Why I Am Afraid Of Salman Rushdie

Today's post is not strictly Booker related, but it does directly affect my reading, so please bear with me!

This weekend, I discovered something distasteful about myself: I want to be liked. Now, that's not such a huge revelation, I realize most people want to be liked, but I've always considered myself to be firmly in the "I don't care what people think about me" camp. I want to be that aloof, independent person, and I'm trying to reassess my self image now that I know I'm not.

What happened was I had a new book to read, and two-and-a-half free days in which to get a good solid start on it before my work week, but I only managed to read four pages of it. The book, of course, is Salman Rushdie's "Midnight's Children" - by all accounts a superb novel, one of the greatest English-language novels of the last century, and one I was quite looking forward to reading. So, really, what was the problem? Why was I finding Anything else to occupy my time with to avoid reading? I actually resorted to doing laundry! Admittedly, I didn't stoop to doing dishes, but if there weren't so many hockey games on I'm sure I would've gotten sudsy!

At first I thought I was afraid of Salman Rushdie, afraid that the genius of his writing would prove too much for my feeble mind and the novel would leave my weak brain a quivering mass of gelatin. It's actually not too far from my actual fear, and may yet be proven true (if you don't hear from me again, send flavour crystals in mourning - everybody likes a jello salad!) but I hadn't even given the book a fair chance to intimidate me properly! Why couldn't I even start the book?

Then, a comment from a friend highlighted my true worries. She told me she loved "Midnight's Children", and something in me twinged and I thought, 'but what if I don't?' What if I don't love one of the greatest novels of our time? What if *gasp* I hate it? Even worse, what if it fails to touch me at all? Is it possible that I am in some fundamental way damaged by my years of devouring genre fiction, so much so that I can no longer appreciate a masterpiece of literature? And, if so, what will people think of me? My friend who loved it, the customers at my book store, all of you, perhaps even Mr. Rushdie himself - what would you think if I don't love it? I couldn't start reading, for fear that I wouldn't like it and therefore people wouldn't like me.

It's all a bit absurd. I don't want to care whether people like me, and I'm honestly having a hard time figuring out why I think anyone else would really care if I don't love this novel. But I do, on both counts.

Which brings me to something another (brilliant!) friend of mine once told me. 'All the mean things that you worry other people are thinking about you are just reflections of the mean things you think about other people.' Ouch. Its true, though. I know I'm disappointed when a friend doesn't like something I love, even more so than if they don't bother to read it at all. I guess I see them as being just a little less cool, because they're a little less like me. How vain am I, right? But it's true. It's ugly, and I don't like any of it, but it's my truth. Now that I'm aware of these thought patterns I'm going to combat them, because that's a person I really don't want to be.

I'm nearly a fifth into "Midnight's Children" now, and I'm enjoying it. Mr. Rushdie has a good sense of humour, which always wins my heart in a book. His style is very elegant also, with story elements looping back on themselves building up the narrative. So, I like it. And I'm trying not to care if that makes me 'cooler' or not.

Happy reading!