tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-327094740848639572.post7281916679076514348..comments2024-01-23T01:55:31.211-08:00Comments on Filmi~Contrast: Fourths: Language, Moondram Pirai, Rushdie, Ram-LakhanMiranda http://www.blogger.com/profile/13418800569507952654noreply@blogger.comBlogger4125tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-327094740848639572.post-432730838684994412019-12-04T03:48:31.905-08:002019-12-04T03:48:31.905-08:00Nice post! This is a very nice blog that I will de...Nice post! This is a very nice blog that I will definitively come back to more times this year! Thanks for informative post. <a title="how to allocate more ram to minecraft" href="https://minecraftreligion.com/how-to-allocate-more-ram-to-minecraft/" rel="nofollow">how to allocate more ram to minecraft</a><br />seohttps://www.blogger.com/profile/04949241886594542110noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-327094740848639572.post-87715791765444711322014-12-19T17:32:43.268-08:002014-12-19T17:32:43.268-08:00Silverambrosia,
This is such a lovely comment/repl...Silverambrosia,<br />This is such a lovely comment/reply, I'm sorry it took me so long to respond. I wanted to give you a proportional response, and I ended up getting so caught up in end of semester stuff I didn't get around to it. This is still less than I wanted to say, but hopefully it addresses a few of your excellent thoughts. <br /><br />This cracked me up. "Who freakin cares when most of the characters are alone through their own persistent perversity."<br /><br />I agree with so much of what you said, even if I haven't read enough of Marquez to know the specifics, I have read enough of these global citizen-y, nihilistic, rule-breaker sorts to be able to relate. I do know that it takes a terrific miss of the mark in fiction to make me have SO much to say. That's really one of the most frustrating things, in the end, about reading Rushdie and Marquez. So much talent, so much gift of imagination, and so little faith in humanity. These writers take joy in creating hyper-complex works that never breathe--because they aren't interested in life. They're interested in complexity. It's not the same thing, in my opinion. And it seems they fail to breathe life into us, either. "I don’t think I’m taking the novel too literally when I say that many of the characters were positively perverse, and meant absolutely nothing to me." <br /><br />Also, as you said, these novels stem from a "central conceit." I love that phrase. It's not that modern writers shouldn't innovate. Kazuo Ishiguro does, and I care about the new things that peek through a format I didn't expect. And the Victorian novel is not the only thing of worth. Nor are all interwar novels fun and games to read. Henry James' work is complex and a little soulless, in my experience, for all it's heady heights of intellectual exploration. D.H. Lawrence makes me laugh. Sometimes long novels can never justify themselves to me, which is why I choose to read classic children's fiction if I'm not in the mood for headache. <br /><br />Still, I do think there's something broken in these postmodern novels or their novelists. Either that, or there's something very ancient in some of us that refuses to move forward. I'm ok with that ... mostly because I can't do anything about it ;) <br />Miranda https://www.blogger.com/profile/13418800569507952654noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-327094740848639572.post-24604218673482364442014-12-04T13:01:33.117-08:002014-12-04T13:01:33.117-08:00Infact I would say that Rushdie’s characters are m...Infact I would say that Rushdie’s characters are more palatable than Marquez’s. His depictions of them and their actions are also tempered with humour. That ‘tendency towards manipulating protagonists into implausible choices for the sake of superimposing a point’ is perhaps most pronounced in Midnight’s Children, but it’s not that strong in several of Rushdie’s other novels. Most of Marquez’s characters (at least in 100 years of Solitude) however, are governed *solely* by their caprices; there is no other driving force, no internal struggle, no conflict; they exhibit no capacity for introspection. They operate on this completely amoral plane, and are basically just metaphors or sort of figurines placed on the author’s canvas to repeatedly drive home his central conceit. The novel is about solitude and the different forms it assumes, and conditions in which it manifest itself, but who freakin cares when most of the characters are alone through their own persistent perversity. Both of these novels I only read two or three years ago, yet I can scarcely remember a thing about either of them (that’s how limited their impact was on me). I was able to draw on examples from Marquez’s novel because I at least retain email exchanges on it, with the friend who gushingly recommended it to me. <br /><br />About origins, I can't remember Rushdie's exact position on it, and what I made of it. Broadly speaking, origins do matter, but sometimes their influence and formative role can be overstated. Sometimes the malleability of people, their susceptibility to new and diverse influences, and capacity to absorb and change can be underestimated. Perhaps that's what Rushdie took exception to. <br />silverambrosiahttp://www.silverambrosia.wordpress.comnoreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-327094740848639572.post-31708456318984527532014-12-04T12:59:14.984-08:002014-12-04T12:59:14.984-08:00Yay!...Someone else who doesn't like 'Midn...Yay!...Someone else who doesn't like 'Midnight's Children'. What an interesting post Miranda, and so wonderfully expressed. You've described it so well:<br /><br />"He compares tendencies towards circularity, an oversupply of imagination over humanity, and a tendency towards manipulating protagonists into implausible choices for the sake of superimposing a point... He seeks to overstimulate and to dilute your perception with extraneous detail, all in the name of creating a grand experience, maybe even The Great Subcontinental Experience."<br /><br />Rushdie novel's often make for a very dense and difficult reading. Some of the humour is appealing, but by the end of it you’re sometimes wondering whether it was really worth it. The characters in 'Midnight's Children' didn't stay with me either. It's a conscious stylistic choice on Rushdie's part, but it just all seems so erratic and convoluted. All that detail, mode of employing magical realism,"breaking the laws of space and time and weaving a six dimensional verbal tapestry" as you put it, can ultimately just make for a plodding and cumbersome novel. <br /><br />I actually feel very similarly about Gabriel Marquez's 'One Years of Solitude". Marquez is a lot easier to read than Rushdie, and his prose is a lot more fluid. In terms of aesthetics Marquez is impressive, even for those who are more ambivalent about the underlying content of his novels. But the part of your post I quoted has equal (infact, even greater) application to Marquez. The characters are often eccentric and capricious, and for some readers these very idiosyncrasies and marked traits are what render the characters interesting (I guess the genre is after all magical realism). Even so, I often find Marquez’s characters engaging at only a superficial level. I don’t know if u’ve read the novel but, e.g. all of Colonol Aureliano Buendia's enigmatic appeal, his internal ruminations, the sort of mystique that surrounds him cannot make him truly interesting or compensate for the brutal and bloody callousness he evinced as a militaryman. His ultimate realisation that he has only been fighting for pride, is accompanied by no desire to make amends. Rather, he just very willingly sinks into an extreme state of cynicism and apathy. I don’t think I’m taking the novel too literally when I say that many of the characters were positively perverse, and meant absolutely nothing to me. I think my comment repeatedly wasn't posting coz of the length, will divide it into two parts. <br /> <br />silverambrosiahttp://www.silverambrosia.wordpress.comnoreply@blogger.com