(B) 75% | More than Satisfactory Notes: Worlds collide, deep divides, a total-context killing (but aim impedes), too in-the-weeds: it's hardly trim nor(B) 75% | More than Satisfactory Notes: Worlds collide, deep divides, a total-context killing (but aim impedes), too in-the-weeds: it's hardly trim nor thrilling.
*Check out progress updates for detailed commentary: (view spoiler)[
Progress updates:
08/20/2025 - Preamble (1) To date, this is the first and only Salman Rushdie book I've read. - It wasn't exactly an ideal gateway into his œuvre. (2) I originally bought this on a whim—to top up an online order to get free shipping. - I believe it was on clearance for $2.00 CAD. (3) I don't remember anything about this. - Except it took forever to finish and I read nearly all of it in a hotel room in Whitby, Ontario on a work trip.
08/21/2025 - Disc 1 (1) This begins from the perspective of Max Ophuls' daughter India, in and around his assassination. - A half-Indian Angeleno with an English accent, she's a reflection of his (in)famous cosmopolitan existence. - Actually, almost literally his reflection. Naked before a mirror, she sees "the body her father would have had if he had been a woman." - While strongly libidinous, she's not particularly promiscuous.
08/23/2025 - Disc 2 (1) India receives a marriage proposal from the quintessential all-American boy. - So quintessential, she sees his face in every billboard ad. - So quintessential, she always forgets his very memorable name. - He's the polar opposite of her exotic and cosmopolitan composition; of her father as well. - Her neighbor insists he's "guy" (gay), which is, again, opposite to her father's formidable heterosexual aura.
08/25/2025 - Disc 3 (1) 1/5 of the way in, and the book's been moving steadily back in time. - From the assassination, to its lead-up, to the assassin's childhood, to his parents—even a section on his great-grandfather. - I don't foresee going back any further. Narratively, there's no reason. (2) We get a good dose of quirky lore, a la "Harry Potter." - The (cooking) Pot War, a farting prophetess, giant mythological insects, etc.
08/27/2025 - Disc 4 (1) "Kashmir was an integral part of India. An integer was a whole and India was an integer and fractions were illegal. Fractions caused fractures in the integer and were thus not integral..." - Rushdie engages in long and playful verbal gymnastics, which doesn't add much, other than make very serious situations seem super-silly. - Possibly, deliberate quirkiness to break from his strictly-literary reputation.
08/31/2025 - Disc 5 (1) The over-sexual 14 year-old Boonyi, who fancies herself a temptress and manipulator of men, inadvertently draws the affection of a colonel and a teacher/spy. - Ironic (or simply delusional), in this religious patriarchy, to believe she has any power over men. (2) Pandit Gopinath does the Clark Kent eyeglasses trick. - He drops his "fogyish pose" and "looked younger and steelier, a man to be reckoned with.
09/04/2025 - Disc 6 (1) We get a sort of relay-race handoff where the narrative baton is passed from Boonyi/Noman to Max Ophuls. - It's a handoff marked by sexually-charged eye contact between Boonyi and Max. (2) Rushdie does his darndest to make Max seem super-cool, like a cross between Ian Fleming and James Bond. - It all seems too try-hard. "The Flying Jew" isn't doing it for me as a super-suave and roguish resistance fighter.
09/08/2025 - Disc 7 (1) Max's WWII resistance activities are described as "terrorism." - Given the time of writing, this may have been meant to counter the idea of terrorism being strictly Islamic. (2) I hate to sound Anglo-centric, but, whether it's European or South Asian, this book has way too many complicated foreign-language names for me to remember and keep straight. - Moreover, most of these characters simply don't matter!
09/11/2025 - Disc 8 (1) Is it just pretense? Or does Max honestly believe he can hide his serial infidelities from his wife, the former spy? - Albeit retired, she still has top-level surveillance and intelligence contacts. (2) It's interesting how Max's daughter India was originally named Kashmira by Boonyi. - A bit on-the-nose, but a decent allegory of Kashmir's short-lived bid for independence and its forced accession to India.
09/17/2025 - Disc 9 (1) This compares and contrasts willing and unwilling sexual pariahs. - Giving birth at an orphanage, Boonyi is mocked by survivors of sexual slavery for pursuing a life of sexual servitude. - Returning to her village, Boonyi learns she'd been declared "dead." A fate shared by her friend, Zoon Misri—"dead" from being gang raped. - In all cases, willing or unwilling, the result's the same: you end up an orphan.
09/20/2025 - Disc 10 (1) Shalimar the Clown: "All I ever learned how to do is walk across a rope and fall over like an idiot and make a few bored people laugh ... the real bad dream starts when you wake up ... And now that I’ve woken up there is something important I need to do also..." - An actor gets political. Why am I not surprised? - And for the reason I assume most actors get political: They want to be more than just clowns.
09/21/2025 - Disc 11 (1) It's interesting to consider acronyms (and/or initialisms) in this book. - Previously, acronyms were posited as the language of post-war politics and bureaucracy: "Its aggressive uninterest in euphony, marked it out as power-speech. Power had no need for prettification, no need to make things easy." - Fast-forward, and we see acronymic "power-speech" adopted by militant groups (e.g. JKLF, MNLF/MILF, HAJY).
09/25/2025 - Disc 12 (1) Shalimar's real name is Noman Noman. Around two-thirds through, it dawned on me how Noman is a play on "No Man." That's symbolic in several respects—Noman Noman is "no man" plural. - As an anonymous assassin, "no man" both in terms of being inhuman, as well as being invisible—or even death personified. - As a cuckold, "no man" in terms of being emasculated. - As a family name, "no man" as in being no more.
09/30/2025 - Disc 13 (1) Re: Assassin, Sergeant Hilliker: "... we'll get him, ma'am, don't doubt it, this isn't Indian country, it's ours." - Interesting to say to a woman named India, of Indian parentage, for whom an Indian connection was always denied. - Interesting to say about an Indian assassin, who is indeed far from home and without kin nor refuge (unlike the rapist Gegroo brothers, who found sanctuary and escaped capture).
10/06/2025 - Disc 14 (1) "[Kashmira's] mother had stepped toward love, defying convention, and it had cost her dearly." - Kashmira (FKA India) has seemingly been sold a bill of goods—I have no clue what "love" Boonyi stepped toward. - With Shalimar the Clown, sure, marrying a Muslim defied Hindu convention, but it wasn't her choice and she left him as soon as she could. - With Max, she was just his local sugar baby. No love there.
10/07/2025 - Disc 15 (1) It's interesting how magical realism factors into the story: starting totally absent, it slowly crescendos—like a frog in boiling water—to a beyond-doubt event at the end. - Mostly, it involves prophecy and telepathic intrusion—Boonyi, Kashmira and Shalimar the Clown could have really used some occlumency lessons! (2) In sum: the book strives for maximum context, but spends too much time lost in the weeds. (hide spoiler)]...more
(A-) 80% | Very Good Notes: Where exercise meets homicide, shaming causes death: bad attitudes and harmful food mean someone's final breath.
*Progress u(A-) 80% | Very Good Notes: Where exercise meets homicide, shaming causes death: bad attitudes and harmful food mean someone's final breath.
(A-) 82% | Very Good Notes: A tragic tale of film travails (of mercy by the end), where loss of clout and rife self-doubt makes monsters out of men.
*Pr(A-) 82% | Very Good Notes: A tragic tale of film travails (of mercy by the end), where loss of clout and rife self-doubt makes monsters out of men.
(B+) 79% | Good Notes: Review pending re-read. Individual reviews for included issues can be found here: - Hyde Street #1 - Hyde [image] Review to come...
(B+) 77% | Good Notes: British-quaint, no theme restraint (confections, cars and crime), a kiddish tone with adult bones, distinctly of its time.
*Check(B+) 77% | Good Notes: British-quaint, no theme restraint (confections, cars and crime), a kiddish tone with adult bones, distinctly of its time.
*Check out progress updates for detailed commentary: (view spoiler)[
Progress updates:
05/18/2025 - Preamble [image] (1) This is one of those cases where the film's far more popular but I've only ever read the book. - Otherwise I'd have outfitted these updates with GIFs, as is my wont. Though I hear the film's a big departure from the source material, and so it wouldn't really fit. (2) This is narrated by David Tennant, who I only know by reputation. - I've never seen "Doctor Who."
05/21/2025 - Chapters 1–5 [image] (1) This really gets into the weeds with automotive jargon. - I can only assume society, Britain specifically, was more car-literate in the '60s. (2) "Smart [car] salesmen offered Commander and Mrs. Pott cigarettes and Jeremy and Jemima sweets just to try and tempt them to buy." - I'm pleasantly surprised the cigarettes bit isn't edited out. I'm anti modern meddling.
05/23/2025 (1) - Chapters 6–8 [image] (1) I'm struck how ominous the end-of-chapter music has become. - It's not like anyone's died, they're just doing a bit of spelunking in France. (2) The children call their mother "Mimsie" again. I'd thought the first time may have been a typo but I guess it's deliberate. - Odd, especially in this very proper pre-hippie/postwar era. - Possibly she's their stepmother?
05/23/2025 (2) - Chapters 9–12 [image] (1) So, cheerful music plays when the kids are kidnapped? - This is where ominous music is actually appropriate. (2) We end with a fudge recipe, which the book calls "fooj." - I wonder if this is the inspiration for the cookie recipe at the back of the Green Lantern Christmas comic I read in December. - I read a lot of books, and I've only ever seen it the two times.
05/23/2025 (3) - Bonus Material and Final Thoughts [image] (1) We end with a 4-minute interview with David Tennant. - Nothing noteworthy, just musings and making connections to the James Bond books. (2) To me, this feels distinctly of its time. - Children's books today would never have gunfire nor explain how to rig an explosion. - Complex vocabulary aside, this is also oddly instructive on matters of mechanical engineering. (hide spoiler)]...more
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