Okay. Greenland is still Greenland, and not New Puerto Rico. But what will the news be tomorrow? Every day we see another mind boggling headline, and shake our heads with dismay, bafflement and outrage.
Never before has a society needed to cope with such a barrage of impossibilities. This is where Salman Rushdie's Two Years Eight Months and Twenty-eight Nights comes in. Set in approximately 3015, it is about the bizarre occurrences that took place a thousand years earlier.
This novel was published in 2015, so written at a time when there was still a "jug-eared" but highly intelligent, wise, thoughtful and articulate president. Rushdie has been graced with the "prescience" label before, and should be again. Although the next president has not yet been elected in this novel, America, nevertheless, endures a time of "strangenesses".
Events happen that are so weird the population is dismayed, baffled and outraged. No one knows how to respond appropriately. In this novel, people lose their gravitational force, and float upward, while their neighbors pretend not to notice. Others are crushed by gravity until they are paper thin. A sea monster lunges upward and swallows the Staten Island Ferry.
Genies, the male one Jjins and the females Jjinias, appear on giant urns and magic carpets of lightning, huger than the Statue of Liberty, and ferocious, able to transform their bodies into giant transformer toys, blades emerging from their palms.
I'm not convinced this is magic realism; it seems more a graphic novel written with words, to paraphrase Rushdie. It often takes the form of Superhero comics, the main character and her enemies vanquishing one another with all kinds of antics.
The events are horrifying, not because of their violence, but because everyone in the novel is absolutely stumped. A gobsmacked population stammers, but has no notion of how to deal with the insane happenings.
.
There is allegory here. Rational and irrational thought are almost like characters, the rational beings people of science, the land, concrete and measurable objects. The irrational are the dogmatic, the people who dream up and defend abstract, religious principals that serve only to destroy.
On another note entirely, I have been dismayed by friends moaning about how if only Daenerys from The Game of Thrones could step into America and take care of business. This solution seems to be what we are reduced to, these days.
Rushdie creates an ambigious ending, where the "strangenesses" are eventually defeated. It won't soothe your disturbed soul, and it shouldn't, any more than Daenerys flying in to save America with her dragons.
Please face up to reality, volunteer for the candidates in your area who can conclude this realm of strangenesses, and vote.
Never before has a society needed to cope with such a barrage of impossibilities. This is where Salman Rushdie's Two Years Eight Months and Twenty-eight Nights comes in. Set in approximately 3015, it is about the bizarre occurrences that took place a thousand years earlier.
This novel was published in 2015, so written at a time when there was still a "jug-eared" but highly intelligent, wise, thoughtful and articulate president. Rushdie has been graced with the "prescience" label before, and should be again. Although the next president has not yet been elected in this novel, America, nevertheless, endures a time of "strangenesses".
Events happen that are so weird the population is dismayed, baffled and outraged. No one knows how to respond appropriately. In this novel, people lose their gravitational force, and float upward, while their neighbors pretend not to notice. Others are crushed by gravity until they are paper thin. A sea monster lunges upward and swallows the Staten Island Ferry.
Genies, the male one Jjins and the females Jjinias, appear on giant urns and magic carpets of lightning, huger than the Statue of Liberty, and ferocious, able to transform their bodies into giant transformer toys, blades emerging from their palms.
I'm not convinced this is magic realism; it seems more a graphic novel written with words, to paraphrase Rushdie. It often takes the form of Superhero comics, the main character and her enemies vanquishing one another with all kinds of antics.
The events are horrifying, not because of their violence, but because everyone in the novel is absolutely stumped. A gobsmacked population stammers, but has no notion of how to deal with the insane happenings.
.
There is allegory here. Rational and irrational thought are almost like characters, the rational beings people of science, the land, concrete and measurable objects. The irrational are the dogmatic, the people who dream up and defend abstract, religious principals that serve only to destroy.
On another note entirely, I have been dismayed by friends moaning about how if only Daenerys from The Game of Thrones could step into America and take care of business. This solution seems to be what we are reduced to, these days.
Rushdie creates an ambigious ending, where the "strangenesses" are eventually defeated. It won't soothe your disturbed soul, and it shouldn't, any more than Daenerys flying in to save America with her dragons.
Please face up to reality, volunteer for the candidates in your area who can conclude this realm of strangenesses, and vote.
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