Quichotte

Quichotte (French: key-SHOT) is Salman Rushdie's nod to Don Quixote. I've been meaning to get around to DQ for some years, but haven't quite gotten there yet. So I may have missed some important connections; that's okay, this book needs to stand on its own, right? Also, it may be worth mentioning that I haven't had the best relationship with Rushdie. He's a Booker Prize darling, so I thought I'd love his work, but Midnight's Children, his most acclaimed work, bored me to no end. Keep in mind that I've now only read two Rushdie novels, so I'm far from familiar with the breadth of his work, but frankly Rushdie reminds me of a more imaginative Philip Roth or John Irving. Certainly, they have their readership, but I'm not a fan of the meandering prose and the leering narrative.

I liked Quichotte more than I'd anticipated I would. I'd heard fans of the author say this was certainly not his best work, and since I didn't find his “best work” all that appealing, I thought this would likely be terrible. Rushdie lets his imagination run away in this metafictional romp, and that provided some level of enjoyment. Also, unlike Midnight's Children, I found the story and the characters entertaining enough to stay mildly invested. The story within a story within a story was crafted well and showed significant intelligence and creativity.

And yet it feels like this story tries too hard to be relevant and humorous. The level of absurdity reaches epic proportions from time to time. There's a scene involving the transformation of people into humanoid mastodons. Because it appeared out of nowhere, I had to read this chapter twice to make sure I hadn't misunderstood. I'm sure this scene is meant to highlight the continued existence of mob mentality akin to our prehistoric human nature or some junk. I don't know—briefcase-totting mastodons are probably best left to the likes of Murakami.

My overall feelings of Quichotte is that the novel is wildly imaginative, but lacks heart. There is what seems to be an attempt to find the pulse of “America” in these pages, an effort which involves highlighting multiple isolated events of the same ilk, ie, the prejudice and hatred of America. Rushdie displays an extensive familiarity with the America that bears the hood of hatred, but he doesn't breathe life into the dark forces, nor into those who stand in opposition. In a story about the creation of characters, Rushdie stops short of creating a soul. It's an entertaining story at its best moments, but Quichotte fails to deliver either magic or profundity.

As I just finished Don Quixote, I had to read this book. I've only read two other books by Rushdie: his children's books Haroun and the Sea of Stories (loved) and Luka and the Fire of Life (hated). Although I enjoyed some parts of Quichotte, on the whole it did not come together for me. Rushdie's writing was a mishmash of cliches, quotations, and derivative elements, meant no doubt as parody and homage, but lacking a distinctive “music” of its own. The dissolution of the world of the novel in the end paralleled the dissolution of any caring I had developed for the characters, as the whole scenario just became sillier and more bizarre. Maybe that was the point, but it left me feeling cheated rather than exhilarated.
Along the way I thought often of Neil Gaiman and Terry Pratchett, who have played similar kinds of games with words, language, and literature, but have done it so much better. Either of them would be more deserving of the Booker Prize, in my opinion.