ITS SALMAN AND HE’S OFF AGAIN
doncha just love him?
Mr Rushdie
doncha just love him?
I do
he must be my favourite living writer in the English language...
...
And you know what i think?
when i turn another page
after a page of delights
I think,
Hooray
its Salman and he’s off again
But i also think,
O Bloody Hell
its Salman and he’s off again...
On some beautifully measured flights of lyrical fancy
Because its great and i love him but, but...
Doncha just wish that he would calm down a bit sometimes?
Doncha?
Cos why does everything have to be so up? Why can’t anyone be normal? Why do they all have to be so bloody extraordinary?....
O there’s an enchanter and he’s the most amazing enchanter there ever was, and O there’s a woman and she’s the most beautiful woman in all of Asia, and there’s a scent shop and O, its full of the most wonderful and treasured and scents giving Salman any unneeded excuse to rattle off another long and marvellously written list of the ingredients of ancient perfumes
Which he probably did in his last book, or was that stuffed animals, or alchemists tools, or, whatever?
Whatever, who cares? Its Salman and its always marvellous
But O, there’s a temple builder so he’s the best temple builder there ever was...
You get my drift?
And O, there’s an engraver and, you know what, he’s the most amazing engraver you can imagine there ever was without using adjectives
He knows so much, that Salman, the knowledge keeps coming at you till you’re floating awash in a lyrical delirium growing within for as long as his ever-extending semi-ecstatic sentences...
And he either does know a hell of a lot, or he’s brilliant at making it seem like he does... Probably both
Cos i don’t know if Salman has ever had a character of an Egyptian Observer of the Royal Bowel Movement but, if he did, the royal priest’s mother would have been the most beautiful and enchanting woman in all of Egypt, his father used to make the clouds scatter purely by opening his mouth and letting out the lyrical beauty he was famed for on twelve continents in his youth but which unique gift he lost when he fell in love with the most beautiful glassblower ever, ever, who etc etc, and his sisters would weave the most perfect carpets ever heard of anywhere ever, ever, which began as childish art, curiously mimicking every known style of cave painting ever, ever, about which of course Salman seems to knows everything, so much so he can make knowledgeable jokes about it in a way which even ignorami like us can get, but which tapestries became Egyptian with puberty, Greek perspective with marriage and which, amazingly, foretold every artform there ever was and ever could be, ever and ever, so there...
O Salman, you are the dog’s bollocks but can’t you just calm down a bit and write something more imaginatively restrained in that beautiful matchless style of yours?
Not all the time, heaven forbid, and long may you live, and many books may you write, and prosper may you errr do, but just once, less lists and less bloody superlatives...
Why not?
Err... please
A very long list of all the words which have ever meant please in every language there ever was, kind of please...
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...
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First time i was in India i read three of his, Shalimar the Clown, The Ground Beneath Her Feet, The Moor’s Last Sigh...
And loved them... Shalimar the most ... [the writing]...
And the second time i motored through the Enchantress of Florence, which was then his latest... and somehow i was surprised by how marvellous it was
And i not long ago read Victory City... his latest
...
...
...
While a couple of decades back i made a list of my favourite living writers in the English language
And seeing how Phillip Roth and Toni Morrison and JG Ballard are now dead
its Salman
...
...
...
Salman, he doesn’t go up to Eleven
Salman begins at eleven
...
...
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THE JOYS OF SALMAN
...
the lilt
the cadence
from left to right and down
left to right and down
...
to turn the page
and stand the eye above the
downward roll of language
the eye-mind a little daunted at the
unbroken paragraph of the
long passage of words to come
for the eye-mind knows already the
long fluid sweep of the lines
as they lilt
from left to right and down
left to right and down
with a language so beautiful it needs not rhyme or meter
in a cadence
a sweep, a surge, a pulse
with each image a verbal incandescence
one following another following another
from left to right and down
left to right and down
a rhythm in the succession of motif
a sustain in the pursued idea
with a fluid lilt, a deft cadence
and a phrased precision
with the beauty insistent
the intelligence persistent
and a gently rocking in the line
from side to side and down
from side to side and down
with a billowing in the fleshing out of detail
and an exacting in the paring down to the
pertinent
in a gentle lilt, an easy cadence
rolling the eye-mind
from left to right and down
left to right and ...
up and ...
across
...
...
...
in other news
last evening on Neil Island
tomorrow a ferry to Rangat
up the islands
for a bus to Mayabunder
on our way to Diglipur
...
...
…
in other news
a metaphor the key
to unlocking
the door to
a passage to
a whole new realm of though
t
Salman, he doesn’t go up to Eleven
Salman begins at eleven
love this, can see you purrrrforming it jem
love from us in montréal
The likes of which the world has never seen, as one deranged world leader likes to say. He should read Salman. Is there a comic book edition?