opfiheart.blogg.se

Plus, when you’re done, if you pronounce it correctly, you can tell friends you’ve read “Quixote.At first blush Quichotte, Salman Rushdie‘s newest novel, ( Penguin Random/House) would seem to be a simple retelling of Cervantes’ Don Quixote. If you haven’t read him before, this is a good book to start with - it’s fabulist and funny while revealing a lot about the world we live in. … the true story is there’s no true story anymore.”įortunately, there are true storytellers, and Rushdie is near the top of that list. How’s a young person supposed to tell them apart? … Every show on every network tells you the same thing: based upon a true story.

Garbage out there, and great stuff out there, too, and they both coexist at the same level of reality, both give off the same air of authority. He might be satirizing America’s obsession with celebrities, but there’s no doubt Rushdie has paid attention to the trend.Ĭonsider this from Sancho, this time in an inner monologue: “A zillion channels and nothing to hold them together. The book is crammed with pop culture references like that. “No great quest, my boy, was ever achieved except by those with faith” - Sancho retorts: “But if faith is all you’ve got, you’re going to lose out to the guy with the moves and the good looks.” When Quichotte uses the lessons of “The Bachelorette” to help plan his pursuit of Salma R. As in Cervantes’ novel, Sancho is the pragmatist to his father’s idealist. Rushdie even gives Quichotte his own Sancho, dreamed to life while witnessing the Perseids meteor shower near Devils Tower in Wyoming. is addicted to painkillers, and Quichotte was a traveling pharmaceutical salesman before embarking on his quest. He lives in the present, or what Rushdie calls the age of “Anything-Can-Happen,” a time when it “was no longer possible to predict the weather, or the likelihood of war, or the outcome of elections.” Miss Salma R. Quichotte is introduced as a 70-year-old man of “retreating mental powers” suffering from brain damage caused by watching too much television. Throughout, Rushdie offers his hallmark social criticism.

The two stories bounce off each other in delightful ways, often matching each other character-for-character before finally interweaving in a blockbuster ending that feels earned, if not quite real. And the man writing his story, pen name Sam DuChamp, who has written only “modestly (un)successful” spy novels until he conceives Quichotte.Quichotte’s quest to meet and live happily ever after with Miss Salma R., the aforementioned talk-show host of Indian origin.