Earth-shakingly Beautiful Women, Dolls, Murder and the Internet, but no Telepathy-'Life is fury....' (Fury - Salman Rushdie)

Member Name: beoram

Product:	Fury - Salman Rushdie
Date:	16/11/01 (973 review reads)
Rating:

Advantages: excellent, like all of Rushdie's work, interesting in view of 11.09.01

Disadvantages: shorter than usual, no 'magic realism', like in other books

FURY is a novel which is difficult to place in relation to Rushdie’s other works. It does not stand so far outside the body of the rest of his work as does his first novel GRIMUS [a sci-fi fantasy novel with an Amerindian, rather than ‘India-Indian’, protagonist], yet it does not seem to quite belong with MIDNIGHT’S CHILDREN or even his most recent preceding novel THE GROUND BENEATH HER FEET. On the prosaic side, it is much shorter than his other novels (a mere 279 pages); however, it also simply has a different feel from his other books (see more on this below). One practical effect of FURY’s brevity (compared to his other works) is that we do not get to see the entirety of all of the characters. There are some characters, who though very vividly invoked, make but brief appearances in the novel (much more characteristic of a Mike Leigh film than a Rushdie novel). I do not think FURY is quite the equal of MIDNIGHT’S CHILDREN, but their differences make them hard to compare (and, my rating shows that I still think FURY an excellent book). That said, I would still rather recommend MIDNIGHT’S CHILDREN or THE MOOR’S LAST SIGH to a reader who wants an introduction into Rushdie’s work.

Despite being set in New York (and despite some reviews to the contrary), FURY is not an ‘American’ novel. It is a novel by an author who, like FURY’s hero Prof. Malik Solanka, was bred in Bombay, educated in London and recently taken up residence in the USA. Besides, it does not seem particularly useful to attempt to classify Rushdie’s books by such national adjectives, at least no more than to see Joyce’s FINNEGAN’S WAKE as an ‘Irish’ novel. FURY involves America, India and England (as well as Fiji, under the Swiftian pseudonym ‘Lilliput-Blefuscu’).

The story itself is part murder-mystery, part romance, part sci-fi, part political allegory—it is a bit
ter satire of the ‘money-mad burg’ of New York and black comedy about human nature in general (thus, again, not really centred on America in particular). While dark and perhaps disturbing in parts, these elements are mixed with a moving love-story and the novel is filled with many moments of lighter humour.

As in his previous novel THE GROUND BENEATH HER FEET, Rushdie examines the relation of the artist to his creation and his audience. Solanka is a Cambridge-philosopher-turned-dollmaker who has unwittingly (and unwillingly) created a pop-culture phenomenon that represents almost everything he despises about modern culture. His pop-culture heroine, a BBC-TV star named Little Brain, originates as an intelligent, if irreverent, girl-doll who travels through time to have discussions with people like Galileo. However, Solanka loses control over Little Brain and the TV programme becomes internationalised, low-brow, mindless drivel (in Solanka’s opinion at least).

The title refers to the somewhat inexplicable fury (part of it seems to stem from the ‘Little Brain saga’) of the protagonist, who at one point in time finds himself standing over his sleeping wife and son with a kitchen knife and at another point suspects himself of being the serial killer (in a sort Jekell-Hyde fashion) murdering women in NYC with a block of concrete. It is this fury which causes him to flee London, without a word of explanation to his family, for New York, seeking to ‘define’ himself—or, rather, erase himself: Eat me, America, he prays, and give me peace. But the fury is not just that of the protagonist, but of almost everyone in the novel: Muslim taxi-drivers curse mindlessly at the other traffic in Urdu. Solanka’s black friend Jack Rhinehart turns from being one the harshest critics of rich WASPish Americans (one kind of ‘racial’ fury) to trying to join their ‘club’ (and experiences another kin
d of ‘racial’ fury-frustration at not being fully ‘admitted’). It also concerns the ‘political’ fury of one of the female protagonists, Neela Mahendra, at the treatment of Indian ‘Lilliputians’ by the indigenous ‘Lilliput-Blefuscians’. Also, the Greek Furies themselves put in a sort of appearance at one point.

Having left his family and retreated into the anonymity of New York (a strange kind of modern sanyasi-behaviour?), the first part of the novel partly concerns his relationship with Mila Milo, a young Slavic-American girl who is a sort of fashion-chic-guru to a consortium of young computer-technology wizards. This relationship has reverberations of Lolita (due to the age difference and implications about Mila’s father) as well as Pygmalion (as Mila reveres and emulates Little Brain, particularly her pop-culture manifestation). Mila is key to the latter development of Solanka’s new creation: an internet sci-fi saga about a cyberneticist whose android-creations (like Solanka’s Little Brain doll) eventually no longer obey his wishes (this mini-story about the relation between human and androids is also reminiscent of some of the issues about ‘humanness’ raised in Philip K Dick’s DO ANDROIDS DREAM OF ELECTRIC SHEEP? [and the film BLADERUNNER, derived from that novel] ).

The main female protagonist in the novel, the one who pulls Solanka out of his fury and despair, is the ethereal, apsara-like, literally traffic-stopping Indian beauty (or, rather, Indo-Lilliputian beauty), Neela Mahendra. This character is transparently Rushdie’s current girl-friend, the South Indian model/actress/cookery-book-writer Padma Lakshmi [see my review of her book EASY EXOTIC], down to the herringbone scar on her right arm. This and other aspects of the novel make one feel it to be perhaps the most autobiographical of Rushdie’s novels, though not in any unpleasan
t way. The latter part of the novel is primarily focussed on Solanka & Neela’s relationship and Neela’s part in the revolutionary activities in Lilliput-Blefuscu [read Fiji].

One of the striking differences between FURY and Rushdie’s previous novels is the lack of what is often called ‘magic realism’. There is nothing akin to the telepathic or other extra-ordinary abilities of the Midnight’s Children in FURY (even Neela’s ability to stop traffic Rushdie claims—and I don’t doubt it—is true of her model Padma). The closest FURY comes to that sort of Rushdiesque touch of the not-quite-natural is the blending which occurs between Solanka’s sci-fi internet saga about androids who revolt against their maker and the uprising of the Indo-Lillputians who start wearing masks based on the some of the android characters in Solanka’s e[lectronic]-epic.

My opinion of FURY is that it is outstanding, like all of Rushdie’s novels, even if it is very different from his normal fare. Again, I would recommend some of his earlier novels to those unfamiliar with Rushdie, but Rushdie-fans definitely should not miss FURY. Also, as some other reviewers have observed, FURY takes on a new relevance in the aftermath of the 11 Sep. events (the fury that incited them, as well as the fury they have provoked).

Summary: