Salman
Rushdie’s “Shalimar the Clown” begins with the murder of the former American
ambassador to India, Max Ophuls, and then proceeds to tell the events leading
up to his death at the hands of a Kashmiri militant, Shalimar, on the former
ambassador’s daughter’s doorstep. It is a tale of larger than life
personalities, of opposing players on the world stage whose personal worlds
also intersect, and do so in ways that are, perhaps, more important than the
intersection of their political lives. It is a story in which personal honor
trumps the importance of a particular cause and provides a motive for action
and life itself.
It is a
story that begins in the 1930s, against the backdrop of an Alsatian printing
shop run by a Jewish family in the years before World War II. The story tells
of Max Ophuls’s youth, his days as a freedom fighter during the Great War, and
his legendary flight out of France as the first pilot of a top secret fighter
jet. Then, the backdrop changes, and readers find themselves in the valley of
Kashmir, where ominous portents suggest an unkind end to the tranquility that has
blessed the professional entertainers of the town of Pachigam. Against this
backdrop, a young love blossoms between the daughter of the Indian pandit and the
son of the village’s chief, a Muslim. It is a welcome, though anomalous love,
for in Pachigam, as in much of Kashmir at the time, Muslims and Indians live peacefully
alongside one another, though it is uncommon for them to intermarry. Despite
the promise of young love, ominous portents must have their way, and eventually
Pachigam, along with the rest of Kashmir, is plunged into a war of ethnic and
national strife.
Shalimar
the clown comes into his own during this turmoil, nursing personal hatreds and
vowing to take back his honor from those who have taken it from him. The
novel’s timeline catches back up to itself, and readers are returned to the
doorstep where Max Ophuls lies in a pool of his own blood. But, the story is
not finished, for Shalimar the clown must still reckon with the
late-ambassador’s daughter before the novel can be fully played out.
Like
all Rushdie novels, Shalimar the Clown
delves deeply into the background of its central characters. Rushdie uses his
keen insight to develop the minds and motives of his characters. He uses these
characters and their personal histories to depict Kashmiri identities, and the
struggles of Kashmiri’s to establish their own national identity on the world
stage. To create this perspective, Rushdie uses his characters’ similar pasts
to draw parallels between resistance fighters in the Alsace-Lorraine territory
during World War II, and the Kashmiri fight for independence from India and
Pakistan. But, as much as Rushdie wants to create a parallel, he also wants to
emphasize differences, because it is differences—in choice, personality, and
values—that drives the different outcomes of his various characters’ lives.
Ultimately,
the story moves toward a compelling end, one that seems to promise a striking
resolution, but one that ultimately refuses to draw its own firm conclusions;
it refuses to provide a dénouement. Instead, the novel insists that the reader
actively participate in the story’s conclusion.
Admittedly,
this is not my favorite Rushdie novel. The book fails to live up to the epic
quality of novels such as “Midnight’s Children” and “The Satanic Verses.”
Compared to other Rushdie novels of its size, like “The Moor’s Last Sigh,”
“Shalimar the Clown” seems to lack thoroughness, as if it would benefit from a
wider scope, or, at least, a large page count. Though it dives deeply into its
characters’ backstories and personalities, the novel seems to have failed to
completely plumb the depths. Additionally, Rushdie seems to have tried to
distance himself from his iconic use of magical realism. While it would be
impossible to say that the novel was entirely lacking of magical realistic
elements, to say that these elements took a central stage in this novel—as they
have in others—would be incorrect. Instead the novel’s fantastical qualities
were pushed into the background. Rushdie would have done better to have embraced
the novel’s magical realist elements, or to have eschewed them entirely.
None of
this is to say that the novel wasn’t enjoyable. As always, Rushdie has presented
an articulate, well thought out, and potent piece of literature. If, at times,
the coincidences and parallels in the novel seem slightly overbearing, then
they only do so because lack of complete depth has forced these parallels to
become more striking than they normally would be in a novel of this caliber. I
recommend the book to anyone interested in reading one of Rushdie’s shorter
works, but only after they have read the more compelling novel, “The Moor’s
Last Sigh.”
JCM
6 August 2013
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