Dr Christopher Rollason: BILINGUAL CULTURE BLOG – ENGLISH/SPANISH – CASTELLANO/INGLÉS In English and Spanish / en castellano e inglés

Salman Rushdie, Knife: Meditations After an Attempted Murder, London/New York: Vintage, 2024, 211 pp.

In this, the twenty-second of his long and distinguished line of literary works, Salman Rushdie tells the reader that ‘it was and is a book I’d much rather not have needed to write’ (173). This is hardly surprising as the triggering event, already signified in the book’s subtitle, is the near-fatal attempt on his life perpetrated on 12 August 2022 in a lecture theatre in Chautauqua in New York state, and its life-changing consequences. The painful nature of the material would have made it understandable had he not chosen to tell the world his story, but his final decision is vindicated by what proves, despite everything, to be a highly articulate and deeply felt piece of writing, liable to have a cathartic effect on both writer and reader, and a book to be shelved without reservation alongside its predecessors in its author’s  oeuvre.

It is ironic that the attack should have occurred just as Rushdie was about to deliver a lecture on ‘the importance of keeping writers safe from harm’ (3).  Had it succeeded, the attempted murder by a young Lebanese-American would have marked the delayed but definitive implementation, after 33 years, of Ayatollah Khomein’s fatwa of 1989 (the assailant, who admitted he had read all of two pages of The Satanic Verses, was an avowed admirer of the Iranian cleric). Thanks to hospitalisation, the best medical care and a dogged survival instinct, against all the odds Rushdie survived the multiple knife-wounds – losing his sight in his right eye and the full use of his left hand but with his mental faculties undimmed, in a process of treatment and recovery that some might wish to call miraculous. There is no question, however, of harping on near-death experiences or any religious or spiritual turn: Rushdie declares that he remains the non-religious person, indeed not to mince words atheist, that he always was: ‘My godlessness remains intact’ (186). The moving dedication prefixed to the book is humanist in tone (‘This book is dedicated to the men and women who saved my life’);  and it is clear from his pages that if there is any discourse he believes in, it is that of love – love as personified by the constant presence across the book of his wife Eliza and her unconditional and unfaltering practical and emotional support right through her husband’s ordeal.

Salman Rushdie also reminds the world that he is first and foremost a novelist and a writer. He recalls how ‘for more than thirty years I have refused to be defined by the fatwa and insisted on being seen as the author of my books’ (132). Suddenly, he found himself back in the high-risk phase he had described in his earlier memoir Joseph Anton, reduced once again to ‘the author of The Satanic Verses’ (of ‘that novel’ – 23) despite his fifteen other works of fiction and the success (notably in his native India) of his latest novel, Victory City – but once he is well enough to visit the UK, back come the police protection and the ‘living at “undisclosed locations”’ (80), precautions he had deemed no longer necessary.

He reaffirms his long-standing role – in no way altered by the attack – in writerly circles as defender of free speech, as manifested in his presidency of PEN USA and his actions in support of beleaguered writers. Rushdie harks back to a lost innocence (when he began writing ‘that novel’, he says, ‘it never occurred to me that I wasn’t allowed to do it .. I had these stories I wanted to tell’ – 98). Years later but still on the same issues, Rushdie now in this book suggests a quite legitimate parallel between his own story and the murderous invasion of the French magazine Charlie Hebdo’s offices in 2015. He recalls that not all of his fellow writers were willing to defend the journalists killed in that attack, and notes that of those colleagues with whom he disagreed over Charlie, the ‘anti-Charlie clique’ as he calls them (191), to date none have so much as commented on the knife attack or expressed their sympathy. The PEN leadership, however, did offer their support, while Rushdie himself sums up free speech doctrine declaring that ‘in the rough-and-tumble world of politics and public life, no ideas can be ring-fenced and protected against criticism’ (183).

Rushdie’s writing in this book is concise and lucid, switching effortlessly between different registers, from the colloquial timbre of an imagined dialogue with his assailant, through technical legal discourse and pages of medical data which would not be out of place in The Lancet, to the compelling and economical narrative mode that best represents Rushdie as chronicler of our times. As usual, intertextuality is not lacking, from evocations of Shakespeare (Gloucester’s fate in King Lear – 95) and Kafka (the end of The Trial – 21) through to Nobel prize-winners José Saramago (Blindness – 197) and Bob Dylan, whose ‘Love Minus Zero’ is quoted twice (44, 69). The author also quotes the late nineteenth-century poet W.E. Henley, taking up from him three significant words, ‘bloody but unbowed’ (208), which could well describe the Salman Rushdie of these pages.

Meanwhile, with the assailant awaiting trial, the book ends with Salman and Eliza returning to Chautauqua a year after the attack, articulating the need to accept what happened,  with their happiness ‘wounded’ and yet still ‘strong’ (209), and move on. This book is not for the squeamish, and some might find in it a plethora of gory detail. However, Rushdie’s narrative, taken as a whole, offers a breadth of scope that goes far beyond the triggering event, thanks to his reflections on the destiny and responsibility of the writer and, as he movingly reminds us across the book, the healing power of love.

Note added 22 April 2024: I reviewed ‘Victory City’ on this blog on 13 March 2023.

Visiting Luxembourg’s annual Festival des Migrations in early 2024, near the entrance I chanced on the Portuguese stand and its book display aimed at the Grand Duchy’s largest migrant community,  Browsing there, I came across a black-covered book entitled ‘Esch, Lieu de Mémoires’ (‘Esch, place of memories’), which intrigued me as I live in Esch-sur-Alzette, second city of the Grand Duchy of Luxembourg, onetime ‘iron metropolis’ and now the seat of the country’s university and, let us not forget, European Capital of Culture in 2022.

I bought the book and within a few days read it. It turned out to be a multilingual volume, arising from an initiative linked to the Capital of Culture celebrations and published in Germany under the auspices of the Luxembourg/Portuguese cultural association PESSOA, with the support of various local institutions. The book combines photographs and text: four photographers have works included, and there is a total of ten contributors of texts, written mostly in Portuguese but with the English and French languages also represented.

The contributors were asked to submit previously unpublished texts with a bearing on Esch-sur-Alzette, the aim being, as contributor and editor São Gonçalves puts it in her introduction, to ‘célébrer la ville, sa diversité et son multiculturalisme’ (‘celebrate the city, its diversity and multiculturalism’), but also to ‘diffuser la culture dans sa conception universaliste’ (‘disseminate culture in its universalist conception’) (8). The result is a highly readable collection of writings of various lengths, in multiple registers and embracing both non-fiction and fiction. Some of the authors prefer a straight narrative of their experience as immigrant workers and their discovery of a new culture; others evoke Esch as physical space, its squares, cafés, concert halls and parks; others again choose the route of genre fiction: there is a love story, a mystery story and a ghost story (the last-named located in the municipal library).

We thus have a labyrinth of diverse texts with the city of Esch-sur-Alzette as its guiding thread: to quote the contributor Cidália Rodrigues, ‘As cidades são como as casas. São aconchego e abrigo, história e memória!’ (‘Cities are like houses. They are comfort and shelter, history and memory!’) (67). The multilingual nature of the volume underscores the motif of multiculturalism. The texts are complemented by the excellent interspersed photographs, with their eminently local subject-matter, from bus station to industrial landscape. All in all, the book is attractively presented and a pleasure to handle (though I have one cavil, namely the lack of a table of contents, which detail would, especially given the diversity of the texts, have facilitated reading).

The volume concludes with a paean to ‘Esch-sur-Alzette, la grande ville amie’ (‘the great city and friend’) by Paulo Lobo, son of Portuguese immigrants, for whom Luxembourg’s second city remains ‘la ville de la culture et des rencontres, la ville des événements festifs et culturels pour tous publics … la ville des jeunes et des vieux qui embrassent la vie dans un meme élan généreux‘ (‘the city of culture and encounters, the city of festive and cultural events for all audiences … the city of those both young  and old who embrace life with the same  generous élan’) (109-110). I would suggest that although the Portuguese language is predominant in the volume, it is very arguably of interest to those who do not read Portuguese – this thanks to the quality of the material in French and English, not to speak of the excellence of the photos! Those whom the multicultural city of Esch interests will decide!  

PESSOA asbl, Esch, lieu de mémoires. Lünen, Germany: Oxalá Editora, 2022. Various contributors, 124 pp. 

Bob Dylan: Mixing Up the Medicine

Written and edited by Mark Davidson and Parker Fishel, 608 pp., New York: Callaway, 2023

**

This beautifully produced volume, which has been received by many as one of the best books ever on Bob Dylan, is the first publication to emanate from the archive that has been housed since 2022 in the Bob Dylan Center in Tulsa, Oklahoma. Co-edited by Mark Davidson, Curator of the Bob Dylan Archive, and fellow archivist Parker Fishel, it might at first sight appear a coffee-table book, or alternatively a study guide to the archive, but in reality it is neither of those things: it could be best described as an illustrated biography, with the particularity that most of its copious graphic material is taken from the archive and has never before seen print publication.

Biographically, the book offers an account, both lucid and ludic, of Bob  Dylan’s career, the focus being on the artistic rather than the personal, and within the artistic on Dylan in his best-known manifestation as songwriter and musician (recognition also being accorded to his practice of other arts such as painting or cinema). The graphic material includes letters, manuscripts, photos, film stills, record sleeves, memorabilia and much more (one may note anecdotally such gems as a Christmas card from Paul McCartney!) Of particular interest to many will be the scans of draft lyrics as set down in notebooks or scribbled on hotel notepaper. We learn, for instance, that Dylan’s most revised song ever is ‘Dignity’ and that the archive contains some seventeen drafts of ‘Jokerman’. However, one of the things this tome is not is a substitute for in-person research in Tulsa: the draft lyrics are by no means always reproduced in full, while archive location codes are not given anywhere in the book.

The volume is also of value for the thirty essays, critical or biographical and all specially commissioned, that are interspersed with the life material. The guest authors range from critics including the likes of Greil Marcus (on a super-early tape of 1960 from Madison, Wisconsin) and Alex Ross (on the drafts of ‘The Groom’s Still Waiting at the Altar’) to creative writers of the prestige of Peter Carey (on ‘Tweedle Dee & Tweedle Dum’) or Michael Ondaatje (who intriguingly compares Dylan as reviser of his own texts to another great rewriter, no less than Honoré de Balzac). The book is worth owning for these essays alone, foregrounding as they do the multiplicity of critical perspectives that exist on Dylan’s life and work.

In the months since it came out, this volume has been amply received, with overwhelmingly favourable reviews. Translations are already out in French, German and Spanish. For Dylan students this book impressively complements such earlier key material as Michael Gray’s The Bob Dylan Encyclopaedia or Dylan’s own Chronicles Volume One and The Philosophy of Modern Song; it offers something for everybody, whether one’s focus be on lyrics, photos or biodata. The editors have gone to enormous lengths to celebrate the riches of the archive, and this the resulting book most certainly merits a prominent place on the shelves of any serious Dylan collection.

Back in past decades, the journal Poe Studies ran an occasional series of ‘fugitive references’ to the writings of Edgar Allan Poe in the works of other writers. In that spirit, I offer a set of such references, gleaned from my reading in recent years. Here they are:  

Dorothy L. Sayers, The Nine Tailors (1934) – quotes from Poe’s tale ’Berenice’ as epigraph to the fifth part of her detective story (also, the ‘tailors’ themselves are in fact bells and thus suggest Poe’s ’The Bells’) 

Evelyn Waugh, The Loved One (1948) – the cremation which is the book’s last act is accompanied by a recital adapting the first verse of Poe’s ’To Helen’

John Betjeman, Summoned by Bells (1960) – as a schoolboy, the poet learns by heart Poe’s ‘The Bells’ out of his school’s ‘dog-eared poetry books’ 

P.G. Wodehouse, The Code of the Woosters (1938) – Jeeves summarises Poe’s ‘The Purloined Letter’ for Bertie Wooster’s benefit

Stephen King, Carrie (1974) – passing allusion to a school production of ‘The Raven’, prompted by a bust of Pallas in the school’s storage

Poe is everywhere, and I will be pleased with any suggestions for additions to this list!

ADDED 11 February 2024 – three more Wodehouse references, for which I am pleased to thank Helen Swallow.

**

P.G. Wodehouse
Right Ho, Jeeves, 1922

But, dash it!” I cried. “Do you know what’s happened? Madeline Bassett says she’s going to marry me!”.”I hope it keeps fine for you,” said the relative, and passed from the room looking like something out of an Edgar Allan Poe story. I don’t suppose I was looking so dashed unlike something out of an Edgar Allan Poe story myself, for, as you can readily imagine, the news item which I have just recorded had got in amongst me properly.

Summer Lightning 1929

The atmosphere of Blandings Castle has changed all of a sudden from that of a normal, happy English home into something Edgar Allan Poe might have written on a rainy Sunday.

Barmy in Wonderland, 1952

He gave him a nasty look. It was a look that seemed to bring into the office an Edgar Allan Poe-like atmosphere of wailing winds and family curses.

I have been a keen user of the Kindle e-reader for a decade now, and as another year draws to an end I feel it is time take stock of the drawbacks (few) and benefits (many) which this technology has brought me over these years – for today even though I have a substantial library, if I have the choice of reading a book in Kindle or print form, I will probably choose the electronic format.

Some say the e-text lacks the feel and the concreteness of a physical book: others may object to the proprietary aspect (it’s officially the Amazon Kindle). The e-book makes additions to one’s library invisible (but still real), and giving a Kindle file as a present is not the same as giving a book!

The small size of the device means it is fine for text but not so good for art books. Also the user has to remember to charge the battery, whereas a physical book is ‘always on’. In the academic world, Kindle editions may not be ideal for referencing, as many Kindle texts lack conventional page numbers.

These objections are not to be dismissed out of hand, but I consider they are outweighed by the many and diverse advantages. I find the flat surface particularly convenient for reading, and greatly appreciate the backlighting which means one can read at any time, including during lights-out on a plane! Also crucial is the ability to change the font size (by contrast, I may have to simply abstain from reading a physical book if the font is too small). Download is immediate – once a book is ordered it arrives immediately and one can start reading! Capacity is another issue: one device can store hundreds not only of books but of omnibus volumes, the latter (such as Delphi Classics) typically being designed for electronic reading. There are no storage space issues as there are with a physical library. The Kindle also creates new search possibilities, within books and across books, and one can engage in a lexical hunt tracking down the appearances of a given word across one’s entire collection! Particularly useful too is the dictionary function – press on a word and up comes the definition – which allows readers to develop their word power, in a foreign language but also in one’s own language.

I am sure there are more functions that I haven’t explored, and from the above list of advantages conclude that the Kindle is overwhelmingly beneficial to those of us who love reading!  The name Kindle is indeed appropriate, for every time a reader opens the device, a flame is kindled in the name of the written word!

Tales Unraveled: Sufferings and Pangs of the Downtrodden in the Short Stories of K. V. Dominic, ed. Dr S. Barathi, New Delhi: Authorspress, 2023

Those interested in short stories should not overlook the contribution to the genre made by practitioners of Indian Writing in English. There is a rich and ample tradition, from R.K. Narayan through to Anita Desai and beyond. Dr K. V. Dominic, Retired Professor of English at Newman College, Thodhupuzha, Kerala, is widely known in Indian literary circles as an academic, critic and poet, and as editor of the well-regarded International Journal on Multicultural Literature. He is also a productive author of short stories, and this new essay collection is aimed at achieving a wider audience for his contribution to the genre.

The book has been edited by Dr S. Barathi, Assistant Professor of English at the SASTRA university college in Kumbakonam, Tamil Nadu, and consists of a preface by the editor, 23 critical essays, a wide-ranging interview with the author and a copious bibliographic appendix. The majority of the contributors hail from India, but there are also essays by critics based elsewhere (including my own). K.V. Dominic’s short stories are typically located in his home state of Kerala but are equally of pan-Indian and universal interest, touching themes including multiculturalism, intercommunal relations, ecology and ethics, and expressing sympathy with the marginalised and downtrodden.  

Dr Dominic’s website is at: www.profkvdominic.com

**

My contribution to this book is:

Christopher Rollason, ‘K.V. Dominic’s Tales of Kerala Today’, inTales Unraveled: Sufferings and Pangs of the Downtrodden in the Short Stories of K. V. Dominic, ed. S. Barathi, New Delhi: Authorspress, 2023, pp. 27-34.

Abstract of my chapter:

This chapter analyses the contribution to the Indian Writing in English (IWE) short story canon of the stories of Professor K.V. Dominic, examining a selection of representative texts, most of them published in the three short story collections which have appeared to date under his name. It is shown how the author’s writing reflects the particular characteristics of his native state of Kerala, as a multireligious and multicultural environment and as India’s most literate state. Close examination of the selected stories also points up how they variously highlight issues that are at one and the same time both local and universal, including ethical dilemmas in urgent situations, generosity and gratitude, and humanity’s relationship to animals and to nature. It is further shown how in line with the varying subject-matter the author activates both classical realist and magic-realist or fabular modes of narration.

‘We are such stuff as dreams are made on’, Shakespeare famously said, and art, especially visual art, can often be seen as an exploration of the dream side of humanity. Between 3 June and 12 November 2023, the Konschthal gallery in Esch-sur-Alzette is home to an exhibition of remarkable canvases by the Luxembourg-born, Brussels-based artist Tina Gillen, paintings which transport the viewer into a dream world that nonetheless has its basis in reality. The exhibition is named ‘Flying Mercury’, after the messenger of the gods who symbolises the free-floating imagination. An informative and well-written illustrated leaflet is available, in French and English versions.

These are not abstract paintings, for they typically have a clear referent. The dominant genre (there are also flora and dwellings…) is landscape, a pictorial mode that exercises a universal appeal. However, these are not realist landscapes in the tradition of a Constable: a possible antecedent might be the emotionally charged landscapes of  the German Expressionists. The official leaflet puts it in a nutshell: ‘These conceptions navigate between abstraction and figuration’. The forms evoked are familiar from the material world but transformed into dream images, as if caught at the moment when the real mutates into the oneiric.

Many of the paintings embody physical sensations which are also emotional, such as heat and cold. A whole sequence represents different degrees of heat, even to the point of suggesting the interior of the sun. Another group expresses extremes of cold, through the eloquent image of the iceberg. The drifting floe manifests as an image of solitude: the maritime melancholy has its parallel in contemporary literature,  recalling the equation of ocean and solitude in the moving stage play ‘I Am  the Wind’ by this year’s Nobel laureate, the Norwegian Jon Fosse. Other works again superpose different levels of representation: in one canvas, a more realist foreground is connected to a less realist background by the flight of a darkly articulated raven. Another canvas, entitled ‘Shelter’, depicts what appears to be a typical dwelling from the small-town USA à la Hopper, but with a starkness that is not of waking life, here too evoking a deep sense of solitude.

The exhibition space is ample, generous enough to enable the visitor to absorb the paintings at a relaxed pace, and to contrast with calm the different elements in a given series. These are paintings that repay close attention, and it is to be hoped that through this exhibition Tina Gillen‘s work will both maintain its existing prestige and attract new followers.

For the venue’s site, see: www.konschthal.lu

Luxembourg’s much-prized Ellergronn forestry centre and ramblers’ paradise, situated between the city of Esch-sur-Alzette and the French border, is also, from 2 September 2023 to 2 March 2024, the locus of an open-air sculpture exhibition under the name of Land Art Ellergronn,  sponsored by the artists’ collective CUEVA. 32 sculptures in total, the work of 38 different artists, are dispersed around Ellergronn’s installations and the surrounding woodland. A common denominator unites them: all, whatever their idiom,are coloured orange – a colour chosen to contrast as vividly as possible with the green of the trees and ferns of the forest.

Ellergronn is a beautiful place and ideal for communing with nature. The exhibition gives it a new dimension, fusing nature and culture, and can be wholeheartedly recommended for lovers of both green spaces and art.

See:    https://administration.esch.lu/2023/09/05/exposition-cueva-land-art-au-ellergronn-la-nature-devient-toile-pour-38-artistes/

Luxembourg’s Villa Vauban museum continues its excellent series of exhibitions (having already brought us Constable) with a retrospective dedicated to Luxembourg impressionist painter Dominique Lang and his contemporaries (‘Dans la lumière de l’impressionnisme? – Dominique Lang (1847-1919) et ses contemporains’). While Impressionism is associated mostly with France, it also had adherents from, e.g., Germany, Spain, the US, and, as we now discover,  Luxembourg.

Lang was not exclusively an impressionist painter, although it was in that genre that he produced the most: he also painted portraits and made forays into Pointillism and even Symbolism. A feature of this exhibition is the inclusion for comparison and contrast of numerous similar works by other artists from the period, not only from Luxembourg but also from the border regions of Germany and France (Trier, the Moselle) that abut on the Grand Duchy. Nonetheless, Lang is at the centre, and while the exhibition samples his various adoptive genres, pride of place – despite the title’s question mark – would likely go to his impressionist landscapes, executed with a patent sensitivity to nature. especially trees and water.

The paintings shown in the illustrations to this post are all by Lang, except for a lakeside view by his conational Frantz Seimetz. The exhibition includes ample wall descriptions placing Lang’s life and work in context in French, German and English. Visitors to the villa (and its beautiful park) will not be disappointed with the range of works on show, and should come away better informed about a lesser-known but fascinating corner of the grand artistic movement that was Impressionism!

There might not be an obvious connection between Salman Rushdie and Canada’s veteran singer-songwriter Joni Mitchell, but a surprising link emerges in Rushdie’s latest novel, Victory City..

Other novels by Rushdie do cite the likes of Bob Dylan – notably The Ground Beneath Her Feet and The Golden House – indeed, the former even quotes the title of a Mitchell album, The Hissing of Summer Lawns from 1975. Those are novels with a contemporary setting, in which citing rock-era songwriters makes sense. Victory City, however, is set well back in Indian history and would not appear an obvious location for smuggling in such a reference.

Nonetheless, on page 27 at the beginning of chapter three, in the description of a Portuguese trader, we find: ‘He had seen the world from Alpha to Omega, from up to down, from give to take, from win to lose, and he had learned that wherever he went the world was illusion, and that that was beautiful’.

There is an allusion here that will be obvious to anyone who knows Joni Mitchell’s song ‘Both Sides Now’, which first appeared on her 1969 album Clouds and has subsequently been recorded by numerous artists. The first of the song’s three stanzas is about clouds and concludes: ‘I’ve looked at clouds from both sides now / From up and down, and still somehow / It’s cloud illusions I recall / I really don’t know clouds at all’. The second and third stanzas evoke respectively love (‘from give and take’) and life (‘from win and lose’). The resemblance with Rushdie’s formulations is not fortuitous: whether consciously or not, Salman Rushdie has been influenced by Joni Mitchell!

Note: I reviewed Victory City on this blog on 13 March 2023.