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Salman Rushdie, the Beauty of Death
SALMAN RUSHDIE — QUICHOTTE – 2020
We must, first of all, eliminate what Salman Rushdie is trying to trap us into. The central character in the book is a writer of thrillers who writes under a penname, Marcel DuChamp which is the name of a French artist of long ago in the 20th century who is so famous for his male urinal seen as a work of art, generally shown flat on its back which is at least disorienting. This here thriller writer Marcel DuChamp is originally from Mumbai with quite a few people in his family and Salman Rushdie would like us to believe this Ismail Smile, aka Marcel DuChamp is a personification of Salman Rushdie himself. He heavily insists on the biography that is in many ways similar to his own. If we reduced this novel to this, we would just be unable to understand what this novel stands for, though I don’t think it stands, at least not stand up. It rather kneels on a praying carpet and prays us to believe this is true. But it is not. By principle and essence of literature. Even in a direct autobiography, the person represented in a work of fiction is not the author of the work of fiction but only a character, and this fictional author wants us to believe what he says about himself is true. But it can be just a bunch or a cluster of lies. If we let ourselves be invaded by the idea this fictional author is the real author, then the book would only be his autobiography, and even so, this autobiographical vision of the real author would only be a fictional self-justifying ranting and raving about himself in the most narcissistic way, like all autobiographies are. Literature does not tell the truth about anything but only describes fictional situations and characters, even and especially when it pretends the reverse.
This being eliminated we can now try to understand what this complicated, a lot more than complex, work of fiction is telling us and how important it is for our enjoyment and enlightenment. There is a big Islamic background all the time but it is always perceived by the characters as something that is being betrayed page after page, even, and especially, when the characters protest too much, just like the lady of some…
