Janet's comments (member since May 20, 2009)

Janet's comments from the Constant Reader group.

Thank you for suggesting and posting this link, Whitaker. I enjoyed listening to the interview; I've just finished listening to it and will remember many things he said, including this: Orhan Pumak said he's used a lot of color references in this and other books because, as an artist himself, he simply likes color; therefore, I should stop trying to read more into its symbolism than there is. Although there is much symbolism in tradional literature, he said, he isn't intentionally using it.

I still have to read a few chapters to finish the book. I think I've most enjoyed parts when the characters, or sometimes the objects, are expressing religion by explaining the miniaturists' art. (If I close my eyes perhaps I can see it all better :D )

Maybe there's a bigger point: that seeing, although it's fantastic and realistic, like Frankish representation, is not a substitute for the real deal, which is living.

At Chapter 30, I'm only half way through the book. I really, really like it, but I don't know how to tell you all the reasons why I do. It's a mystery, but it's not much of a mystery. It's a love story, not the erotic kind; some say the tale of Husrev and Shirin that's paralleling Black and Shikure in the book inspired Shakespeare's own Romeo and Juliet, I don't know.

I like the book because it's discussing things I’m interested in, like: exotic countries, art and Allah; individually vs. the collective, symbols, timelessness, colors -- or, like Whitaker said: ideas!

I like it too that Whitaker said: (I hadn't considered this, it's very good.)

"And so the book is an elegy to Islamic miniaturist art. But it’s not only an elegy; it’s an attempt to resurrect it, indeed to actually reproduce it, in novel form:"


I like the discussion about western realism in art as being false and egotistical …. but, valuable and good :). Here's a quote from "I am Olive" Chapter 14, that I've been pondering for at least a day:

"Before the art of illumination there was blackness and afterward there will also be blackness. Through our colors, paints, art and love, we remember that Allah has commanded us to 'See'! To know is to remember that you've seen. To see is to know without remembering. Thus, painting is remembering the blackness. The great masters, who shared a love of painting and perceived that color and sight arose from darkness, longed to return to Allah's blackness by means of color. Artists without memory neither remember Allah nor his blackness. All great masters, in their work, seek that profound void within color and outside time."

I think this is a great analogy for a paradox about seeking God through alternative symbols; God exists in seeming blackness, but you can find Him by looking at colors ;). Can someone connect that to the references to blindness in the book?

Interesting that I'm also listening to an audio book called "The Blood of Flowers” by Anita Amirrezvani. It’s a novel set in 17th-century Isfahan in Iran, the author’s first book, about a young woman and the beautiful art of carpet making. In many ways it’s like this book, but it is erotic. Both stories are interesting to me for how Islamic women are treated, and how they can make their situations work to get what they want, considering their status.

This question of why Mary switched the babies is a good one to discuss, and basic to launching the story. I like the posts since the question was asked that I’ve read (putting together Mary, Joseph and Mark Twain is great. Please explain Mark Twain’s connection to me further if you feel like it and have the time.)

I hadn’t thought about it deeply, but I’m sort of aware that switching babies at birth is like a classic Bollywood technique for melodrama.

Another symbolic association entered my mind concerning the politics of India after Independence. I know that Nehru was sympathetic to USSR and communism. And I know that India has struggled between socialism and capitalism up to and until this century, exploding with success only now in the Information Age. Could any of that be in Rushdie’s thinking too, meaning Mary's wanting to please Joseph by reassigning the babies' social positions.

Thank you all for welcoming me into this discussion of Midnight’s Children. It’s a funny coincidence that I, for no real reason, happen to choose to read the same book, and then happen upon a group discussing the book -- we all chose to read at the same time. I’m enjoying the comments here; no doubt, I’m lingering longer in thought because of them.

I found an excerpt of conversation with Salman Rushdie about Midnight’s Children online, in which he was asked about magical realism and his feelings about its (MC) being compared to ‘100 Years of Solitude.’ Of course, he says he was flattered because he admires the work of Gabo Marquez (as do I,) but didn’t see the connection, other than both novels have political content.

Further, when asked if he was thinking of any other writers at the time, he said Dickens (Sterne and Swift.) Dickens, he said, “uses a kind of background which is completely naturalistic, down to the tiniest detail. And on top of this completely naturalistic background he imposes surrealistic images – like the Circumlocution office, which is a civil service department designed to do nothing, or like many of the characters, who are much larger than life. Because they are so precisely rooted in a recognizable real world the fantasy works. […:] What I tried to do, not quite like Dickens […:] make sure the bedrock of the book was right.”

Rushdie’s interpretation, to me, given that it’s probably twenty years old, sounds a lot like that that Jim inserted into the discussion about magical realism from “A Glossary of Literary Terms.”

In the end, maybe, the interpretation of the term magical realism is personal, or cultural, and that’s why in the west, where most of us don’t know eastern history well, see the fantasy large in the allegorical story; and Indians, on the other hand, and as a group I’m told, receive it more as political history… just a thought.

Hi,

I just found this group yesterday (found goodreads just a few weeks ago) I also just happened to be reading Midnight's Children at the moment, so here is my 2-cents worth to add:

I read Midnight’s Children the first time many, many years ago. I forgot how rich the novel is, a plush tapestry of symbols, or, I didn’t know then when I was younger and less mature how to appreciate the book because I didn’t understand a lot of it. I probably thought, as some critics do, that its symbolism was over the top, and not meaningful to progress the story.

I loved the book this go ‘round for its layered density and language. It’s often categorized in a group of other novels, usually by Latin writers, as magical realism. I think the complex allegory of MC is something else altogether; beyond definition that combines magic and reality, it’s more like a dream realism, if brilliant dreams had brilliant language (my dreams are often packed with symbols whose language I’m barely, or not, aware of.) For what it worth I’m calling it ‘applied cohesion in hegemony of dreams.’

When Saleem Sinai is a baby in his cradle the adults noticed that his eyelids seemed stuck, always open. His mother closed them with her fingers, then for months afterward she and another manually manipulated them open and shut:

"He'll learn, Madam," Mary comforted Amina, "He is a good obedient child and he will get the hang of it for sure." I learned: the first lesson of my life: nobody can face the world with his eyes open all the time.”

I also liked the technique of foreshadowing (four-five-sixth sense shadowing) because it kept me involved in the story, when otherwise I could drift away on the beauty of Rushdie’s sentence construction – left pondering this, that or the other thing; for instance, pondering optimism disease… interesting diagnosis.