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The Midnight’s Children Meander: Week One

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Greetings! Explanations follow. But first, a confession:

I’ve been afraid of Midnight’s Children for three decades. It was assigned to me in college. I never read it. And it has been staring at me balefully ever since. Like, completely full of bale.

So it was that out of fear, I cheated — cracking open the cover ahead of time yesterday afternoon. And hell if the first several pages weren’t a blast. Yes friends, I’m here to report — there was joy, not terror! A few new-to-me words. Tussock! Cheroot! But Rushdie sure can write. I’m not scared now, I’m stoked.

Also, the eerie close-coincidence of timing revealed in the second sentence? Unplanned! Spooky! Delightful! Affirmation, perhaps, that this is the book we’re supposed to be reading right now. And that I was supposed to cheat and start a day early. Phew!

In case you’re embarking on your first Meander, or you’re considering embarking on your first Meander, here’s an explanation in brief of what’s about to happen:

  • Each Sunday I’ll letcha know the weekly target in a post on ye olde blog (see below for an example).
  • By the following Saturday you’ll aim to read that section — usually around 50 pages or so, letting us know you’re meandering by posting a comment on that week’s thread.
  • Are there prizes? Of course there are prizes! Comment each week, finish the book on time, and you’ll win a genuine magnet-sized collectible (it attracts, it adheres, it astonishes).

That’s it. That’s how it works.

Now some people will tell you that you can’t do it. That you aren’t up to the challenge. But if I may offer a modest counterpoint:

I have peered deep into your soul. I’ve witnessed that spark of the eternal that you uniquely possess. And I’m pretty sure you can do this. I like your odds, is what I’m saying. I believe in you and your Meander-ability. And I’m very glad to have your company as we take to the road, reading Midnight’s Children en masse, trying not to trip despite reading and walking at the same time.

So what’s next? The aforementioned target! Let’s meet up at the end of “Hit-the-Spittoon (pg. 52 in the Random House paperback) where, in some confusion, someone’s asking “is he going to be your father?”

And this here? This is the post for comments on MC: Book 1.1 through Book 1.3.

Oh, and also/lastly: A tussock is “a compact tuft especially of grass or sedge.” (Merriam-Webster)

Comments

35 responses to “The Midnight’s Children Meander: Week One”

  1. Clort Avatar
    Clort

    Clort, replorting for duty.

    Reply
  2. Jeff Avatar
    Jeff

    Because I have retreated with my family to a mountain cabin for some much-needed R&R, I’ve been able to blast thru this week’s section. And goodness, am I glad we are reading this! Like Mr. Vortex, I was once upon a time going to tackle a Rushdie book–The Satanic Verses–but then got afraid that I’d be too stupid to understand it. So I put it up on my bookshelf. It has sat there unread for 32 years.

    So I was kinda nervous to join this meander. But knowing this book’s reputation I figgered I’d go along anyway, even if my caveman brain only understood the parts of it with the easier words. But with this first 50 pages I am sold and completely on board and no longer afraid. I actually was enjoying it more with each new page, as I began to really love our narrator, who is peppering his stories with some really fun asides, diversions, boasts etc, even as he relates the stories themselves so vividly. It’s the kind of writing that is so good it makes me mad/jealous, his ability to convey so much at once, comic and tragic, across decades, often within the same paragraph. Just infuriating. In the best possible way.

    I also believe I know exactly when Dan got hooked on this book. It was on Page 29 of the edition mentioned in his post, and it was with this sentence: “In accordance with my lotus’s wishes, I insert, forthwith, a brief paean to Dung.” That’s got Dan all over it.

    Finally, I do not think I am going to be able to unlearn the phrase “hit the spittoon.’

    Reply
  3. Ute Avatar
    Ute

    Hi, super excited to join this new meander/book club/read along and, on top of it, kick it off with comment # 1…

    I was very hesitant before starting the book (not gonna lie to you, Salman Rushdie did not really appeal to me) BUT really, really like what I’ve read so far and feel super engaged with both the story line(s) (which remind me a lot of magical realism and the likes of Gabriel García Márquez and Isabel Allende) as well as Rushdie’s writing.

    Here a few of the expressions and sentences I underlined (either because I liked the words or the ideas expressed):
    … so he returned to find the seemingly immutable order of his family turned upside down, his mother going out to work while his father sat hidden behind the veil which the stroke had dropped over his brain.
    a cyranose
    Follow your nose and you’ll go far.
    To the Ferryman, the bag represent Abroad; it is the alien thing, the invader, progress.
    She can’t read and, like all fish-lovers, dislikes other people knowing anything she doesn’t.
    phantasm of a partitioned woman
    … I spend my time at the great work of preserving. Memory, as well as fruit, is being saved from the corruption of the clocks.
    what-happened-nextism
    optimism epidemic
    …she lived within an invisible fortress of her own making, an ironclad citadel of traditions and certainties.
    war of starvation

    Thanks for organizing and, as always, I’m really looking forward to reading everyone else’s comments!

    Reply
  4. Ute Avatar
    Ute

    Well, while typing my comments some other meanderers typed theirs, too – so actually not kicking this off at all 😉

    Reply
  5. Computilo Avatar
    Computilo

    I love when a phrase hits you between the eyes early in your reading. Page 14 of the Random House Anniversary Edition: “Most of what matters in our lives takes place in our absence: but I seem to have found from somewhere the trick of filling in the gaps of my knowledge, so that everything is in my head, down to the last detail, such as the way the mist seemed to slant across the early morning air…everything, and not just the few clues one stumbles across, for instance, by opening an old tin trunk which should have remained cobwebby and closed.”

    Marvelous start.

    Like most of the commenters thus far, I also have feared reading Rushdie! What’s up with us meandering cowards! I started the Satanic Verses years ago and I used to brag that it was the very first book that I started and couldn’t finish. Based on my reading so far, I look forward to zooming through Midnight’s Children and going back to the Verses. Thanks, Cecil, for this courageous choice of reading!

    Reply
  6. Furiosa Avatar
    Furiosa

    One more Rushdie avoider here, ready to meander. I’ve also meant to read his books for years and…didn’t. This seemed like as good a time to start as any. At first I wasn’t convinced. Then I became interested. Then I arrived at the Paean to Dung, which appealed to my inner overeducated five-year-old. But the moment that made me dog-ear the page and say YES out loud was this sentence on page 47 (Random House anniversary edition): “Sometimes legends make reality, and become more useful than the facts.” It so strongly echoed the iconic line from John Ford’s “The Man Who Shot Liberty Valance”: “When the legend becomes fact, print the legend.” Then a page or two later, a seemingly minor character comes stumbling home from the movies where he saw “an eastern Western.” Revisionist legends that tell the truth. I’m all in and dying to know if “the fat soft cowardly plumpie” and “bad poet” is indeed going to be our narrator’s father.

    Reply
  7. Guzmán Avatar
    Guzmán

    Hi, I am here too! Attempted the first section on a paper copy but was much too distracted by words I don’t know, so shifted to Kindle, to use the Wikipedia/dictionary option.

    Really enjoying this, the first chapters reminded me of Latin American magic realist authors, like Allende (Isabel). Love family sagas!

    Reply
  8. Computilo Avatar
    Computilo

    Going out on a limb here, but how about “Who Let the Dogs Out?” By Baja Men to kick off the playlist?

    Reply
  9. blue_f Avatar
    blue_f

    Looks like we’re off to a good start. 😊

    Reply
  10. Susannah Avatar
    Susannah

    I’m really enjoying this book so far! The parts describing the narrator’s relationship with Tai were some of my favorites.

    Reply
  11. Amanda Avatar
    Amanda

    hahahahaaha

    Reply
  12. Michael B. Avatar
    Michael B.

    I have enjoyed the first 52 of the book. It could only have been written by someone who grew up in a Muslim family, on the Indian Sub Continent.
    No wonder that a “Fatwa” (Death warrant) was issued against him, but why did it take until he wrote Satanic Verses?

    Reply
  13. So-Called Bill Avatar
    So-Called Bill

    I was finding this book insufferable at first and if reading on my own may well have abandoned it. But I have a Deathmarch/Meander track record to defend so stuck with it, and things are getting better. Quite a few funny moments along the way, and I am often reminded of “The Life and Opinions of Tristram Shandy, Gentleman,” of which yon Wikipedia says: “As its title suggests, the book is ostensibly Tristram’s narration of his life story. But it is one of the central jokes of the novel that he cannot explain anything simply, that he must make explanatory diversions to add context and colour to his tale, to the extent that Tristram’s own birth is not even reached until Volume III.”

    Reply
  14. Cecil Vortex Avatar
    Cecil Vortex

    Here’s a historic quirk that has me confused. The book (p. 31 in the random house) talks of the April 7 Hartal — the protest against the British.

    The web says the Hartal was April 6. Does any one spot the reason for the discrepancy that I’m missing?

    Thanks!
    -Cecil

    Reply
  15. Willem Avatar
    Willem

    I also thought “uh oh, might have to meander away from this meander” when I started, even though I was impressed with his writing. Happily I am now committed to putting one foot slowly in front of the other. The whole “doc through sheet” w/ sheet reappearing as ghost, the Tai stuff, and Padma cajoling him to get on with the time-based narrative kept me engaged.

    Reply
  16. Willem Avatar
    Willem

    Thinking it started on April 6 and the narrator is just noting that here we are on April 7 and shops are closed etc….

    He got the Jallianwala Bagh massacre date right, and the # of rounds fired. Horrific, 379 dead…

    https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jallianwala_Bagh_massacre

    Reply
  17. Amanda Avatar
    Amanda

    Here we go! I read Midnight’s Children when I was an adolescent punk, and opening it again many years later found myself once more buffeted by its maximalism. I noticed more than one list in these pages where the narrator does away with serial commas; it seems even grammatically the text avoids temporality and succession, instead aiming to have all things (even a list of nouns) happen always in a big, combustive quantum moment of past present future. This seemed about right:

    “As a young man, he had shared a room with a painter whose paintings had grown larger and larger as he tried to get the whole of life into his art. ‘Look at me,”‘he said before he killed himself, ‘I wanted to be a miniaturist and I’ve got elephantiasis instead!’”

    This made me think of Synecdoche, New York, which I happened to watch last night. If you haven’t seen it, the protagonist is a hypochondriacal director who’s spending his MacArthur Genius Grant winnings on a stage play featuring hundreds of actors that fills an airplane hangar — effectively trying to reproduce all of life in art. Meanwhile, he’s haunted by the international success of his estranged wife who paints in miniature. Can’t make this stuff up!

    And for my first playlist nomination, it’s gotta be “After Midnight” by the inimitable JJ Cale.

    Reply
  18. Jim Compton Avatar
    Jim Compton

    Maybe he got the date wrong and his editor failed to correct it?

    Reply
  19. Alyssa Avatar
    Alyssa

    Same here on all accounts. The first fifteen pages were rough going, especially after a summer reading diet that’s consisted mainly of plot-driven thrillers, the beachiest of beach reads. But I’d like to call more on the under-utilized English major part of my brain, and a group read is a good way to tackle something challenging. And I did start to enjoy the book more, after I got into the topsy-turvy and disjointed rhythm of it all (or non-rhythm. maybe). Onward!

    Reply
  20. Peaseblossom Avatar
    Peaseblossom

    I’m hooked.

    “…While I sit like an empty pickle-jar in a pool of Anglepoised light, visited by this vision of my grandfather sixty-three years ago, which demands to be recorded, filling my nostrils with the acrid stench of his mother’s embarrassment which has brought her out in boils, with the vinegary force of Aadam Aziz’s determination to establish a practice so successful that she’ll never have to return to the gem-stone-shop, with the blind mustiness of a big shadowy house in which the young Doctor stands, ill-at-ease, before a painting of a plain girl with lively eyes and a stag transfixed behind her on the horizon, speared by a dart from her bow.”

    Now that’s a sentence!

    It’s funny that Computilo expounded on the very next sentence–the one that struck me as well. Perhaps that’s why we’re friends, eh Computilo?

    And for my addition to the Playlist, I select Eric Clapton’s “After Midnight” since I think Rushdie is gonna let it all hang down.

    Reply
  21. Mike M. Avatar
    Mike M.

    Liking the book so far — and agree with SB that the relationship with Tai is super interesting.

    Very glad about the Intense nasal focus in the opening chapters — hope that lasts.

    Reply
  22. drah Avatar
    drah

    I am on the trail but behind all of you. hopefully catching up soon.

    Reply
  23. Just KT Avatar
    Just KT

    It did take a moment to catch on to the cadence of the writing, but now I’m hooked. Particularly loving the women we’re getting to meet, and Rushdie’s ability to bring them to life with such complexity and affection in so few pages. I’m a little afraid of Naseem, enamored by Padma…and really wishing I could spend some time in each of their kitchens.

    Reply
  24. Susan C Avatar
    Susan C

    Placeholder until Comcast restores my internet service—no way I’m typing more than this on my phone.

    Reply
  25. Itto Ogami Avatar
    Itto Ogami

    Really enjoying my first Rushdie book, and a great Meander to start.

    Repeated piercing of fourth wall with Padma are delightful, especially that the first extended breakage dealt with dung. Ode to dung. “It stands to reason that dung was equally valuable for the humans making the transition from hunter-gatherers to settlements in the Neolithic Middle East around 12,000 years ago, says Dr. Shira Gur-Arieh, an archaeologist at Pompeu Fabra University in Barcelona, Spain.” Yes, ode to dung.

    Shifting, there are loads of Indian culinary references beyond subjects involving cooking/meals, and hope that continues.

    Like fellow Meanderer Computilo, was very struck by the statement, “Most of what matters in our lives takes place in our absence.” Made me ponder our closest relations, like children, and how they evolve almost entirely in our (parental) absence. And how we are affected (transformed) by what occurs out of sight and other senses. Like sentient clay shaped by ethereal forces.

    Reply
  26. Barbara B Avatar
    Barbara B

    I have started the book! I meander!

    Reply
  27. Jennifer E Avatar
    Jennifer E

    Thanks for picking this book as I have always felt like I should read Rushdie but have never gotten around to it. The imagery is vivid and I’m enjoying imagining the scenes that Rushdie describes. I’ve been to India but not to Kashmir and it looks like it will be off limits indefinitely so enjoyed this first section.

    Reply
  28. Noodle Avatar
    Noodle

    Such interesting comments! The only thing that surprises me a bit is that no one seems to have called out that, for our Meander, this is a perfect book, since it meanders so much in time and place itself.

    Reply
  29. Susan C Avatar
    Susan C

    A wonderful start! I am pondering the Meta-Meander of 2020, starting with the white noise of DeLillo (“And this is where we wait together, regardless of age, our carts stocked with brightly colored goods.”), on to the tight control and intricate puzzle of Atwood (“Ten days after the war ended, my sister Laura drove a car off a bridge.”) to the exuberance of Rushdie (“And there are so many stories to tell, too many, such an excess of intertwined lives events miracles places rumors, so dense a commingling of the probable and the mundane!”). Thank you Cecil, and all of the rest of you, for what you bring to the tale.

    Reply
  30. pete Avatar
    pete

    I am surprised by how many terms I have had to learn to get the references but it’s worth the work. I am also grateful for the influence of Padma and her advocacy of “the world of liner narrative, the universe of what-happened-next.”

    Reply
  31. Lydia Avatar
    Lydia

    I am too late for this week – but I will catch up next week. And I am very much looking forward to it. Even more after reading all your thoughts.

    Reply
  32. Clort Avatar
    Clort

    My first response was ‘who needs another folklore inflected mystically charged family generational chronicle?’ My second response was, ‘I do, baba, me!’ So I’m in, and enjoying the inventive alertness of the speaker and the way that in the act of reading lets you into a sense of India and its recent history and its weather and its spices. It’s feeling to me like one of those books that ends up giving you the sense of a place.

    Reply
  33. Fiona Trayler Avatar
    Fiona Trayler

    Thanks for the inclusion!! This book is bringing back memories of conversations with my Mammy, when I was in my mid-teens!

    My parents spent 3 weeks in India, one of their stopping points was Srinigar, in the Kashmir region… and stayed on a houseboat. So it’s super interesting to see Salman mention “…. apart from the Englishmen’s houseboat on the lake”. I can still see her pouring over the old photo album. Good old memories!

    Reply
  34. Eric Wullenbaecker Avatar
    Eric Wullenbaecker

    Starting tonight and will catch up by tomorrow hopefully :). I’m excited, I spent a month doing yoga teacher training in India, so this book will bring back some memories.

    Reply
  35. Realzorro Avatar
    Realzorro

    I’m behind but loving it and making good catchup time. The nose. The sheet w the hole in it – sexy,funny,romantic,quirky. Really enjoying it so far. Growing sense of foreboding after the Kashmiri demonstration is shot down… seems like he’s putting a human face on the tragedy to come with all the little small town characters and foibles. Love it!

    Reply

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