Word: rushdieã
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Dates: during 2001-2001
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These themes have been treated elsewhere—most flamboyantly, by Salman Rushdie in East, West and The Satanic Verses. In Naipaul’s younger days, he had a sense of humor as sharp as Rushdie??s, but always muted by wry restraint. By now this restraint has entirely choked away the humor in Naipaul’s fiction, as well as much of the dark gravity that made Naipaul’s post-comic fiction so attractive. The final section, with its political uncertainty and sense of alienation, faintly resembles a low-key A Bend...
...blurbs that accompany the novel describe this it as Rushdie??s first “American” novel. Certainly the novel is preoccupied with America, and the frequent rants about America’s failings further blur the distinction between Solanka and Rushdie: “Who let Charlton Heston out of his cage and then wondered why children were getting killed at school?” The novel brims with Rushdie??s acerbic wit, particularly in his portrayal of an ever-more wealthy and jaded America and its accoutrements. He name drops with alarming...
...godless homosexual rapist of your mother’s pet goat”). Some of these seem to go astray: Perry Pincus, seducer of Eng Lit. celebs and “unashamed sexual butterfly” is presumably a (biting) portrayal of an actual acquaintance of Rushdie??s, though for those of us outside the know, she is fairly superfluous. Although Rushdie??s New York is peopled with minutely observed passersby, victims and perpetrators of infidelity and callousness, all of whom are fuel for Solanka’s and their own pervading fury, at times they...
Rushdie has been accused of drawing his female characters in less than three dimension, and it is difficult to dismiss the allegation in this book. The book is dedicated to Rushdie??s new partner, and it largely turns on her fictional alter-ego, Neela, the woman who finally manages to rescue Solanka from his fury. Yet there is something unsatisfying in her portrayal. She is characterized in terms of her beauty, which Rushdie is forced to describe in terms of its (hazardous) effects on her surroundings: arrested traffic, collisions with lamp posts and occasional tears. But the reader...
Fury is a hugely personal work: a tribute to Rushdie??s newfound love, and to his love for his children, an excoriation of the excesses and breakneck speed of 21st century America, and a story of redemption and ultimate healing. Expatriates in America will find much to sympathize with; Americans may find themselves on the defensive. Not everyone will identify with the fury that Rushdie ascribes to his characters and portrays in their world, and the cynics may have difficulty believing in the redemptive power of love. This is as it should be. All of Rushdie?...