becomes home to a frightening, almost Orwellian government. Expose the hidden dark (and dirty) sides of the good and virtuous. And, of course, tell the villain's story. As someone once postulated, god might not be any more virtuous than satan, he's just got better P.R.

But Wicked, thankfully, is far more than a gimmicky twist on an old story. The novel rises above that to become a truly engrossing story in its own right, and perhaps its most satisfying achievement is showing how evil doesn't always coming storming from the depths with fire and brimstone. Sometimes evil arises from the most mundane sources: misunderstandings, missed intentions, even the unsuccessful fulfillment of goals and dreams.

For those of you sitting in the "Osama" section, Wicked is both the biography of the Wicked Witch of the West from L. Frank Baum's The Wizard of Oz and a prequel to said novel. Wicked traces the arc of Elphaba's (a.k.a, the Wicked Witch of the West's) life from her humble beginnings as a preacher's daughter in Munchkinland to her schooling in science (not sorcery) at the well-known academy in Shiz where she's the roommate of Glinda (the "Good" Witch); from her disgust at the prejudice and other nastier aspects of society in Oz to her birth as a counter-revolutionary in the Emerald City. And beyond, of course, detailing the history of the ruby slippers and how Dorothy (unintentionally) runs afoul of Elphaba, and more retelling of The Wizard of Oz from this new perspective. Maguire does a terrific job at developing Elphaba into a complicated and multi-layered character, deserving equal parts sympathy and scorn for her actions.

While a solid and enjoyable book, there are parts where Maguire makes a few bad missteps. His use of metaphors can be incredibly heavy-handed, particularly in some of the novel's existentialist musings. I really would've liked more development of Frex (Elphaba's father) in the first 50-75 pages, particularly since he's an important recurring character and his feelings about his daughter (and her feelings about him) are vital to novel's development and impact. And particularly bothersome was the hastiness of Elphaba's deterioration from paranoid insurgent to homicidal lunatic. The reasons for this are certainly well-established, but her mental collapse, her final encounter with Dorothy, and indeed the entire denouement seem uncomfortably rushed.

Fairly minor gripes, though. Wicked remains an original, enjoyable novel that has sufficient parts action, comedy and drama without being overly difficult to read. On an ironic note, having read the book I can't imagine how it could possibly be well-converted to a Broadway musical; but, having not seen the stage version, I can't pass judgment on that yet.

Boq returned the smile, warmly. "Glinda used her glitter beads, and you used your exotic looks and background, but weren't you just doing the same thing, trying to maximize what you had in order to get what you wanted? People who claim that they're evil are usually no worse than the rest of us." He sighed. "It's people who claim that they're good, or anyway better than the rest of us, that you have to be wary of."