Major Twentieth
and Twenty-First Century Writers
Contemporary Global Literature
Professor Julia Keefer, Ph.D., julia.keefer@nyu.edu
Forbidden Fruits/Censored Literature!
Religion
,
Science
Sex
and State
The Biological Rhythms of Drama
Notes on Close Textual Analysis
Dramatic Structure
Aristotle's
Poetics
Form and
Formula
Twentieth
Century Literature
Keefer Poetry Site
Hope DeVenuto's Site
Poetry Site designed by Vilma Perusina: Haikus, Friendship and Multicultural
Chaos (poetry
by Keefer's student Michael Gatlin)
Notes on Literature and Terrorism
Objectives
To foster a love of great literature
To sharpen skills for close textual analysis
To develop oral communication and advocacy skills for mock trials
To experience literature from the inside, empathizing with the courageous writer who rebelled against social norms
To study the ethical, religious, intellectual, and sexual dynamics of a given society to determine why they would find certain fiction offensive
To understand and respect cultural differences and diversity
Requirements and Grading:
40% for mock trials, 20 for defense, 20 for prosecution, including preparation and revised papers
60% attendance and participation, close textual analysis of two works, and research progress report.
Reading List
(You must buy and read all books, but you only have to do in-depth analysis, research, and close reading of two books of your choice, related to your mock trials)
Sex and Gender Cluster
God Dies by the Nile and The Hidden Face of Eve by Nawal el Saadawi
Lady Chatterly's Lover by D.H. Lawrence
Lolita by Vladimir Nabakov and Reading Lolita in Tehran
Memoirs of my Melancholy Whores by Gabriel Garcia Marquez
Religion Cluster
The Da Vinci Code by Dan Brown
The Last Temptation of Christ by Nikos Kazantzakis
Children of Gebelaawi by Naguib Mahfouz
Satanic Verses by Salman Rushdie
My Name is Red by Orhan Pamuk
Language Cluster
How to Survive as an Adjunct Professor by Wrestling by Julia Keefer
Ulysses by James Joyce
Political Cluster
Wild Thorns by Sahar Khalifeh
I Saw Ramallah by Marwan Barghouti
This Blinding Absence of Light and/or The Sand Child by Tahar ben Jalloun
Balzac and the Little Chinese Seamstress by Dai Sijie
Red Azalea by Anchee Min
Soul Mountain by Gao Xi Jiang
Anthem by Ayn Rand
Mock Trials
Claim: That the study of censored literature can promote cross-cultural understanding by sharing our deepest fears and anxieties, and exploring the taboos of religion, sex, politics and society.
Counterclaim: That we need sober truth and civility not the fabricated illusory truth of fiction. Also when countries change, like Israel , Germany etc, it is best not to dwell on their past transgressions.
Authors and Crimes
N.B. For the sake of argument, some of these conflicts occurred only in a specific country at a specific time, some books were just condemned unofficially by groups, and some books would theoretically be condemned by others because of what they reveal or represent, while some writers were simply jailed because of what they did or didn't do.
Dan Brown: Angered the Vatican and the Christian Right
Nikos Kazantzakis: Condemned for humanizing Christ
Naguib Mahfouz: Criticized for humanizing all the Prophets, but it was Mohammad, the hashish-smoking womanizer, that irritated the Islamists who later tried to kill him
Sahar Khalifeh and Marwan Bargouti: Irritated Israel by defending Palestine
Tahar ben Jalloun: Irritated the Moroccan monarchy by telling the truth about the jails
Orhan Pamuk: Angered the Saudis by writing about aesthetic Islam
Vladimir Nabakov: Humiliated everyone by writing about child molestation, and forbidden sex but four American publishers refused his work because it was too linguistically complex
D.H.Lawrence: Banned by England and America for being too sexually explicit
Gabriel Garcia Marquez: Forbidden sexual fantasies
Gao Xi Jiang: Banished from China and forced to censor his own books
Anchee Min: Spoke against Mao and Madame Mao
James Joyce: Censored by everyone until they decided he was a genius. Nowadays Ulysses would never be accepted by a New York publisher because it is too intellectual and linguistically inaccessible.
Ayn Rand: Banned by Soviet Union for promoting individualism and capitalism
Salman Rushdie: Everyone is still trying to kill him for apostasy.
Nawal el Saadawi: Jailed in Egypt for condemning clitorectomies, standing up for women's rights, questioning the way men practice religion in Egypt
Oscar Wilde: Jailed for homosexuality
Defenders : How did it feel to write this book? How did you research it, plummet or rape yourself, your world and your imagination? Who is your imaginary reader? Why did you write this book? How long did it take? How conscious were you of aesthetic considerations such as story, structure, narrative style, characterization, voice, description, linguistic style? What is the relationship between fiction and non-fiction? Did you knowingly write to irritate authorities, to get attention or because this is how you felt? Did you ever consider a more benign way of saying the same thing? How do your political, religious and sexual views differ from your narrator? Do you want to die for this book? What is more important to you:this book or your life?
Societies or Groups of People:
Saudi Arabia
Iran under the mullahs
China under Mao's Regime
Soviet Union
Egypt , but particularly the Islamic militants such as Sheikh Omar Abdul Rahman or Anwar Sadat
Moroccan Monarchy, especially Hassan II
Nazi Germany
America , Christian Right
American Military
but also New York anti-intellectual literary agents
Britain
The Vatican
Research country's POV and what they hate most in the book.
Prosecutors: Why are you so threatened by these words? Are your ideas so weak that they cannot stand exposure to different ideas? Don't you trust your flock and citizenry? What is the relationship between words and weapons? Fiction and non-fiction? Propaganda and self-expression?
Theme: Each book is a plump, juicy, forbidden fruit, often censored somewhere at some time by someone, occasionally causing death and destruction. How can a book terrorize? Why do humans censor literature? What aspects of religion, sex, state or science can turn into snakes slithering out of Pandora's Box? The books have been banned at one time or another in China , The Soviet Union, Israel , Europe, Islamic countries, and even parts of America .
Literary Forms: We will analyze different kinds of narrative, comparing Arabic with British, American, Chinese, Iranian, Russian, Turkish, Greek and French, looking at cyclical, pass-the-ball, superimposed, step narratives, interior monologues, stream of consciousness, American straightforward plainspeak, multiple narrators, shifting points of view and time. We will analyze dramatic structure and show how Aristotle's Poetics has been transformed with twentieth century organic drama, screenwriting, ordinary world/special world paradigms and other innovative structures. Through oral interpretation of the texts we will analyze the musicality, phrasing, syntax, and vocabulary of the various authors.
Breakdown
Week 1: Introduction to Course theme and Global Literature: Aesthetics--Style and Structure, Politics, Philosophy, and Science. Global literature versus the Canon. The Concept of censorship and Forbidden Fruits. We begin with the Sex Cluster. Read Lady Chatterly's Lover . Go over reading list and decide what defenders and prosecutors you like.
Week 2: Divide into the four clusters, choosing books for in-depth analysis. Discussion of Lady Chatterly's Lover and the taboo of sex. Read Lolita and Memoirs of my Melancholy Whores. Why does Marquez get away with it while Nabakov's book was banned? The prosecutor of LOLITA should pay careful attention to Nabokov's misadventures with American literary agents who said the following about his work:
"Some of the reactions were very amusing: one reader suggested that his firm might consider publication if I turned my Lolita into a twelve-year-old lad and had him seduced by Humbert, a farmer, in a barn, amidst gaunt and arid surroundings, all this set forth in short, strong, "realistic" sentences ("He acts crazy. We all act crazy, I guess. I guess God acts crazy." etc.) Although everybody should know that I detest sybbols and allegories [] ·an otherwise intelligent reader who flipped through the first part described Lolita as "Old Europe debauching young America," while another flipper saw in it "Young America debauching old Europe." Publisher X, whose advisers got so bored with Humbert that they never got beyond page 188, had the naivete to write me that Part Two was too long. Published Y, on the other hand, regretted there were no good people in the book. Publisher Z said if he printed Lolita he and I would go to jail." (314)
At the beginning of the twenty first century, most American agents and publishers are just as narrow-minded aesthetically, preferring the sleek narratives, predictable paradigms, and minimal style of a Dan Brown to any kind of experimental fiction with linguistic complexity and innovative structure. In a mass culture, similar in some ways to China 's cultural brainwashing, many Americans are wary of works that can't be packaged as cleanly and successfully as McDonalds. If you aren't amusing yourselves to death (Postman) you may be in danger of being elitist in a democracy where pop culture is much more homogenized than its inhabitants from all over the world. Read Reading Lolita in Tehran .
Notes on Close Textual Analysis
Critics analyze in reverse of how writers create:
FORM
Meter in poetry or grammar, sentence length, paragraph progression in prose
Rhythm in stressed and unstressed syllables
Rhyme where applicable
Tone Color including alliteration, assonance, consonance and onomatopoeia
Figures of Speech including metaphors, similes, personification, analogy
CONTENT
Word choice: complex, simple, synonyms, denotative and connotative as they relate to meaning
Description: the density, detail, and degree of sensuality--olfactory, gustatory, kinesthetic, auditory, visual, synesthesia
Narrative sequence: the connection between events in time and space, whether linear, recursive, tandem-competitive, superimposed
Narrative voice:first, second, third, singular or plural, limited, omniscient, personified, multiple or single, point of view
Theme is the way the author relates to the material, combining the form and content for aesthetic or didactic purposes. It is not the same as the Central Dramatic Question.
Characters can be multi-dimensional, stereotypes, archetypes, secrets, lies, flaws, objectives, needs, desires, conflicts, fantasies, nightmares, dreams, what is the worst or the best that could happen?
Dramatic Structures: the orchestration and the organization of conflict. Paradigms: the mountain, the circle, egg shaped ( Campbell monomyth) or wheel stuck in mud (recursive). Classic Aristotelian structure asks a Central Dramatic Question at the Inciting Incident that is resolved by the Climax and Resolution.
Research the World: level of reality, documentary, naturalism, realism, fantasy-enhanced memoir, sci fi, fantasy, use of imagination. Suspending disbelief. Science. Technology.
Story: what happens to specific people at a certain time in a certain space, before it is orchestrated into dramatic conflict.
Week 3: Assignment due: First draft of close textual analysis of your two chosen works. Reading Lolita in Tehran and Oscar Wilde. Sexual repression from the state.
Week 4: Thematic Analysis of God Dies by the Nile by Nawal el Saadawi. Notice how the sun is more of a witness to the crimes than the men's version of Allah, who, like the god Gebelaawi, must have some flaws. Lecture on Twentieth Century Feminist Literature and the contributions of Arab writers. It is appropriate that this week Shirin Ebadi was the first Islamic woman to win the Nobel Peace Prize. Ebadi was one of the first women to serve as a judge in Iran ; she has upheld the principle that Islamic faith is compatible with the rights of women, children and outspoken intellectuals. How do Islamic feminists differ from their European and American counterparts?
In GOD DIES there are so many crises/climaxes that Zakeya's murder of the village leader seems only one of many. When asked where Allah is, she says, in prison, that she killed him-- he is buried on the banks of the Nile . El Saadawi's structure is Arabic in its recursive themes of sun rising and setting on every scene, but also multi-orgasmic with its many climaxes.
Nawal el Saadawi in "BREEDING TERROR or AN UNCIVILISED CLASH OF CIVILIZATONS": "Once again we are facing the fundamentalist, absolutist dichotomy of God versus the Devil, and of Good versus Evil used to mystify people, to confuse them, to veil their minds. The language which George W. Bush uses is no different from that of the pope, or that of bin Laden. All three speak in the name of God against the enemy, against the Devil. The church and the mosque are not just spiritual bodies with a spiritual agenda, but also geopolitical, economic and even military bodies, but their agendas here are clothed in spiritual robes....This war on terrorism is being used to halt the rising wave of opposition to unbridled transnational exploitation of nature, human resources and human life. In the global patriarchal capitalist system war has been and remains the economic stimulus required to stave off recession and protect accumulation of profits. But I wonder how many bombs will be needed, and how many innocent people must die in order to ensure that the Dow Jones and the Nasdaq will begin to climb once more....State terrorism is the elder brother of individual terrorism except that it claims the legitimacy of laws upheld by a powerful few."
Like American and Israeli leaders, she feels that fear is the great enemy, not because we can't shop till we drop, but because it will make us accept anything in the name of security or the war against terrorism. "Fear can help the Big Brother to drive us with a big stick into an Orwellian world." El Saadawi believes we should eradicate the original roots of all kinds of terrorism by restoring religion to the personal realm and developing secular humanist societies that are able to abolish colonial and neo-colonial principles as well as the hegemony of the multinational corporations of the World Economic Forum. She speaks at the World Social Forum, advocating peace, love and justice from the grassroots up, abolishing all patriarchal systems that breed double standards and binary thinking. What do YOU think?
Along with Shakespeare, Aristotle, Sartre, Joyce, and Lightman, she is one of my heros because of the energy, curiosity, intelligence and strength which with she has embraced and attacked so many areas of human knowledge and discourse: medicine, literature, politics, religion. She even has a great website. http://www.nawalsaadawi.net. After her imposed clitorectomy, she has been a strong advocate for feminist rights, criticizing the sexism of the American cosmetics industry as well as Islamic fundamentalism. In 1955 she became Egypt 's Director of Public Health, but her book WOMEN AND SEX (1972), condemning clitorectomies and the veiling of the female mind even more than her body, aroused the anger of male authorities who put her in prison because of her continued research and writings in this area. After Sadat's assassination in l981 (read Mahfouz) she was freed and continued her political, medical and literary fight for the rights of oppressed peoples, particularly women. She claims that Westerners are particularly oppressed by their governments because they believe they are free even though they are the greatest true believers of them all and their democracy an illusion of freedom and equal rights.
In spite of her didacticism, her writing can be beautifully simple and poetic with ancient themes like the rising and setting of the sun in GOD DIES BY THE NILE. While DeLillo begins writing by deconstructing the sentence, by falling in love with words, she distrusts words, because they are weapons manipulated by Machiavellian politicians: "Language should be clear, so we understand each other. No monopoly, no playing, no games, no political games, no linguistic games, because I am really fed up with the linguistic games of the so-called 'postmodern era.'...We find ourselves lost in an avalanche of words which appear very dissident, and which multiply and reproduce themselves endlessly....We drown in these words; we are suffocated by them. It is the zero-sum game of words in which you lose your power to understand." For el Saadawi, language is a weapon, at least to those who imprisoned her, a weapon she will not give up even if it means her body would be imprisoned again. Like many great writers of our times, writing is her jihad, and as founder and president of the Arab Women Solidarity Association, her strong stance offers a welcome antidote to many solutions for the clash of civilisations.
Nawal El Saadawi was born in 1931 in Kafr Tahla, a small village outside of Cairo . El Saadawi was raised in a large household with eight brothers and sisters. Nawal El Saadawi is a leading Egyptian feminist, sociologist, medical doctor and militant writer on Arab women's problems. She is one of the most widely translated contemporary Egyptian writers, with her work available in twelve languages. She continues to devote her time to being a writer, journalist and worldwide speaker on women's issues. Her current project is writing her autobiography, laboring over it for 10 hours a day.
From 1979-180 El Saadawi was the United Nations Advisor for the Women's Program in Africa (ECA) and the Middle East (ECWA). Later in 1980, as a culmination of the long war she had fought for Egyptian women's social and intellectual freedom, an activity that had closed all avenues of official jobs to her, she was imprisoned under the Sadat regime, for alleged "crimes against the state." El Saadawi stated "I was arrested because I believed Sadat. He said there is democracy and we have a multi-party system and you can criticize. So I started criticizing his policy and I landed in jail." In spite of her imprisonment, El Saadawi continued to fight against oppression. El Saadawi formed the Arab Women's Solidarity Association in 1981. The AWSA was the first legal, independent feminist organization in Egypt . The organization has 500 members locally and more than 2,000 internationally. The Association holds international conferences and seminars, publishes a magazine and has started income-generating projects for women in rural areas. The AWSA was banned in 1991 after criticizing US involvement in the Gulf War, which El Saadawi felt should have been solved among the Arabs. Although she was denied pen and paper, El Saadawi continued to write in prison, using a "stubby black eyebrow pencil" and "a small roll of old and tattered toilet paper." She was released in 1982, and in 1983 she published "Memoirs from the Women's Prison," in which she continued her bold attacks on the repressive Egyptian government. In the epilogue to her memoirs, she notes the corrupt nature of her country's government, the dangers of publishing under such authoritarian conditions and her determination to continue to write the truth.
Sample questions to help you prepare your trials:
Question 1: Your family was relatively traditional, you were "circumcised" at the age of six, and somewhat progressive, your father insisted that all of his children be educated. You've been quoted as saying that your mother had a profound effect on you and that you felt that she was a "potential revolutionary whose ambition was buried in her marriage." Let's begin with the idea of Islamic fundamentalism, a "spirited bunch" who have done their best to bring woman down via torture and threats. Do you think that your progressive father had a profound influence on you? And more specifically when you discuss the issue of "over" religion who is your influence there?
Question 2: Despite the limitations imposed on you by both religious and colonial oppression on rural women, You were able to attend the University of Cairo and graduated in 1955 with a degree in psychiatry. After completing your education, You practiced psychiatry and eventually rose to become Egypt 's Director of Public Health. You met your husband, Sherif Hetata, also a doctor, while working in the Ministry of Health, where the two of you shared an office. Hetata's leftist views, led him to be imprisoned for 13 years for his participation in a left-wing opposition party. In your book you have several characters which could signify this oppressive behavior in Egypt , one in particular was the Mayor. Tell a little about why you made the women around him so strong, and yet the people so weak? Also please tell us about the relative view of God that you emphasize in God dies by the Nile ?
Question 4: You began writing 25 years ago, have written 27 books all concentrating on woman, particularly Arab woman, their sexuality and legal status. Your writings have been considered controversial and dangerous for the society, and were banished in Egypt . As a result, you were forced to publish your works in Beirut , Lebanon . In 1972, Your first work of non-fiction, "Women and Sex," which as the title suggests, dealt with the highly taboo subject of women and sexuality, and also the sensitive subjects of politics and religion. This publication evoked the anger of highly placed political and theological authorities, and the Ministry of Health was pressured into dismissing you. Under similar pressures you lost your post as Chief Editor of a health journal and as Assistant General Secretary in the Medical Association in Egypt .
From 1973 to 1976 you researched women and neurosis in the Ain Shams University 's Faculty of Medicine. Your results were published in "Women and Neurosis in Egypt " in1976, which included 20 in-depth case studies of women in prisons and hospitals. This research also inspired my novel "Woman at Point Zero," which was based on a female death row inmate convicted of murdering her husband that she met while conducting the research.
In 1977, you published your most famous work, The Hidden Face of Eve, which covered a host of topics relative to Arab women such as aggression against female children and female genital mutilation, prostitution, sexual relationships, marriage and divorce and Islamic fundamentalism.
When you came out of prison there were two routes you felt you could take. You could have become one of those slaves to the ruling institution, thereby acquiring security, prosperity, the state prize, and the title of "great writer"; not to mention seeing your picture in the newspapers and on television.
Or you could continue on the difficult path, the one that had led you to prison. Has Danger always been a part of your life ever since you picked up a pen and wrote? That nothing is more perilous than truth in a world that lies. That nothing is more perilous than knowledge in a world that has considered knowledge a sin since Adam and Eve. Is there no power in the world that can strip your writings away?
Question 5: Even after your release from prison, your life was threatened by those who opposed your work, mainly Islamic fundamentalists, and armed guards were stationed outside your house in Giza for several years until you left the country to be a visiting professor at North American Universities. You have been a resident writer at Duke University 's Asian and African Languages Department from 1993-1996. You've also taught at Washington State University in Seattle .
Question 6: I get the picture all you want to do is discuss is necrophilia, abuse of political and religious power, bestiality, and corruption. Is that right? Is this not a religious book?
Question 7: Today on cable television there is a show "Sex in the City" that depicts strong independent woman in our society. And discusses how they are sometimes demonized for being strong and independent women. Do you feel that this an accurate portrayal of women in the U.S. , in the World?
Read the Hidden Face of Eve to answer these.
Week 5: Assignment Due: First draft of your author's bio and POV, at least 4 pages.
Religion Cluster. Review passages from the Bible, Torah, and Koran. See Film of Last Temptation of Christ by Nikos Kazantzakis. Note how Kazantzakis milks every sense, not just the visual: he createsa world you can smell, taste and feel. How does this enhance or interfere with your experience of the sacred? Do you feel that Christianity separates soul from body, or that the roots of the religion are in the dictum, "the spirit is willing, but the flesh is weak?" Does this book shock or revolt you? Why?
In Angels and Demons , Brown has some interesting things to say about religion and science: "Science itself caused have the problems it was trying to solve. ‘Progress' was mother earth's ultimate malignancy."(97) "Religion is like language or dress. We gravitate toward the practices with which we were raised. In the end, though, we are all proclaiming the same thing. That life has meaning. That we are grateful for the power that created us." "Our specific methods for understanding it are arbitrary. Some of us pray of Jesus, some of us go to Mecca , some of us study subatomic particles. In the end we are all just searching for truth, that which is greater than ourselves." "Science tells me God must exist. My mind tells me I will never understand God. And my heart tells me I am not meant to."(110) "Terrorism is not an expression of rage. Terrorism is a political weapon. Remove a government's facade of infallibility, and you remove its people's faith." (174) "Very little in any organized faith is truly original. Religions are not born from scratch. They grown from one another. Modern religion is a collage·an assimilated historical record of man's quest to understand the divine." (243)
Discussion of Vatican and Christian Right as prosecutors. Religious taboos. Read Children of Gebelaawi.
Week 6: Discussion of religious and gender taboos, Egyptian Islamic Jihad. Sheikh Omar Abdul Rahman and Anwar Sadat as prosecutors. Read CHILDREN OF GEBELAAWI, paying close attention to how Mahfouz humanizes Abel, Cain, Adam, Moses, Jesus and Mohammad, while bringing his own Islamic community to life. Do you find his work as blasphemous as Kazantzakis? How does his style differ--his descriptive language, use of metaphor, setting of scenes, juxtaposition of dramatic scene with narrative? Which book is more humorous, if that word could be used? Does Mahfouz, as a Muslim, do justice to Jesus? Do you find his portrayal of Mohammad offensive enough to warrant the assassination attempt and the fatwa issued against him by Sheik Omar Abdel Rahman? Do you think writers should be able to write about anything they want? Are there things you would never write about for fear of embarrassment, offending friends and family, losing your job, being politically incorrect etc? What other things are censored in our society? Why is it that JESUS CHRIST SUPERSTAR was a big hit and this film caused a lot of problems? Do you feel Kazantzakis is a 'good' Christian?
Lecture on Mahfouz and the Cairene Alley with pix from Evergreen's latest trip. 
Read selections of Bible, Torah and Koran aloud as well. Show films of Muslim apocalypse.
For more ideas about cross-cultural feminism, go to http://www.nyu.edu/classes/keefer/twenty/bodyf.html.
Naguib Mafhouz is the best-known and most studied Arab novelist in the Anglophone world. Mafhouz was born in a warren of ancient alleys in the heart of Islamic Cairo, behind the al-Hussein Mosque, in the neighborhood of Gamaliyya, in December 1911. His father, a minor civil servant, was highly traditional, and his mother was doting, his childhood lonely but unremarkable. After attending Islamic elementary schools and a secular high school, he entered Cairo University (then King Faud 1) University and in 1934 graduated with a degree in philosophy. He remembers that period, which coincided with the anti-colonial movement against the British, as the happiest of his life--as "the golden age of patriotism....when the times themselves were listening to you," he wrote in his 1961 novel The Thief and the Dogs .
Until 1971, all his works were written late at night, for he spent his days as a government bureaucrat: as an official film censor, an adviser on the arts, and a minor functionary in various ministries, including the Ministry of Religious Affairs. A private, timid man who married late in life, Mahfouz is a strong believer, a bit of a mystic, and a Fabian socialist of the most passionate sort. Mahfouz married a Christian woman at age 43 and had two daughters and no grandchildren. He has never liked to travel, leaving Egypt some three times in his life. By the late 1950s, social realism had become the defining characteristic of his work. His well-ordered, punctilious, conservative daily life was the antithesis of the world he created in his books. Note what he says in this book we are studying: "We live in a repugnant age of slogans. And between the slogans and the truth is an abyss, into which we have all fallen and lost ourselves."
He published his first novel in 1939 and since then has written thirty-two novels and thirteen collections of short stories. This prolific writer's work appears to have gone through four stages. The first (1939-44) consisted of three novels based on the history of ancient Egypt, focusing on a cherished theme, the heroic struggle of the Egyptians and their patriotic Pharaohs to expel the foreign ruling invaders from their country. Like Camus' THE PLAGUE, THE STRUGGLE OF THEBES bore a relevance to Egyptian socio-political reality, the British occupation. In 1945, Mahfouz left the history of Phaoronic Egypt to write A NEW CAIRO. This led to the publication of THE CAIRO TRILOGY, in 1956-57, a realistic study of Egyptian urban society between the two World Wars. In THE MIRAGE, published in 1948, Mahfouz experimented with a psychoanalytic novel, inspired by Freud. In 1959 another stage began with OUR QUARTER, an allegory of human history. In the mid seventies he returned to the fourth stage where he asserts the unique voice of Arabic narrative forms in THE THOUSAND AND ONE NIGHTS and THE DAY THE LEADER WAS KILLED.
Mahfouz' world view is similar to Sartre's social commitment and responsibility, a far cry from the nihilism of Islamic extremists. His work reveals the irony of a European intellectual woven through the ancient Arabic storytelling. In 1988 the Swedish Academy gave him the Nobel Prize and wrote that "through works rich in nuance-- now clear-sightedly realistic, now evocatively ambiguous, Mahfouz has formed an Arabic narrative art that applies to all mankind." His characters are warm and human, in spite of and because of their grotesque flaws from the tyrannical merchant of the Cairo Trilogy, to his debauched and fanatical sons, to the weak and wayward women who tempt and distract them. Yet there is a robust sensuality, a deep reverence for Islam, a generous tolerance and the creation of world so ripe and vivid that you want to savor it forever. CHILDREN OF THE ALLEY with its autocratic rulers and echoes of prophets found in Judaism, Christianity and Islam, proved most controversial and prompted a religious fatwa calling for his death in 1989.
In 1994 there was a near-fatal assault on Mahfouz by Islamic terrorists, wonderfully described by Mary Anne Weaver in her book, A Portrait of Egypt (1999) when he was stabbed while sitting in his car. since then he has only been able to write for 30 minutes at a time because of injuried nerves. He must keep armed guards around his apartment even now, in 2002.90 year old Mahfouz was recently interviewed (2002) for the New York Times. He says that even now he struggles to write every day: "A writer must sit down to write every day, pick up his pen and try to write something-- anything-- on a piece of paper. Perhaps they will succeed, or maybe come up with a new idea that will blossom eventually. Perhaps they will complete a short story, and perhaps nothing will happen at all."
Like many of the writers we are studying, Mahfouz is intensely involved in political, social and philosophical debate. At 90 his eyes and ears are so impaired that a friend arrives every morning to read the headlines for an hour. He gave his first interest payments from his Nobel Prize to Palestinian charities and now defends suicide bombers, a common position among Arab intellectuals:
"They are people defending a cause by sacrificing with their souls, and this is the highest level of noble resistance, although the death of civilians is regrettable. We have to remember that this is not a regular fight, a regular war where you can choose your target and fight only soldiers. This is a desperate situation where you blow yourself up and whoever happens to be on the site."
At the same time he shows little patience for those who want to destroy Israel or censor freedom of expression or intercultural exchanges between Jews and Arabs. At the end of the interview, after discussing death, he said:
"That is the way of life. You give up your pleasures one by one until there is nothing left, and then you know it is time to go." He died in 2005 in Egypt .
Week 7: My Name is Red. Aesthetic Islam.
Pamuk superimposes the pass-the-ball Caravan narrative style of his multiple narrators over a traditional murder mystery plot. The Central Dramatic Question is asked at the Inciting Incident by the corpse rotting in the well after his murder in the first chapter. We learn right away that he thinks he was the best illuminator in Our Sultan's workshop and wants vindication for the guild and his family.
The Theme is interwoven through the history and descriptions of the conflict between art and religion, articulated first on p. 17 by the murderer, whose identity remains unknown till the end: "Does a miniaturist, ought a miniaturist, have his own personal style? A use of color, a voice all his own?
Plot Point One develops in Chapter 18, beginning on p. 97 when the murderer adopts a second voice and personality distinct from another narrative voice he presumably has in the story. He discusses how evil has empowered him, "There was a time when I was terrified not only of the Devil but of the slightest trace of evil within me. Now, however, I have the sense that evil can be endured, and moreover, that it's indispensable to an artist. After I killed that miserable excuse of a man, discounting the trembling in my hands which lasted only a few days, I drew better, I made use of brighter and bolder colors, and most important, realized that I could conjure up wonders in my imagination." (101) We realize that the murderer must therefore be one of the artists.
Midpoint occurs when this same murderer kills Black's Uncle and Shekure's father by repeated blows with an inkpot. Naturally, he dies slowly, visited by memories of the guild, his daughter and visits by Azrael, the Angel of Death. This is followed by the marriage of Shekure to Black.
Plot Point Two occurs when Master Osman plucks out his eyes with a plume needle on p 324.
Crisis occurs when Black, Butterfly and Stork gang up against Olive, looking for that famous last picture that would inculpate the murderer.
The climax occurs when Black blinds Olive, the murderer, after seeing the final portrait made up of many of the non-human narrators such as the Dog, Dervishes, Tree. To their surprise, Olive's portrait is where the Sultan's was supposed to be. Olive confesses that he murdered Elegant Effendi, the corpse at the well, to supposedly save the workshop, and then Black's Uncle because he forced Master Osman into mimicking the Venetian artist, Sebastiano and because Osman said Olive had a style of his own. As he is dying, Olive succeeds in wounding Black by stabbing him in the shoulder. When they finish with Olive, he is supposedly going to Hindustan , blinded and ruined, but in his garden he is beheaded by Hasan, Shekure's brother.
The resolution occurs when the wounded, bloodied Black returns to Shekure who nurses his wounds and gives him a blowjob. They live happily ever after or at least until Black dies naturally of a heart attack in old age.
Meanwhile, the miniaturists fade out as the world is taken by the new Frankish painters and the Renaissance. Shekure's father's book remains unfinished.
Pamuk has meticulously created the world of late sixteenth century Ottoman Empire in Istanbul , fictionalized a story based on the 1591 story of Black and the Ottoman painters. Olive was the name of a Persian miniaturist who came to the Court in 1583. Pamuk wrote and researched 15 hours a day, embedded in the Topkapi Palace , libraries, museums and mosques along the Divan Yolu which still looks today much as it did during the height of the Ottoman empire .
Pamuk's favorite writers are Nabakov and Proust, while Rushdie's favorite books are Tristram Shandy by Laurence Sterne, Metamorphosis by Ovid, and Ulysses by James Joyce.
Orhan Pamuk explains why he refused state honors: "For years I have been criticizing the state for putting authors in jail, for only trying to solve the Kurdish problem by force, and for its narrow-minded nationalism. He writes about Turkey 's two souls, east and west, which could potentially enrich the culture. His first novel, Cevdet Bey and his Sons, a dynastic saga of the Istanbul bourgeoisie, appeared in 1982 after an eight-year search for a publisher. He describes Istanbul as a place "no symmetry, no sense of geometry, no two lines in parallel, " which would make it the opposite of New York . Come to Evergreen's recent trip to Istanbul , January 2004!
The White Castle (1979) is the story of a Turkish master and his European slave. By the end of the novel the two main chracters are indistinguishable. One of them dies but we are not quite sure which. The Black Book, (1990), a mystery that arrives at no obvious solution, takes place in modern Istanbul and confirmed his international reputation.
Like many of our writers, he is an outspoken political activist: "It is neither Islam nor even poverty itself directly that succcours terrorists whose ferocity and creativity are unprecedented in human history, but the crushing humiliation that has infected third world countries like cancer." He feels rich western nations, particularly American, do not listen to or understand the damned of the world. In his writing he tries to unclash civilizations and bridge time gaps, giving the modern world a rich sense of history.
Pamuk was first runner-up for the Nobel Prize in 2005—lost to Harold Pinter who was older and dying. However he won it in 2006.
My Name is Red , sometimes called Call me Crimson, or Color me Confused, as some students have coined it, has as many narrators as I have in my second novel although mine are all non-human, and Pamuk uses his main characters, their dying bodies and corpses, secondary characters, as well as personifying images in the pictures such as a tree, a horse, and abstractions like Satan, red and death. "It was so much fun to impersonate my characters! I enjoyed finding the voice of a sixteenth century ottoman miniaturist, a mother of two children who is looking for a husband, the voice of her kids, the demonic voice of a murderer, and the narrative of a dead man on his way to heaven. Not only my characters speak in my story but objects and colors as well. I thought all these distinctive voices would produce a rich music-- the texture of life in Istanbul four hundred years ago. These shifts in view also reflect the novel's main concern about looking at the world form our point of view versus the point of view of a supreme being. All of this is related to the use of perspective in painting. My characters live in a world where the restrictions of perspective do not exist so they speak in their own voice with their own humanity...Orhan is not my alter ego; he is me. Most of the details and some of the anecdotes of the lonely mother and her son's relationship are derived from my own experience. I also keep mother's and brother's names in the story. The rivalry between the brothers, their constant quarrels, fights, and their negotiating peace and jealousy of their mother are autobiograpical. By carrying the details of my childhood into my historical novel I try to give it a personal dimension. It took me six years to write this book, Ottomans were great record keepers. So for hours I used to read the prices of various clothes, fish or vegetables in Istanbul markets in a given year....I learned that barbers perfomed circumcisions or pulled teeth for the right prices. ....Ever since the age of six, I thought I would be a painter. When I was a kid I used to copy the Ottoman miniature paintings. Later I was influenced by Western painting but I stopped at twenty when I began writing fiction...The more you imitate and repeat, the more perfect you are. After years of painting and re-painting the same scene, the painters begin to memorize it...This is why the master painter does not need to see what he creates. One is that of seeing the world through the eyes of any individual person--looking at things from our humble point of view. The other is seeing the world through God's eyes, from high above as Islamic painters did, and perceiving a totality....The latter is more like seeing with the mind's eye rather than the eye itself." The time frame weaves between recursive, superimposing over the murders, and pass the ball, a favorite technique of Egyptians such as Yusuf al Qaid. Even today, the old city of Istanbul with the blue mosque, the Golden Horn , the palaces of the Sultans, remains very similar to the way it is in this novel.
The book opens as the corpse of Elegant Effendi talks to us. The second murder of Enishte Effendi, Black's maternal uncle, occurs midway through the book and he takes a while to die, long enough for the thread to be picked up by Shekure et al. The love story is between Black and Shekure, whose husband has gone, leaving her to care for her two children, Orhan and Shevket. Master Osnan directs Our Sultan's workshop and the miniaturist painters Olive, Butterfly, Stork and the late Elegant Effendi. The intellectual conflict is between painters who paint like the Franks or Europeans, and those who consider this blasphemous because the Koran forbids representations of humans. Yet the irony is that everyone wants to have their portrait painted, that art can sometimes be more beautiful than life, and that art work could be a way of worshipping Allah's glorious world. Hence the tragedy, temptation and almost titillation of going blind. The murders are committed supposedly because of these arguments, arguments which we see today with the Taliban and Islamic artists all over the world. Pamuk discusses the individuality of style and the fact that if the miniaturists imitate the Franks then they will lose their style. Western culture is predicated on being unique, special, different. What does it mean to sign your name to a work of art? Not all cultures do this. Which one of the miniaturists is most likely to kill Elegant Effendi? What do you think of the almost sadistic events at the end of the novel? What does blindness mean to you? Which is your most treasured sense? Do you see the world a different way after reading this book?
Lecture on Ottoman Empire , Saudi Wahhabism, Sufism, and the multiple narrator style.
Week 8: Film of Ulysses. Lecture and analysis, comparison to Satanic Verses.
In spite of the formidable bulk of this novel, it is really about one day in the life of three Dubliners, Stephen Daedaelus, Leopold and Molly Bloom, but in theme and scope it parallels the journeys of Ulysses in Homer's Odyssey on his long voyage home to Penelope. Joyce read the book in Latin rather than Greek which explains the name Ulysses instead of Homer.
Compare the two-- a-- Homer, b-- Joyce
Ia Telemachus, in Ithaca with suitors, is urged ot seek his father. b Stephen Daedalus eats breakfast with Mulligan and Haines at the Martello Tower , then leaves for work.
IIa Telemachus leaves with Athene. b Nestor-- Stephen teaches his class at the Dalkey School ; receives his pay and would-be sage advice from Mr. Deasy, the headmaster.
III Telemachus with Nestor.
IVa Telemachus visits Menelaos as suitors lay ambush for him. b Proteus-- Stephen on Sandymount Strand.
Va Odysseus leaves Calypso; wrecked on a raft, he swims to the isle of the Phaiakians. b Calypso-- Leopold Bloom with Molly; he leaves to buy a pork kidney, even though he is Jewish, and returns.
VIa Odysseus meets Nausicaa, princess of the Phaiakians. b Lotus Eaters-- Bloom collects the letter with flower from Martha Clifford, orders lotion for Molly at the drugstore, thinks of taking a bath.
VIIa Odysseus is hospitably received by Alkinous and Arete, king and queen of the Phaiakians. b Hades-- Bloom attends the funeral of Paddy Dignam.
VIIIa Odysseus attends games; bathed and fffeasted, he is invited to identify himself and tell the story of his adventures since the fall of Troy . b Aeolus-- Bloom and Stephen appear at a newspaper office, but don't quite meet.
IXa Odysseus tells of his battles with the Kikonians, his sojourn with the Lotus Eaters, and his entrapment in the cave of the Cyclops. b Lestrygonians-- Bloom eats lunch at a pub and goes to look at statures of goddesses in the National Museum .
Xa Odysseus tells of Aeolus, god of winds; the man-eating Lestrygonians; and the enchantress Circe. b Scylla and Charybdis-- Stephen explains his theory of Hamlet in the National Library, where Bloom appears briefly.
XIa Odysseus tells of visiting Hades, then returning to Circe to bury Elpenor. b Wandering Rocks-- Bloom and Stephen wander through Dublin among many other characters but still do not meet.
XIIa Odysseus tells of the Sirens, Scylla and Charybdis, Helios; with his last ship lost, he's rescued by Calypso. Odysseus's storytelling ends. b Sirens-- Bloom dines at the Ormond Hotel restaurant and hears singing by the barmaids and various patrons, including Simonnn Daedula.
XIIIa The Phaiakians return Odysseus to Ithaca . b Cyclops-- Bloom confronts the drunken citizens in a pub.
XIVa Odysseus is hospitably received by Eumaios, his noble swineherd. b Nausicaa-- Bloom ogles Gerty McDowel on Sandymount Strand and masturbates.
XVa Telemachus leaves Sparta and eluding ambus, reaches Ithaca . b Oxen of the Sun-- Bloom visits the National Maternity Hospital , where Mina Purefoy gives birth to a boy. Bloom and Stephen talk a little amid a boisterous crowd of drunken young men.
XVIa Telemachus visits Eumaios; Odysseus reveals his identity to Telemachus. b Circe-- Bloom follows Stephen to Nighttown, Dublin 's redlight district, where Stephen spends most of his money, gets into a scuffle with two soldiers, and is rescued by Bloom.
XVIIa Telemachus returns to his house; disguised as a beggar, Odysseus also returns with Eumaios. b Eumaios-- Stephen and Bloom talk in the cabman's shelter.
XVIIIa Odysseus soundly thrashes the beggar who taunts him. Antinous declares the suitors will stay until Penelope marries one of them. Eurymachos throws a footstool at Odysseus and just misses him. b Ithaka-- Bloom and Stephen go to Bloom's house. Stephen declines Bloom's invitation to spend the night. Bloom gets into bed with Molly and finds evidence of her adultery, which he accepts at last with equanimity.
XIXa Odysseus and Penelope meet; Penelope plans the test of the bow to determine the stranger's identity. b Penelope-- In bed, Molly reviews her life and loves, concluding with her memory of Bloom's proposal and her answer-- yes. (As a teenager, Professor Evergreen acted out this soliloquy, recorded it and choreographed an erotic modern dance to it. If you only have time for this chapter, start here.)
Homer's book continues as all principals gather in Odysseus's house where he wins the test of the bow and kills the suitors and punishes the maids who consorted with them, and is finally recognized by Penelope. Odysseus reveals himself to his father Laertes, the suitors are buried, revenge is foiled and Athene imposes peace. So in ancient Greece adultery is punished but in twentieth century Ireland , Bloom accepts his wife's dalliance because he can't satisfy her the way she wants. And the twentieth century begins-- age of free sex, psychoanalysis, science and technological inventions, megalomania and dictatorships, fascisim and The Bomb, equal rights for all. Much has remained in the twentieth century but individualism is taking a beating. What do you think?
Joyce followed epic rather than dramatic form although his book conforms to Aristotle's unities. Like Professor Evergreen, he tended to over-systematize everything. In order, we have Scenes-- tower, school, strand, house, bath, graveyard, newspaper, lunch, library, streets, concert room, tavern, rocks, hospital, brothel, shelter, house, bed. Organs-- none for Stephen because he is "spiritual." then kidney, skin, heart, lungs, esophagus, brain, blood, ear, muscle, eye, womb, leg, nerves, skeleton, fat. (Interesting that Molly's soliloquy reminded Joyce of fat.) Discipline-- art, theology, history, philology, mythology, biochemistry, religion, rhetoric, architect, literature, mechanics, music, surgery, painting, medicine, dance, navigation, science, ---and poor old Molly gets no intellectual discipline. Technic-- narrative, catechism, monologue, narrative, narcissism, incubism, enthymemic, peristalsis, dialectic, labyrinth, fuga per canonem, gigantism, detumescence, embryonic development, hallucination, narrative, catechism, monologue. Symbol-- heir, horse, tide, nymph, eucharist, caretaker, editor, constables, London , citizens, barmaids, fenian, virgin, mothers, whore, sailors, comets, earth.
So anyone who thinks Ulysses is confusing literary vomit should realize how carefully it was planned and how laboriously it was written. Nevertheless if this manuscript were submitted anonymously to New York agents today, it would have to be dumbed down or put in the slush pile.
Lecture on cross-cultural styles of postmodernism, how Rushdie distorts the Muslim faith, and what his book offers to whom. Compare Satanic Verses to Ulysses.
Rushdie's work is highly coded and requires extensive footnotes to understand his references. Even this will not solve all the puzzles. Without caring to inform the Reader or explain anything, he uses Hindi, Urdu, Persian, Farsi and Arabic words, London immigrant slang as well as local places and people, Indian movies and cinema stars, local places in Bombay, and references to classical literature, twentieth century science, American pop culture and British history in a potpourri of surrealist images, pure fantasy, postmodern word games and disregard for conventional dramaturgy or narrative structure.
It is impossible to understand twentieth century literature without examining the postmodern movement, a movement which in many ways eludes analysis. In some respects, at least in America, it was a rebellion against classical forms and structures, an attempt to create new and fresh language, to play with chance and hybrid forms, but the movement was from the American realist tradition to postmodern so that it often produces even simpler, anti-elitist forms, creating conformity with blank verse and certain kinds of imagery.
Satanic Verses is a postmodern novel but with its coded language and references, it is similar to Ulysses by Joyce, and because it requires so much work and knowledge to understand every word, particularly in Hindi and Farsi, it could be considered elitist. Rushdie doesn't seem to be trying to create dramatic structures based on Aristotle or the Campbell monomyth, although he is always telling stories with their own psychotic rhythms. It could be argued, however, that the entire novel is a simple memoir, a coming-of-age story of a London immigrant flying to Bombay to say farewell to his dying father, a man of many identities whose psychological conflicts resemble a kind of paranoid schizophrenia or manic depression, symbolized by Gibreel and Saladin. It could also be argued that the caustic treatment of Mohammad and his wives, the turbulent distortions of the Koran, the Hajj, and the Satanic Verses of Lat, Uzza and Manat reflect the narrator's frustration, anger and impotence as he deals with the death of his father. Although born Muslim, Rushdie became a humanist agnostic or whatever in London , influenced by science, modernism and existentialism of the twentieth century. Then he filled the empty space with his fantasies. However, at the end of Satanic Verses, Gibreel puts a gun to his mouth, leaving the more practical Saladin to claim his father's inheritance. Gibreel was the one who was dreaming the distorted history of Islam and by murdering this character, Rushdie murders all its associations.
Most Muslims do not appreciate this book although few feel that Rushdie should die for it. Although Tahar ben Jalloun creates his own version of French postmodern, it is a style that blends the grace of Arabic poetry with pure faith and sincere political activism. The combination of Rushdie's wild, almost inaccessible postmodern style, with his lack of conventional dramaturgy, borrowing from Ovid and other writers, and bitter, caustic description of Islam infuriated Muslims more than the work of Mahfouz who at least has compassion for the faith. If they had understood it as an escape into a psychotic dream world as well as a rage against the impotence of death (from his father's cancer), some Muslims might have been less angry although even liberal Muslims told me that they feel the book is not even well-written.
In America and England it was published by Picador, a house that is reputedly very literary and selective. I feel Rushdie wanted to create for Indian immigrant culture what Joyce created for Irish culture with Ulysses using Ovid instead of Homer as a theme, and Islam instead of Catholicism as a system to rage against. Instead he is still a ripe target for rabid Islamists.
How do you know when a prophet is hearing the words of Satan instead of God? According to one version of history, Mohammad heard the voice of Satan through the three goddesses, Lat, Manat, and Uzza, or power, money and sex.
Dramaturgically, Satanic Verses , doesn't amount to much and the story could be reduced to a postmodern reverie during a plane trip of an ex-pat from London to Bombay . However, the narrative sequencing, linguistic style and weaving of postmodern word plays, fantasy resembling magical realism, and references to the Koran and Ovid's Metamorphosis, make the book seem more complex than it is, just like Joyce's Ulysses.
A meditation on the transformation from good to bad and bad to good, it is another attempt to humanize the prophets by focusing on the Satanic Verses, and the Angel Gabriel as a potentially evil force, but while Mahfouz and Kazantzakis are actually believers who humanize the prophets and treat religious beliefs and needs with compassion, Rushdie's satire is bitter and vitriolic. Although born a Muslim he is not a believer. But Islam is only a small part of this book; it is really about metamorphosis, reincarnation, hybrid cultures and the search for home.
In some ways this is a coming of age story of a London immigrant returning to Bombay to forgive his dying father. It's almost as if he has two selves--represented by Chamcha and Gibreel. Gibreel is schizophrenic and plagued by his megalomaniacal version of Islam. He commits suicide after murdering a few people. Chamcha forgives his father and collects the inheritance. However, it is absurd to reduce it to this logline. What appeals to me about the book is its rich style, magical fantasies, and thought-provoking creation of the worlds of Islam and immigrant London . You don't have to agree with Rushdie, or any author, to get something out of their work. "Joyce built a whole universe out of a grain of sand."
Somewhere in that hyperactive brain also roams the spirit of the Irish-born writer James Joyce (1882-1941). Rushdie: "Joyce is always in my mind, I carry him everywhere with me".
Who it was who called his attention to Ulysses (published in Paris in 1922) Rushdie does not remember, but he knows that it was in the first year of his study of history. "Everyone said that it was such a sealed book, hard to penetrate, but I did not think so at all. You never hear people say that there is so much humor in the book, that the characters are so lively or that the theme - Stephen Daedalus in search of his lost father and Bloom looking for his lost child - is so moving. People talk about the cleverness of Ulysses and about the literary innovation. To me it was moving, in the first place"
Stephen and Bloom, those were the characters which touched him immediately. He quotes from memory: "Leopold Bloom ate with relish the inner organs of beasts and fowls". Those were the first lines of the second chapter. "I am myself disgusted by that kind of organs", he grinned. "There are still so many little things I always have to smile about when I think of them. That commercial, for example: "What is home/without Plumtree's Potted Meat?/ Incomplete"=.” That is still funny. Joyce used many stylistic means which were novel in his time, newspaper headlines for instance. Is it not moving that he makes Ulysses happen on the day that he met his wife! He kept that newspaper, carried it always with him and used all of its details, including the names of the horses in the races. In short, he built a universe out of a grain of sand. That was a revelation to me: so that is the way one could also write! To somebody who wanted to be a writer, like me, it was so perfect, so inspiring, that it made one need to recover. I have thought for some time: I quit writing, I become a lawyer. Later I thought that there may be some little things still worth doing."
And what about Joyce's famous interior monologue? "That stream of consciousness was not an invention of Joyce, but he used it more subtly than anyone else. Bloom's inner voices were about very common things, about a hungry feeling or so. Joyce demonstrates that the material of daily life can be as majestic as any great epic. The lives of ordinary people are also worthy of great art. One can create grandeur out of banality. That was precisely the criticism Virgina Woolf had on Joyce. Woolf was a bit too snobbish for it."
As the best example of the stream of consciousness Rushdie "of course" considers Molly Blooms monologue at the end of the book. "In the past I could recite whole parts of it: "and first I put my arms around him yes and drew him down to me so he could feel my breasts all perfume yes and his heart was going like mad and yes I said yes I will Yes." That conclusion is absolutely rocket fuel at the end. You have a book behind you in which the behavior of people is not strictly transparent and then suddenly you feel not only the skin of that woman, but her whole body, all her flesh and blood, that is a baffling climax. Of course also very erotic, although as yet the novel was not erotic at all. At that time literature did not extend to erotics, to the sexual fantasies of women. Impossible to imagine Virginia Woolf doing something like that."
Ulysses is in fact a national epic about Ireland . "It is a grand homage to the country that has never understood him" says Rushdie. "He was regarded there as a pornographer and blasphemer. Now he is viewed as Ireland 's national monument. Well, that's easy. I do understand how Joyce felt. I am close to him. I feel a kinship, not so much between our types of authorship, but rather between his eye and ear, his mind and mine. The way one looks at things.
Nevertheless, they would not have become friends, he believes. "Joyce was not very good at friendship. There is a story about his put-down of Samuel Beckett, who adored him and often came along his place. He plainly told him that he only loved two people in the world: the first being his wife, the second his daughter. His only encounter with Proust was also very comical. Joyce and Proust met each other when leaving a party. Proust had his coach standing at the door and was wrapped up fom head to foot, afraid as he was to catch a cold. Joyce jumps into the coach uninvitedly, lights a cigar and opens the window widely. Proust says nothing, neither does Joyce. It is like a silent movie. Two masters of the word, who say nothing to each other and yet disclose themselves. Fantastic!"
In Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man Joyce mentions the weapons with which a writer can defend himself against the outer world: silence, exile, and cunning. Are those the weapons Rushdie recognizes? "Well, that was a very good stratagem in the time of Joyce. Like Voltaire, Joyce believed that a writer should live near a border, so that he could leave immediately if problems arose. At present that does not work anymore: I have experienced it personally. And silence is an overrated art form, which people now too often impose upon you."
But are writers not regarded more and more as intellectuals and are they not continually asked for an opinion? "I believe that worldwide there are more and more efforts to impose silence upon writers - and that not only applies to me. It is easy to point to the Arab world, or to China , but even in the United States there are people who want to ban Harry Potter books from schools, because they contain something about witchcraft. Even something harmless like that provokes an attack. We live in a time with an increasing urge to censorship. Various interest groups--including antiracist or feminist movements-- demand it. When Kurt Vonnegut is banned from public libraries and not everywhere it is allowed to teach about Huckleberry Finn, then you just cannot assume straight-away that there is something like freedom. Against silence it is that now we have to fight. And exile does not work. Therefore, cunning is the only thing that remains."
"To be born again, first you have to die." This chapter is preceded by an epigraph from Book I, Chapter VI of Daniel Defoe's The Political History of the Devil as well Ancient as Modern ( London : T. Warner, 1726), p. 81. Defoe's location of Satan's abode as the air is of course highly appropriate for this novel in which the demonic falls from the air. But more importantly, the Devil is a wanderer, an image of the rootless immigrant. The novel opens with the two main characters, Gibreel Farishta and Saladin Chamcha, falling to earth because the plane they have been flying in has just been blown up by the terrorists who have hijacked it. We are then told a good deal of detail about their backgrounds, their occupations, their love affairs, and how they happened to find themselves together on the plane. Then the story of the hijacking is told, leading up to the moment of explosion which began the novel. This is my favorite chapter in terms of style and flights of imagination, delicious metaphors and similes: "The aircraft cracked in half, a seed-po giving up its spores, and egg yielding its mystery. Two actors, prancing Gibreel and buttony, pursed Mr Saladin Chamcha, fell like titbits of tabacco from a broken old cigar." (4) Way before 9/11, Rushdie captured the thinking of jihadhis: "Martyrdom is a privilege, We shall be like stars; like the sun." (88) Note that this is a female suicide bomber who pulled the wire so the walls could come tumbling down to -- life, not death, for the subject of this novel is metamorphosis. Hinting at reincarnation, Rushdie seems more like an Indian Hindu, than a Muslim, which was his childhood religion.
Gibreel falls asleep and "dreams" the beginning of the other main plot of the novel, the story of Mahound, more or less closely based on the traditions surrounding Muhammad and the founding of Islam in the seventh century. It is this plot that resulted in the attacks on Rushdie by Muslim critics. We see Mahound surveying the city of Jahilia and are introduced to various significant locales. The period corresponds historically to the early days of Muhammad's preaching in Mecca , where he was not widely accepted, and the Ka'ba was still filled with pagan idols, including those of the three goddesses who are the focus of the "satanic verses." Mahound's preaching has earned the hatred of the ruler of Jahilia, Abu Simbel , whose fortune is derived from worshippers at their temples. Abu Simbel , aware that Baal is his wife Hind's lover, blackmails the poet Baal to satirize Mahound and his companions. But then he tries a more effective alternative to render the prophet harmless by offering him toleration if he in turn will acknowledge the three goddesses, Lat, Uzza and Manat, whose temples he and his wife receive their income from. Mahound horrifies his followers by seeming to be willing to deviate from his message of strict monotheism. He consults with the Angel Gibreel, who has up to this point been dictating holy scripture to him, and becomes convinced that the "satanic verses" quoted at the bottom of p. 114 [top of p. 117], acknowledging the three goddesses, should be proclaimed as inspired, though the narrator hints on p. 112 [114] that they have been inspired not by God, but by the devil.
Mahound's decision produces an orgy of celebration which results in death for some, and he himself wakes up in Hind's bedroom. Mahound realizes the "satanic verses" are indeed satanic, and goes to the Ka'ba to repudiate them. A fierce persecution of Mahound's followers is unleashed, and he has to flee to Yathrib. Gibreel dreams that he is being attacked by the goddesses, for in his dream-role as the archangel/devil he has been responsible both for suggesting the verses and repudiating them. Muslims were particularly offended by Rushdie's descriptions of Mahound wrestling with the archangel where the latter's tongue was in his ear, his fist around his balls: "After they had wrestled for hours or even weeks Mahound was pinned down beneath the angel, it's what he wanted, it was his will filling me up and giving me the strength to hold him down, because archangels can't lose such fights, it wouldn't be right, it's only devils who get beaten in such circs, so the moment I got on top he started weeping for joy and then he did his old trick, forcing my mouth open and making the voice, the Voice, pour out of me once again, made it pour all over him, like sick." (125) At the end it seems as if Lat, Uzza, and Manat have turned into Grecian-style furies flapping around hhis head, clawing at his eyes, biting, whipping him with their hair, their wings. Rushdie implies that evil is within, that it cannot be wished away, or continuing the attack on Islam, stoned in the Jamarat rite of the hajj. Evil resides in all of us, in our thoughts, our unconscious.
At the end of the novel, Gibreel returns to Bombay , depressed and suicidal. The movie he tries to make is a "satanic" inversion of the traditional tale from the Ramayana, reflecting his disillusionment with love after having been rejected by Allie. Ultimately he goes entirely mad, kills Sisodia and Allie (hurling the latter symbolically from the same skyscraper from which Rekha Merchant had flung herself).
"If the old refused to die, the new could not be born." (561) What do you think?
Visiting Saladin, he confesses, then draws a revolver from the "magic" lamp Saladin had inherited from his father, and shoots himself. Zeeny Vakil's final words to Saladin, "Let's get the hell out of here," may be ambiguous: they could mean only "Let's leave," but she may also be inviting him to leave the the realm of the Satanic in which he has been living for so long.http://www.wsu.edu/~brians/anglophone/satanic_verses/.
Salman Rushdie still cannot fly Air Canada because the airline is afraid some Islamic extremist will bring down the plane in an effort to fulfill the fatwa issued by Iran after publication of SATANIC VERSES. Yet this is a book of fiction. Islamic rebuttal to Western condemnation of Fatwa against SATANIC VERSES: Semseddin Turk , the President of the MIT Islamic Society writes "Because of the unequivocal attempt at associating itself with real events, THE SATANIC VERSES is dangerously, even criminally, misleading for a Western audience that knows little about Islam and Muslims. Rushdie's metaphors and symbols are strongly reminiscent of and reinforce traditional Western prejudices and myths about Islam. THE SATANIC VERSES is one of the most slanted works in a regular cycle of intentional or unintentional misrepresentations of Islam and Muslims in media sources and textbooks. Because of its wild implications and virulent language, the novel constitutes an unprecedented assault on Islam, and indirectly, on the Abrahamic religions preceding it."
The novel aptly begins with Saladin Chamcha and Gibreel Farishta falling from an expoding airplane, hijacked by Shiite terrorists, to the shores of Britain . Chamcha is an anglicized Indian who has lived in England since youth, while Gibreel, a religious movie star, recently recovered from an illness where he lost faith in Islam, comes to England to pursue Alleluia Cone who he fell in love with in India . Upon arrival, Saladin grows horns and hooves and thick hair develops all over his body, while Gibreel acquires a halo, metamorphosing into forces of good and evil which Rushdie then blurs by making Saladin embrace his Indian heritage while Gibreel begins to doubt his pro-Western choices. At the end Saladin is bettered by his transformation while Gibreel, who was the "angel," commits suicide to escape from his dilemmas. What Muslims most object to are the dreams of Gibreel, the story of Jahilia and Mahound, the latter referring to the prophet Mohammed and the former referring to the city of "ignorance," or Mecca . He then refers to the great personalities of Islam as "fucking clowns," "riff-raff," and "goons." The verses of the Koran are "revelations of convenience." They particularly hate his discussion of sex where "sodomy and the missionary position were apporved by the archangel, whereas the forbidden positions included all those in which the female was on top." Mahound is guilty of "fucking as many women as he liked," including mothers and daughters.
Westerners rebut that Muslims are being too literal and unimaginative, confusing postmodern, deconstructionist fictional techniques, irony, and suspension of disbelief with deliberately malicious anti-Islamic propaganda, thereby repressing freedom of speech. Muslims protest against the use of obscene, violent language when dealing with respected Muslim religious leaders. Nikos Kazantzakis also received similar criticism, without eternal death threats, for THE LAST TEMPTATION OF CHRIST.
In an open letter to Rajiv Ghandhi, Rushdie states: "The section of the book in question (and let's remember the book isn't actually about Islam, but about migration, metamorphosis, divided selves, love, death, London and Bombay) deals with a prophet who is snot called Muhammed living in a highly fantastical city...in which he is surrounded by fictional followers, one of whom happens to bear my own first name. Moreover, this entire sequence happens in a dream, the fictional dream of a fictional character, an Indian movie star, and one who is losing his mind at that. How much further from history could one get?"
Rushdie was born to liberal, prosperous Muslim parents in Bombay June 19, 1947. In August 14 of that year, Pakistan divided itself from India as part of an agreement ending the period of British colonialism in South Asia . The result was a chaotic and extremely violent period as 6 million Muslims moved north to the newly-established Islamic state and 8 million Hindus and Sikhs moved south fleeing it. In 1961 he moved to England to study at Rugby School and then Kings College , Cambridge . In 1980 he published MIDNIGHT'S CHILDREN which won the Booker Prize but gained a law suit from Indira Gandhi who won her libel case before she was assassinated. In 1983 he published SHAME and in 1988 SATANIC VERSES. Like India , SATANIC VERSES is dense, multicultural, creative, rich, magical, chaotic, a complex "chutneyfication" of echoes and allusions that Rushdie infuses with biting satire. Like Wittgenstein, Rushdie seeks to attack questions rather than provide pat answers and paradigms, to break down the rigid, self-righteous orthodoxy of extremist Islam. Recent books are FURY and a collection of essays.
The theme is a search for identity in a post-colonial, pre-colonial vein. People of Anglo-saxon stock are almost entirely absent form the London of THE SATANIC VERSES. Instead the city swarms with immigrants: Indians, Bengalis, Pakistanis, Jamaicans, German Jews, etc. He reminds the English that they too were colonized, by the Romans and the Normans . Interestingly, he rejects both martyrdom and triumphant nationalism as inadequate foundations for a satisfactory self-identity, questioning the credibility and beneficence of orthodox, traditional Islam. Gibreel's dreams challenge the Koran's claims to infallibility, accuse Islam of the repression of women, call into question the probity and honesty of the Prophet himself. He spares no institution or person in his quest to answer the question, what kind of idea are we? Underneath its complex structure Rushdie reaffirms beliefs in individual liberty and tolerance, freedom of expression, skepticism about dogma, and belief in the redemptive power of love. Again Rushdie voices some of the issues developed by Sartre in his affirmation of human freedom and responsibility in a world devoid of absolutes. Rusdie writes about the novel in his essay, "Is Nothing Sacred?" "Because whereas religion seeks to privilege one language above all others, the novel has always been about the way in which different languages, values and narratives quarrel, and about the shifting relations between them, which are relations of power. The novel does not seek to establish a privileged language, but it insists upon the freedom to portray and analyze the struggle between the different contestants for such privileges. (420) ...while the novel answers our need for wonderment and understanding, it brings us harsh and unpalatable news as well. It tells us there are no rules. It hands down no commandments....And it tells us there are no answers; or rather, it tells us that answers are easier to come by, and less reliable, than questions. If religion is an answer, if political ideology is an answer, then literature is an inquiry; great literature, by asking extraordinary questions, opens new doors in our minds. (423) "In the twentieth century, the novel came to be viewed as primarily oppositional, critical of the culture which produced it. Rather than providing values, it challenges them. Modern novels are praised for their courage in exposing hypocrisy, challenging tradition, exploring forbidden themes. If blasphemy is not the most common of techniques in western fiction it is because so few writers take religion seriously enough to feel it worth attacking. "(Rushdie:"In God We Trust"376-377)
In 1988 VikingPenguin published SATANIC VERSES at which point a Saudi newspaper in London denounced him. Threats and complaints followed and in 1989 the book was burned before TV cameras in England , 5 members of an extremist group attacked the American Culture Center in Islamabad , and in Kashmir , sixty were injured and one died in a protest. For these questions and his playful satire, Rushdie was condemned to death by the Ayotollah Khomeini of Iran in the following fatwa: "I inform all zealous Muslims of the world that the author of the book entitled SATANTIC VERSES--which has been compiled, printed and published in opposition to Islam, the Prophet, and the Koran--and all those involved in its publication who were aware of its content, are sentenced to death."
He elaborates: "I call on zealous Muslims to execute them quickly, wherever they may be found, so that no one else will dare to insult the Muslim sanctities. God Willing, whoever is killed on this path is a martyr." Rushdie defended himself as follows: "Nowadays...a powerful tribe of clerics has taken over Islam. These are the contemporary Thought Police. They have turned Muhammad into a perfect being, his life into a perfect life, his revelation into the unambiguous, clear event it originally was not. Powerful taboos have been erected. One may not discuss Muhammad as if he were human, with human virtues and weaknesses. One may not discuss the growth of Islam as a historical phenomenon, as an ideology born out of its time. These are the taboos against which THE SATANIC VERSES has transgressed (these and one other: I also tried to write about the place of women in Islamic society, and in the Koran). It is for the breach of taboo that the novel is being anathematized, THE SATANIC VERSES is not, in my view, an antireligious novel. It is, however, an attempt to write about migration, its stresses and transformations, from the point of view of migrants from the Indian subcontinent to Britain . This is, for me, the saddest irony of all; that after working for five years to give voice and fictional flesh to the immigrant culture of which I am myself a member, I should see my book burned, largely unread, by the people it's about, people who might find some pleasure and much recognition in its pages. I tried to write against stereotypes; the zealot protests serve to confirm, in the Western mind, all the worst stereotypes of the Muslim world." (The Book Burning 25) Even though his book was fiction, Rushdie was personally blamed for its ideas. The extremists lack humor and suspension of disbelief as well as tolerance. But the book itself as well as the political controversy are good examples of the dilemmas of role criticism, which we will examine in the American Jewish and Palestinian interpretations of occupations and Israeli checkpoints.
The story of the Satanic Verses is not mentioned either in the Koran or in any of the early oral or written sources. It is not included in Ibn Ishaq's SIRA, the most authoritative biography of the Prophet, but only in the work of the tenth century historian Abu Jafar at-Tabari (d.923). He tells us that Muhammad was distressed by the rift that had developed between him and most of his tribe after he had forbidden the cult of the goddesses and so, inspired by Satan, he uttered some rogue verses which allowed the banad al-Lah to be venerated as intercessors, like the angels. In these so-called Satanic Verses, the three goddesses were not on a par with al-Lah but were lesser spiritual beings who could intercede with him on behalf of mankind. Later, however, Tabari says that Gabriel told the Prophet that these verses were of Satanic origin and should be excised from the Koran to be replaced by verses saying they were mere projections and figments of the imagination. As a magical realist, Rushdie chooses to focus all his attention on these figments.
One of my students was recently reprimanded in the New York subway in July 2002 for reading SATANIC VERSES. Accosted by a Muslim woman, she was told "not to believe anything in that book." Is that the point of novels, to make us believe, or is suspension of disbelief just the willingness to enter a FANTASY world created by the author? Why do so many cultures, American included, expect fiction to be naturalistic, true to life? Why do some of us take irony, humor, satire, fantasy so literally?
I have also been influenced by Joyce and Rushdie, and editors also found my trilogy too linguistically complex. In this case, the censorship occurs in a strange way: publishers will not promote books they feel are not easy enough reads for the American masses. Sex, politics, and violence are fine but intellectual concepts and big words are anathema to the American readership in particular.
Optional Field Trip to the 96th Mosque between Second and Third Avenues. Women must cover skin and wear headscarves. Browse the bookstore for books and tapes. Then meet at the Metropolitan Museum of Art, 82nd and Fifth. Theme: Spirituality versus Sensuality.
Meet amidst the Greek sculptures. Note how the artists capture naked men in their prime, those short years of youthfulness and power where the muscles and other organs rip with robust muscularity and sexuality. Beauty is that "best moment" in a man's life, captured for eternity. See how accurate the artists' knowledge of anatomy was, and how lifelike and individualistic the poses. Kazantzakis comes from this culture and his Jesus is one of these men who beats and covers up his flesh to serve God. Contrast this aesthetic with: the Egyptian worship of the afterlife.
Meet in the Temple of Dendur . As we roam around ancient tombs, sarcophagi, statues nestled in coffins, sphinxs and hieroglyphs on stone, note how the artists painted their most beautiful, colorful, subtle designs on the INSIDE of the coffins! If you are depressed about death, this is the place to hang out. The men who built the pyramids and tombs were paid workers but are depicted as links in a chain, almost like two dimensional clones. Pictures of the living consist of sitting regal pharaohs, workers in their chain gangs, or the ultimate symbol of power-- the Sphinx, who has the head of a man and the body of a large cat. Egypt loves all cats, big and small. The world created for the pharaohs after death seems better than the one they had while living. In Greece people can live on the islands almost naked, but humans must be covered to protect them from sun and sand. As you imagine what it was like to live in Ancient Egypt, let these images stay in your mind as you read Akhenaten by Mafhouz. As soon as the Islamic section is restored, we will visit it to give you a better insight into this culture in order to understand Children of Gebelaawi and Satanic Verses. .Meet in the "church" of the medieval section to look at crucifixes, stained glass and other sacred objects of Christianity. Euroamericans' experience of Christianity is filtered through the Middle Ages in Europe; it does not jump out from the hot sensuality of the Middle East . This is a narrative culture where artists retell the same story of nativity, crucifixion and ascension through a variety of means. Perhaps Americans objected to THE LAST TEMPTATION OF CHRIST more because of the cultural clash of sensuous Greece recreating and re-crucifying Jesus, rather than prim, proper, dark and dreary medieval Europe . Contrast the different uses of light and space in the medieval church and mosque.
Week 8 : Political Cluster. Wild Thorns and This Blinding Absence of Light. Political taboos. Compare classical structure of Wild Thorns with Euro-existential structure of This Blinding Absence of Light. Discussion of political taboos, and prosecutors, Moroccan monarchy and Israeli military.
While Usama is the protagonist of Wild Thorns, he shares the spotlight with his cousin Adil and all the resistance fighters. The Inciting Incident occurs when Usama returns to Nablus from his travels, trying to suppress his sensitive, poetic side, "Personal dreams evaporate, the individual becomes a single shot in a fusillade. You can be honed by experience to become a rocket, a guided missile." (6) Further foreshadowing occurs when Abu Mohammad says, "'What I'm most afraid of is that he'll do something stupid and then they'll blow up our house.'" This chapter is followed by the high concept conflict between Israel and Palestine , represented by the interrogation at the checkpoint, which is satirical, sad, cruel and comic.
At PP1 Usama rephrases his dilemma after seeing the blood fly from Abu Sabir's fingers, "Would he be able to undertake the mission that was required of him? How could he actually kill people--he, Usama, who'd once mourned for a lamb slaughtered on a feast day?" (78) He answers this question with renewed commitment.
Midpoint is the confrontation between Adil and Usama beginning of p. 95. Adil prefers a more practical, life-affirming approach although he dislikes what the Israelis have done, while Usama is willing to accept suicide bombing, hunger, and poverty to fight the Israelis with total resistance. On p. 100 he finally tells Adil there are orders to blow up the buses, thus clarifying his mission, which, like the attacks on Iraqi policemen, is designed to kill fellow Muslims.
Plot Point 2 is the assassination of the Israeli officer by the young man shrouded in a white kufiyya, who we later learn is Usama. It is the beginning of his end. Ironically it is Adil who picks up the officer's orphaned little daughter and carries her home.
The Crisis occurs when Usama, Zuhdi and other resistance fighters fight with the Israeli military jeeps after a bomb explodes near the bus. Khalifeh articulates the theme, connected to the title when Zuhdi says, "'The thorns aren't there to produce roses...they're there to protect them.'"
When Usama dies on p. 185 it is the beginning of the Climax. His last words are, "There's no escape from death. You, mother, you're an angel. And me, I'm a real lion, mother; tell everyone I died a martyr, a martyr to the cause. A martyr to the land. I love you, mother. The oven fire. The smell of burning dung. The flute. Scarves. Wedding celebrations. The bride. Nawa. Salih. Weddings. Yet to come..."
It could be argued, however, that the real climax is when the Israelis bulldoze the ancient family home with its sculpture, jasmine and lemon trees, beautiful courtyard, memories of a long line of people. They are given a few minutes to evacuate the home, taking essential belongings. Adil makes the choice NOT to take his father's kidney machine, knowing that many younger ones will die, if they struggle to keep him alive in a refugee camp. Again, it is a practical choice, but a terrible one that makes Adil in some ways, his father's murderer.
The resolution occurs with the expression of Adil's rage, which has been suppressed throughout the book, "If only you were more cruel, or harder of heart, you'd blow up everything you could lay hands on, from the Atlantic to the Gulf and on to the world's furthest reaches. You'd leave no two stones standing. You'd uproot the trees, eaxposing the infections beneath the earth's surface to the light of the sun, to the breezes of spring. You'd turn everything upside-down. And begin again. Slowly, very slowly. Here a seedling. There a tree. Here a flower. And you, yong Sabir, a tall, broad-shouldered palm. Your hands would bring rocks from the depths of the earth and from the mountains.
'Those stones would shine like raw diamonds. We could colour them, decorate them, and build them into rows of beautiful houses that would stretch as far as the eye could see and stand for all eternity. ...Peace would reign from the rocky heights of Mount Aibal to the pine forests of Jirzim." (207)
But this is just fantasy because the house lies in ruins, commerce goes on and Kissinger ironically announces a solution to the Middle East crisis.
WILD THORNS
Sahar Khalifeh was born in 1941 during the British mandate in Palestine in Nablus . She left a frustrating marriage to study literature and feminism in America . Her first novel was confiscated by the Israelis, which shows that militant Iran is not the only country guilty of censorship. Her second novel was first published in Cairo . She has taught at Iowa and Bir Zeit University and probably knew some of the suicide bombers, maybe even the women. She founded the Women's Affairs Center in Nablus . In WILD THORNS we see militancy as a necessary venue of resistance to Israeli occupation. But Khalifeh does not let didacticism make her prose laborious and heavy; the novel is rich and succulent like ripe olives and we see, hear and feel the characters-- the underground, militant high schoolers we have recently seen so often in the news, the shopkeeper who sells groceries to Israeli soldiers, or the village mothers who ululate in solidarity as their homes are bulldozed. Although it was written in 1975, the novel offers us a deeper understanding of what is going on in 2002 with the seige of the Church of Nativity , the bulldozing of homes in Jenin, and the terrors of the suicide/homicide bombers/martyrs.
Khalifeh's characters are not drawn with the same good vs evil morality we saw in GOD DIES BY THE NILE. After Usama assasinates the Israeli officer, "sombre images fill Adil's mind. The dead officer, his grieving widow, the little girl stretched out on the ground, her pale, bare legs partly covered by Um Sabir's veil. People running through the streets, someone yelling, 'Leave a pig alone!' Bitterness flooded his heat. My cousin kills a man and I carry off his daughter. Tragedy or farce? Still, the memory of the Israeli woman's head on his shoulder, despite all the boundaries that divided people, seemed top opne the horizons of this narrow world." (172)
Those who compromise, however, are usually the ones to survive, so Adil must suffer to see his family home blown up by the Israelis: "Take a deep breath, Adil told himself. Tears. Dust. Fog. He could smell lemonwood through the acrid aroma of dust and crumbling stone. The lemon tree was burning in the rubble of the courtyard. The soldiers looked so arrogant in their dark cars. A thirst for reenge, for rebellion, stirred deep within him. I'm not cruel, but I'm filled with rage and bitterness, filled up to here. And these cowering crowds. And you yourself, Adil, a god of patience, that's what they say. What could be worse than admitting you're an impotent god, unable to assert your own rights or anyone else's? The process of ascent and fall goes on. A god-like ascent to the heights of Mount Aibal . And descent through seaweed into the gutters and decaying refuse. You search for yourself in other people's eyes, Adil. You find yourself mirrored in the eyes of the hungry, the nake, the homeless, those who live in tents. The winds and storms toss you in all directions. But the will to live still beats within you, defiant and instinctive. What can you do? Your spirit is bottled up; it can't find a way out. You experience sorrow, repress your emotions, and wait. Nevertheless! This mind of yours at least keeps you awake, wards off the drunkenness of indifference. Your heart rages and storms, yet the energy's suppressed by the machinery of oppression." (206)
But unlike the suicide bombers, Adil only thinks the thoughts and then goes back to his job working for the Israelis: "If only you were more cruel or harder of heart, you'd blow up everything you could lay hands on, from the Atlantic to the Gulf and on to the world's furthest reaches. You'd leave no two stones standing. You'd uproot the trees, exposing the infections beneath the earth's surface to the light of the sun, to the breezes of spring. You'd turn everything upside-down. And begin again. Slowly, very slowly. Here a seedling. There a tree. Here a flower. And you, young Sabir, a tall, broad-shouldered palm. Your hands would bring rocks from the depths of the earth and from the mountains. Those stones would shine like raw diamonds. We could colour them, decorate them, and build them into rows of beautiful houses that would stretch as far as the eye could see and stand for all eternity. The soldiers' metal detectors could ring all they liked, we wouldn't hear them." (207)
These are the thoughts Adil has as his enormous, ancient family house lays in ruins, the house that Khalifeh first described as "...a real, old-style mansion. There were marble pillars, high valuted ceilings and an open courtyard paved with huge stones. In the middle of the courtyard was a pool, surrounded by lemon trees and sweet-smelling jasmine. Arabesque plasterwork decorated the walls, stained glass lanterns reflected the light and the anitque chests in every room were inlaid with mother-of-pearl." (33)
As his world crumbles, Adil meditates on the poetry of nuclear terrorism-- to destroy all and begin again. Yet for Adil, he sees it only as a wish-fulfillment, a dream upon which he would never act. The novel closes as people go about their business, selling newspapers and other goods, buying vegetables, fruit and bread, surrendering to the same sad survival that Wiesel's holocaust victims did. Does Khalifeh give you insights into the souls of these men, that you don't see in the other two novels?
Week 9: China and The Soviet Union, great fascist states of the twentieth century. Lecture on Mao's Cultural Revolution and the Peking Revolutionary Opera. Red Azalea and Anthem.
Week 10 : Soul Mountain and Balzac and the Little Chinese Seamstress . Gao Xi Jiang won the Nobel Prize in Literature and Balzac was made into a movie. Compare the two styles—complex postmodern to simple, understated beauty.
Week 11: Assignment Due: First draft of cultural analysis from Prosecutor's POV, at least 4 pages.
Week 12: Mock Trials.
Week 13: Mock Trials.
Week 14: Research papers due the last day of class. International Feast.
Irritating Questions:
Exactly how does censored literature promote cross-cultural understanding? Wouldn't these issues just inflame people? Or must they always be introduced with the assumption that even nonfiction is fragmented and fabricated, exaggerated and manipulated to reveal the angst in the psyche and what lies under civilized behavior. So how do with deal with this material? The same way psychologists should do with humor, compassion and tolerance. It is also exciting and cathartic to experience things vicariously that we would never permit ourselves to enjoy in daily life.
How many authors, like Dan Brown, deliberately write about sensitive, controversial material, or actually try to get censored in order to get free publicity to enhance sales?
Would some of these books never get the exposure and popularity if they weren't censored?
Note how cultural expectations and differences determine what taboos each culture has.
What is most offensive to you now--something that is politically incorrect, racist, sexist? Pornographic?
Or something that makes Islamic militants brave, intelligent and human?
Or something that is so intellectual you can't understand it without an excellent dictionary and a good education?
Or a book that loses focus regarding the narrative thrust and doesn't make the story clear?
Or a book with no story?
Or a book where the ending is depressing and dismal?
Reference Books: The Bible, the Koran, news articles, Les Dossiers Secrets , Breaking the Da Vinci Code, Nabakov's autobiography SPEAK, MEMORY and the annotated LOLITA, Faith in War,
Anti-American Terrorism and the Middle East by the Rubins
Osama bin Laden's biography
The Hidden Face of Eve by Nawal el Saadawi
A Portrait of Egypt by Mary Anne Weaver
No God but God by Genevieve Abdo
Books by Ayman al Zawahiri and Sayyid Qutb
The True Believer by Eric Hoffer
Why I chose these Forbidden Fruits:
It is ironic that the Christian Right censored and eventually boycotted THE LAST TEMPTATION OF CHRIST, but seemed to love the more violent PASSION OF CHRIST by Mel Gibson. For them it is better to be cruel and bloody than to insinuate that Christ might have been tempted by carnal thoughts or even married Magdalene in a fantasy or alternative narrative, for that would make Jesus too human. The sin of Kazantzakis is that he humanized Christ when many Christians would prefer to imagine a perfect person (according to Catholic doctrine) running around the earth. Kazantzakis is a very sensuous writer so he imbues all his characters with that Zorba the Greek lust for life, thereby making Jesus' sacrifice all the greater because he had so much to give up. However, this logic did not appease the Christian Right or the Vatican who banned the book and the film. No one wants to imagine Jesus with a wife and family, except some of the Muslims!
The Vatican also censored the DA VINCI CODE because Brown maintains that the research on the secret societies and the Opus Dei's world headquarters in New York is accurate, thereby indicting the Pope, the Catholic church and this society on a superificial read, although a more careful study shows that the book could be interpreted in many ways. The fact that the book is so popular was one reason that John Paul II forbad his flock to read it. Brown based his research on Les Dossiers Secrets, a fascinating document that describes the connection between Da Vinci and Victor Hugo, Isaac Newton, Botticelli et al and the Priory of Sion as well as other key elements in Brown's plot. Brown's style is American plainspeak:simplistic, often clich?-ridden, utilitarian, technical at times, but always subservient to the dramatic structure of a thriller and the narrative thrust of the detective novel. At one point I was reading LOLITA and the DA VINCI CODE and couldn't stand Brown's writing, until I concentrated on the plot and imagined I was reading the New York Post. Some of you will prefer Brown to Nabakov because he is more accessible, and he writes in a way that pleases American agents and publishers. In this book, the story is more interesting to me than the narrative or linguistic styles. What do you think
Although Ayn Rand associated individualism with American capitalism in the twentieth century, writing a litany to selfhood and selfishness in ANTHEM, a book obviously banned by the former Soviet Union, nowadays multinational corporations have turned their employees into robots and destroyed the kind of individualism for which Rand left her homeland. Some people like the romantic mindscape of her novels such as THE FOUNTAINHEAD, while others criticize her lack of character depth and dimension. Her writing is simple, clear and didactic, but Gao Xi Jiang is a stylist, influenced by French twentieth century aesthetics and Chinese pen and ink drawings. In ONE MAN'S BIBLE, he also articulates a creed to individualism, but his structure is complicated by recursive narrative, flashbacks, changing points of view through an innovative use of pronouns, and a more complex linguistic style. After all he won the Nobel Prize in Literature. For those of you who would like a journey through China 's ancient mountains and Buddhist temples, read SOUL MOUNTAIN . He was naturally a big threat to China 's revolutionary communist culture, so much so that he helped them out at one point by burning his books.
CHILDREN OF GEBELAAWI, in some ways, is the Muslim version of THE LAST TEMPTATION OF CHRIST in that it humanizes the prophets, Adam, Moses, Jesus and Mohammad. The militant offshoots of the Muslim Brotherhood:Gama al Islamiya and Egyptian Islamic Jihad:were infuriated that Mohammad, peace upon him, is interpreted as a hashish-smoking womanizer. While they don't believe Mohammad is the son of God, he is still an ideal man whose way is followed through the hadiths. By focusing on his alleged weaknesses, it sends the wrong message to Muslims. They also interpreted the novel literally, not seeing that old man Gebelaawi was a satire of the fatherly god so many of us need instead of the supreme, abstract being that is so hard to imagine. While Egyptian leaders such as Nasser and Mubarak always defended Mahfouz'work, the famous Al Azhar university banned CHILDREN OF GEBELAAWI as soon as it came out in 1959. It was published in Beirut in 1967 but banned again when Sheik Omar Abdel Rahman (New Yorkers know him well for plotting the first World Trade Center bombing in 1994) said in 1989 that Rushdie would never have had the nerve to write SATANIC VERSES if Mahfouz had been properly punished for his book. If you are the prosecutor, it's probably best to be Sheikh Omar. Maybe you can even interview him in jail! Anyway, the jihadhis got so mad that an internal fatwa was issued against Mahfouz and they tried, unsuccessfully, to assassinate him. They did succeed in damaging the nerves in his writing arm, a kind of living death for a writer. Mahfouz won the Nobel Prize for this book and the CAIRO TRILOGY and is one of the greatest Arab writers of all time. He combines the breadth and depth of a Tolstoy, Hugo or Dickens with contemporary politics and innovative Arabic narrative styles.
GOD DIES BY THE NILE again was taken literally by the Jihadhis who did not see that it was that distorted view of god as the mayor of the village who was killed by Zakeya, a female peasant. However Nawal el Saadawi has angered the Egyptian government for years because of her work with women--spelling out the physical and psychological effects of clitorectomies and abusive treatment. As a doctor, Saadawi only told the truth but it was a truth the government wanted to hide. In fact clitorectomies weren't banned until 1997 after a CNN documentary enraged the world. This means that many women living in Egypt today, including Saadawi, have been brutally mutilated. In addition to having her work banned, she was also imprisoned by Nasser because of it. This novel is probably her best literary endeavor, using the rising and setting of the sun to mark the horrendous episodes of her plot, crafting a magical story where the Ordinary and Special World fuse and tangle in an imaginative ways. Her female characters are better developed than the men who are often limited and one-dimensional, but even today in Egypt , sexual segregation is the rule de jour.
WILD THORNS was banned by Israel because of the injustices described at the checkpoint and bulldozing the homes. In fact, some of my Israeli students never even heard of the book although it is well read in America . When one Israeli read it, he cried because, "I had no idea the Palestinians were so badly off." Sahar Khalifeh's structure is classical although she diverges with multi-protagonists and a focus on the community. Most of Marwan Barghouti's work is banned because he is still sitting in an Israeli jail. In any war, the government likes to document the struggle in a favorable light, and while Kahlifeh humanizes both Israelis and Palestinians and even has them show sympathy and even love for each other, her book does not make the Israeli army look good.
I SAW RAMALLAH by Marwan Barghouti was banned in Israel where he is in jail.
THIS BLINDING ABSENCE OF LIGHT is a kind of Moroccan version of the Gitmo dilemma except it is probably worse, revealing how political prisoners slowly rot. The Moroccan monarchy imagines itself as an enlightened bridge between Europe and Islam and so it is for the most part, but while Morocco constructs beautiful mosques like the immense one in Casablanca, and caters to upscale tourists with lavish hotels, villas and a new film industry, there is a deep divide between the rich and the poor, and an absence of the kind of democracy that might even it out. Tahar ben Jalloun ironically writes in French and lives in Paris , and uses a contemporary postmodern linguistic and structural style to plummet the perversities and imperfections in Islam, Arabic culture and governments where nepotism and despotism are the reign de jour. Obviously the kings don't like their dirty secrets aired in public. I was in Marrakesh this past January and noticed the subtle undercurrents of political unrest even though everyone purports to love the new kind, Mohammad, who recently abolished polygamy, cut the ribbon at the new film center, and secretly dates men as well as women.
MY NAME IS RED, a murder mystery with a plethora of pass-the-ball narrators situated in the guilds of miniaturist painters during the Ottoman Empire would seem like a strange book to censor, but it depicts a kind of aesthetic Islam that is abhorrent to the puritan, pristine strands of the Wahhabi movement in Saudi Arabia . In fact the House of Saud developed as a rebellion against the excesses of the Ottoman sultans as well the transcendental and chemical excesses of the whirling dervishes. While Saudi Arabia is slowly loosening up, it has banned a great many books that make Islam seem a little too colorful. It is composed mainly of Sunnis, who also find the Shiite version of Islam in Iran too iconic for their taste. In Mecca , everything is black and white and human forms cannot be represented in art or photography. There is a little color in Medina but no human forms. Orhan Pamuk documents this dilemma clearly in his book where the artists are torn between the Persian traditions and the new wave of Frankish painters of representational art, but to many Muslims, this is blasphemous. There is no God but God and neither artists nor scientists should be creative in that sense. What sections of the Koran or hadiths reinforce this view? I met Pamuk at Bard last year and he also got into trouble with local jihadhis for his book SNOW. He says that when you write, you must have the courage to make enemies:for you will. His favorite writers are Nabakov and Proust and he is writing a book on baby boomer sex in Istanbul in the seventies. I wonder whom this will anger. It is difficult for some Western readers to get used to the pass-the-ball multiple narrator sequencing, also used in many Egyptian novels, because it comes from ancient Bedouin caravan tales. I recently finished a novel, UNCLASHING CIVILIZATIONS, where 18 nonhuman narrators carry the story and I can testify that it is difficult to write, but very rewarding, giving the story many points of view and rhythm. On a second read, it may help to read all the monologues of each narrator, i.e. Black, Red, Olive etc. because that is what I did on rewrites and I am sure Pamuk did the same. Many Islamic writers do not care for completely omniscient narrators because only Allah is omniscient; by sharing the story, each narrator colors it with its own imperfections while trying to preserve something about the story that stays the same. Linguistic style does not differ much from narrator to narrator because they are trying to pass the ball and preserve the story. Every culture has its own story expectations. For most of you, Dan Brown may be the easiest read and you may feel that reading a Turkish novelist is lying getting trapped in a time warp in Istanbul . That is the idea and purpose of the course--to expose you to things that are difficult and different.
LIPSTICK JIHAD is an interesting memoir written by a very young Iranian-Californian journalist. Don't worry--it is very easy to read as she spent most of her life in California . While it is not great literature, it reveals the social life of Iranians after the Islamic revolution and how they over-reacted to suppression and censorship with an obsessive focus on superficial looks, cosmetics, clothes, drugs and liquor. It really is a lipstick jihad. When I personally visited all these Islamic countries, I was happy to wear hijab and abaya and not have to worry about my looks for I feel the lookist industry is as damaging as some of these Iranian positions, only because it is subtle and therefore more insidious. Why should women spend a fortune and waste hours of precious time trying to look like 19-year-old models, who only exist in a retouched photo? However, neither Moaveni nor the author of READING LOLITA IN TEHRAN see it this way, assuming that make-up and fancy clothes, drinking alcohol and smoking are simply expressions of freedom. In their world this may be the case but any kind of conformity can be enforced to create its own form of imprisonment. As a scholar and professor, Nafisi's book has more literary merit and her insights and point of view on other banned books such as LOLITA help us with this course.
Nabakov is the greatest American stylist of all time. (Argue with me!) No native born American writes as well as he does. His relationship towards the narrator is complex and it does almost seem as if it is his story, but in reality it is just a novel. For my part, I feel more empathy for Humbert Humbert and Charlotte because they were trapped in horrible prisons while Lola was able to get and about, actually stand up to her oedipal figure and run away from him instead of harboring unconscious fantasies that would prevent relationships to others. The plot and structure are simple and linear but the language is rich and complex, although much more homogeneous than SATANIC VERSES. LOLITA was banned by everyone at one time because, even though the molester/murderer is on trial, honestly confessing to his faults, Nabokov makes his seductions titillating, tempting, luscious:truly a forbidden fruit. However, with his screenplay, directed by Stanley Kubrick, he shows how he can conform to, manipulate and satirize American culture. But four American publishers refused to accept his manuscript because it was too linguistically complex, so it was first published in Paris.
LADY CHATTERLY'S LOVER by D.H. Lawrence was banned in the United States because of the sexuality.
SATANIC VERSES is a kind of Indian postmodern ULYSSES only Rushdie's classical reference is THE METAMORPHOSIS by OVID rather than Homer's ODYSSEY. The first few chapters show imaginative linguistic buoyancy, which occasionally degenerates into coded discourse and a hybrid vernacular. However, very few people actually read this book. It has been banned in almost every Islamic country and there is still a fatwa out to kill Rushdie. Like Mahfouz, Rushdie humanizes Mohammad as a womanizer but his tongue is more acerbic and bitter and he is definitely an infidel while Mahfouz is still a Muslim. Muslims also don't like the focus on the Satanic Verses that were supposedly excised from the Koran for the same reasons that the Pope banned Brown's books. But SATANIC VERSES on one level is simply the quasi-psychotic ravings of an Indian ex-patriot as he flies home to India from England to visit his dying father. One could argue that a mishmash of postmodern, magical realism, Joycean symphonies and a thousand tongues are playing inside his head. The problem occurs when people want to take literature literally without humor and compassion, expecting it to be a blueprint for the didacticism, which infiltrates their lives. But if their faith is so secure, why are they threatened by words on a page, unless those words refer to the weaknesses in their arguments that they don't want people to see?
On one level, almost every book is a forbidden fruit to someone--the author's family, workplace, country, village, lover etc. To write is to draw the good and bad of life and few of us want to be reminded of our faults. In our jobs and with our families we forge ahead with an optimism which is often blind to the darker possibilities of things. When these are combusted in drama, they can frighten everyone.
Every culture has its taboos and its favorite stories. The Campbell paradigm shows the storyteller crossing the threshold from the rules and regulations of the Ordinary World to a Special World with its own reality and returning home resurrected with an elixir for the community. Great art is often liminal, dancing on the border between the accepted and the forbidden, the conventional and the dangerous. The subject of this paper is fiction, or non-fiction memoir that is fictionalized, so that issues of accuracy, and truth in reporting are not applicable and should be left to journalism, history and biography. I claim that the purpose of fiction is to hover between the dangerous and the conventional, teasing us with what is forbidden, plummet our collective unconscious and describing and catharsizing our pain, lust, envy, hopes and fears. Literature should be able to be an act of terror, so that we don't have to have real terrorist attacks that actually kill people. Let us kill and maim the characters of fiction in a non-literal way so that we exorcise these demons.
The main cultural taboos relate to scientific discoveries (Pandora's box), versus religion and ethics, sex, pornography, adultery, rape, molestation, violence, politics and more subtle forms of censorship where a work is not published or promoted if it is too intellectual, complex, or sympathetic to unpopular characters or concepts. In the twentieth century, most of the novels of great writers were censored.
What worlds are the most oppressive in the books we read? When, where and how should literature be censored, or should it always be 'free?' Does America censor its literature by simply not allowing it to be published, for financial or commercial reasons? Does America censor literature when it becomes too intellectual?
If you read ONE MAN'S BIBLE and CHILDREN OF GEBELAAWI at the same time, you will note certain similarities and differences. Both Mahfouz and Gao Xingjian won the Nobel Prize for Literature and both are intensely involved with the political regimes of their countries, hating all forms of repression. Stylistically, Xingjian's description is more visual and Mahfouz' more auditory, as befits their respective cultures. Xingjian's structure is recursive, a wheel stuck in mud or a fly cut in a web, alternating a second person narrative in the present with a third person narrative in the past. The following passage describes his difficulties with this extraction of memory--
"Remote childhood is hazy, but some bright spots float up in memories. When you pick up one end of a thread, memories that have been submerged by time gradually appear and, like a net emerging from the water, they are interconnected and infinite. The more you pull, the more threads seem to appear and disappear. Now that you have picked up one end and again pulled up a whole mass of happenings from different times, you can't start anywhere, can't find a thread to follow. It's impossible to sort them to put them into some knd of order. Human life is a net, you want to undo a knot at a time, but only succeed in creating a tangled mess. Life is a muddled account that you can't work out." (41)
But he does use the voluptuous presence of the German woman in the present to nurture him enough to have the courage to plummet his painful memories of past life under Mao's regime. He can only take so much at a time, so he constantly returns to the present.
Gao's writing was considered pornographic and reactionary. (It's ironic that American literary agents wanted Nabakov to be more pornographic by writing simple sentences with a mechanical, literal focus.) During Mao's regime, all forms of adultery were punished, and citizens were not allowed to get married until 26.
In the twenties, the American Dream was Forbidden Fruit for many Americans. Langston Hughes captures this dilemma brilliantly in his poem, Harlem--
What happens to a dream deferred?
Does it dry up
Like a raisin in the sun?
Or does it fester like a sore -
And then run?
Does it stink like rotten meat?
Or crust and sugar over like a syrupy sweet?
Maybe it just sags like a heavy load.
Or does it explode?
My favorite descriptive passage from The Great Gatsby is because I love the way he personifies the lawn and uses kinesthetic imagery to capture the brazen energy and grandiosity of the nouveau riche and the role the women, particular Daisy, play in this splendid charade-- "Their house was even more elaborate than I expected, a cheerful red and white Georgian Colonial mansion overlooking the bay. The lawn started at the beach and ran toward the front door for a quarter of a mile, jumping over sun-dials and brick walls and burning gardens--finally when it reached the house drifting up the side in bright vines as though from the momentum of its run. The front was broken by a line of French windows, glowing now with reflected gold, and wide open to the warm windy afternoon, and Tom Buchanan in riding clothes was standing with his legs apart on the front porch.
He had changed since his New Haven years. Now he was a sturdy, straw-haired man of thirty with a rather hard mouth and a supercilious manner. Two shining, arrogant eyes had established dominance over his face and gave him the appearance of always leaning aggessively forward. Not even the effeminate swank of his riding clothes could hide the enormous power of that body--he seemed to fill those glistening boots until he strained the top lacing and you could see a great pack of muscle shifting when his shoulder moved under his thin coat. It was a body capable of enormous leverage--a cruel body....
We walked through a huge hallway into a bright rosy-colored space, fragilely bound into the house by French windows at either end. The windows were ajar and gleaming white against the fresh grass outside that seemed to grow a little way into the house. A breeze blew through the room, blew curtains in at one end and out the other like pale flags, twisting them up toward the frosted wedding cake of the ceiling-- and then ripple over the wine-colored rug, making a shadow on it as wind does on the sea.
The only completely stationary object in the room was an enormous couch on which two young women were buoyed up as though upon an anchored balloon. They were both in white and their dresses were rippling and fluttering as if they had just been blown back in after a short flight around the house. I must have stood for a few moments listening to the whip and snap of the curtains and the groan of a picture on the wall. Then there was a boom as Tom Buchanan shut the rear windows and the caught wind died out about the room and the curtains and the rugs and the two young women ballooned slowly to the floor." (11-12) Note the synesthesia--"groan of a picture," the use of dashes to make the description dynamic, and the way these short passages show how completely Tom dominates the scene, physically, sexually, materially--but maybe not spiritually.
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