Salman Rushdie seduces Western critics again - this time with Quichotte
Salman Rushdie’s 2012 film, based on his Booker Prize winning Midnight’s Children, was strongly criticized by Western critics. While officially he was only credited with writing the screenplay, The Telegraph, London, and other papers reported that Rushdie was the effective director as well as took complete control over all aspects of the movie’s making.
Criticism of Rushdie’s film:
”The trouble with... Midnight's Children, aside from the fact it is a mess and a muddle, is that it goes on and on and on and on. And on. And on. And then, just when you think it has to be over, it goes on some more.”
Deborah Ross, The Spectator, London.
“The effort to pack an already overstuffed picaresque epic into a film of more than two hours ends up an indigestible stew.”
Rushdie’s “…earnest voiceover over-explains the plot to the point of redundancy. Watching Midnight’s Children often feels like Rushdie is sitting beside you in the cinema, forever grinning hopefully and nudging you in the ribs.”
Robbie Collin, Chief Film Critic, The Telegraph, London
Rushdie appeals to the Western critics with Quichotte
Rushdie’s film was also a box office failure, grossing a total $1.3 million worldwide, according to Box Office Mojo. It grossed $400,000 in the U.K., $300,000 in Germany and $192,000 in the U.S.
The savage criticism of the film, and its box office flop, almost reduced Rushdie to a forgotten figure in Western literary circles. But apparently, knowing that he can hook Western critics into once again praising him lavishly, he comes back with Quichotte, a story of convoluted twists of language and “magical” imagery.
The initial response of the Western reviewers of the book were mixed. For instance, writing in the Financial Times, August 23, 2019, Christian Lorentzen noted that Quichotte was “…an uneven but diverting and occasionally brilliant novel.” https://www.ft.com/content/a4daa050-c4d0-11e9-ae6e-a26d1d0455f4
But Lorentzen, like other Western critics, also fell for Rushdie’s story telling tricks, which Rushdie first used to great effect in his 1981 book Midnight’s Children. Lorentzen writes that Rushdie’s ”…recourse to the grandiose mythic narrative gesture, a tendency that’s marked his work since his breakout second novel Midnight’s Children — winner of the Booker in 1981 and the Booker of Bookers in 2008 — can be both seductive and off-putting.”
On July 23, 2019, Quichotte was among the thirteen books long-listed for the Booker Prize. https://thebookerprizes.com/booker-prize/news/2019-booker-prize-longlist-announced
If you are a fiction writer who also reviews books, can you question the wisdom of the wise folk who select the books for the prestigious prize? If a reviewer criticizes the book, and hence the prize list, what is the chance his or her future book will be chosen by the Booker judges?
Writing in The New York Times book review September 7, 2019, Jeanette Winterson praised Quichotte,: using lots of cliches: “Lovely, unsentimental, heart-affirming . . . a remembrance of what holds our human lives in some equilibrium—a way of feeling and a way of telling. Love and language.” Https://www.nytimes.com/2019/09/03/books/review/quichotte-salman-rushdie.html
By giving the Western critics what they seek in the works of Third World writers, Rushdie has regained his literary stature in the West. Does it matter if readers cannot wade through his convoluted stories? Perhaps the poor reader is not smart enough to figure out the cleverness of Rushdie’s writing.
But whether Quichotte will be remembered ten, or even five, years from now is another matter. Today there are 178 copies of Midnight’s Children on sale on Amazon for $2. Apparently readers, who bought these copies, found it was not worth holding onto them. Hopefully they read the book, unlike this writer who could not get beyond the first few pages when the book came out in 1981.
