I picked up the book, mainly due to its premise, which read –
Inspired by the Cervantes classic, Sam DuChamp, mediocre writer of spy thrillers, creates Quichotte, a courtly, addled salesman obsessed with television, who falls in impossible love with a TV star. Together with his (imaginary) son Sancho, Quichotte sets off on a picaresque quest across America to prove himself worthy of her hand, gallantly braving the tragicomic perils of an age where “Anything-Can-Happen”. Meanwhile his creator, in a midlife crisis, has equally urgent challenges of his own.
Also, slightly because of the name attached to it, one I’d heard a few times already due to being a literature student. Still, having never read any of Rushdie’s previous works and having only a vague idea about the piece of literature which it boldly takes inspiration from, I was jumping into the unknown, and can quite happily say that the book has been a worthy discovery.
I had a difficult time understanding this text initially, not that the storyline was difficult to follow or in any way convoluted, but the world created by Rushdie is in a way, senseless. Yet that doesn’t strike out as an oddity but serves to be an important cog in Rushdie’s ingenious and imaginative worldbuilding in the novel, since the novel can be quite clearly described as an attempt at finding meaning in today’s meaningless world. Rushdie does this in some part absurdist, some part surrealist, and a whole lot of meta style.
Indeed, the story is amusingly self-aware. To sum up the plot in a sentence, it is about a writer who is himself in the midst of writing a new novel. It is self-aware to an extent that it sometimes feels as if the novel you’re reading is being written as you’re reading along. The narrator keeps referring back to bits of information that has come before in the text, and keeps foretelling events or scenarios that are to play out in the future. Rushdie himself explains the various contents of his story through his characters –
“ He talked about wanting to take on the destructive, mind-numbing junk culture of his time just as Cervantes had gone to war with the junk culture of his own age. He said he was trying also to write about impossible, obsessional love, father-son relationships, sibling quarrels, and yes, unforgivable things; about Indian immigrants, racism toward them, crooks among them; about cyber-spies, science fiction, the intertwining of fictional and “real” realities, the death of the author, the end of the world. He told her he wanted to incorporate elements of the parodic, and of satire and pastiche. ……. And it’s about opioid addiction, too, he added. ”
That accurately sums up all of what you can look forward to in the novel and Rushdie’s intention with this text. He also iterates his reason for taking inspiration from Cervantes and the role it plays in the novel –
“ He tried to explain the picaresque tradition, its episodic nature, and how the episodes of such a work could encompass many manners, high and low, fabulist and commonplace, how it could be at once parodic and original, and so through its metamorphic roguery it could demonstrate and seek to encompass the multiplicity of human life. ”
Best explained by the writer himself, within the same text. Pretty meta, right?
All this ‘inner’ information that is provided to you in between the lines, alienates you more than it allows you to sympathize with the characters, which is a good thing since this Brechtian style of writing allows Rushdie to bring forth his own socio-political commentary on the aforementioned issues. But what prevents the narrative from being preachy and didactic, and elevating the text in turn is how Rushdie explores and carries us through his character’s own line of thought, by deconstructing reality and understanding the world anew, through his characters, using elements of fantasy, absurdism and surrealism in the process. Although, he doesn’t do this every time there’s a socio-political statement made, and leaves some questions unanswered, which can be seen as a drawback of the book.
A helpful reference point that helped me make sense of the world in this story, is the film Sorry To Bother You written and directed by Boots Riley- which is surrealist, humorous and poignantly talks about human relationships, which can also be described of this novel. Even though the plotlines and characters are completely different, it does help to sense the tone. Yet, both the works of art, share one character – America. As Quichotte along with his “companion” Sancho, journeys throughout the country, they more or less interact with the land like it’s a character in itself. We meet America’s politics, culture, art, history (especially race history), the different kinds of people and groups it inhabits, and there’s even a mention of sports. The novel is full of reference points, and nearly everything ranging from Cervantes himself, to Robert M.Pirsig is mentioned. Characters and plot-points are introduced which can be paralleled to their real life counterparts. All of this fits the bill since the novel in its own way serves as an indictment on the role of pop culture in modern-day society.
He explores various aspects of the human condition, such as how television shapes our worldview and how language can a play a key role in our relationship with a place. The novel dissects the modern world, in order to find the truth, through fiction, a struggle echoed by some of the characters in the narrative itself. This creates an enthralling journey in the form of a book which has humor, sentiments, philosophy, as well as social commentary and makes for a highly original and imaginative reading experience.
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