Salman Rushdie – The Moor’s last sigh 1996

This is a book about India and what the narrator, the Moor – a Jewish Christian in India, i.e. double outsider - loves about it.  And how all is lost, without the Moor or anyone else fighting for it.

Hence the title: the moor’s last sigh, i.e. the moment when Boabdil, the last King of the Alhambra, which he gave up to the Christian without fighting for it. Fleeing he turns one last time to it and sighs and his mother says: “That since he had not been able to defend it like a man, he was right in crying for it like a woman.”

Yet, I never managed to connect to the book. All the language games were funny, but somehow felt a bit like too technical, rather than engaging. It feels like a book about language, rather than a book about life. The single parts and quotes you see here make me interested in reading more. But as a book, it wasn’t gripping.

„Suspiro ergo sum.“ (Rushdie, 1996, p.81). „A sigh isn’t just a sigh. We inhale the world and breathe out meaning. While we can. While we can.“ (Rushdie, 1996, p.81).

„for Indian rats, as we know, carry gods as well as plagues.“ (Rushdie, 1996, p.175).

„My three sisters were born in quick succession, and Aurora carried and ejected each oft hem with such perfunctory attention to their presence that they knew, long befroe their births, that she would make few concessions to their post-partum needs. The names she gave them confirmed these suspicions. The eldest, originally called Christina in spite of her Jewish father’s protests, eventually had her name sliced in half. ‚Stop sulking, Abie,’ Aurora commanded. ‚From now on she’s plain Ina without the Christ.’ So poor In grew up wioth only half a handle, and when the second child was born a year later matters were made worse because this time Aurora insisted on ‚Inamorata’. Abraham protested again: ‚People will confuse,’ he said plaintively. ‚And with this Ina-more it is like saying she is Ina-plus ...’ Aurora shrugged. ‚Ina was a ten pound baby, the little so-and-so,’ she reminded Abraham. ‚Head like a cannonball, hips like a ship’s behind. How can this little pocket mousey be anything but Ina-minus?’ Within a week, she had decided that Baby Inamorata, the five-pound mouse, bore a close resemblance to a famous cartoon rodent – ‚all big ears, wide eyes and polka dots’ – and my middle suster was always Minnie after that. When Aurora announced, eighteen months later, that her newborn third daughter would be Philomina, Abraham tore his hair. ‚Now comes this Minnie-‚meena mix-up,’ he groaned. ‚And another –ina, too.’“ (Rushdie, 1996, p.199).

„the point I am making is that, while there can be no disputing that I was conceived in the Lord’s Central house, Matheran, it is also unarguably the case that when Baby Gargantua Zogoiby drew his first, surprising breath at the elite private nursing home-cum-nunnery oft he Sisters of Maria Gratiaplena on Altamount Road, Bomby, his physical development was already so advanced – a generous erection serving somewhat to impede his passage down the birth canal – that nobody in their right mond would have though of calling him half-formed.

Premature? Post-mature is much more like it.“ (Rushdie, 1996, p.205).

„if he opposed answer-and-question pairs there/where, then/when, that/what, thither/whither, thence/whence all existed, then, Vasco argued, ‚every this must also have ist whis, every these ist whese, every those its whoase.’“ (Rushdie, 1996, p.214).

„And if life is hard for ‚natural’ left-handers, how much harder it was for me – it turned out that I was a right-handed entity, a dexter, whose right hand just happened to be a wreck. It was as hard for me to learn to write with my left as it would be for any righty in the world.“ (Rushdie, 1996, p.217).

„the knowledge that life had dealt me a bad hand, and a freak of nature was obliging me to play it out too fast.“ (Rushdie, 1996, p.217).

„It seemed that in the pursuit of his chosen future he had shed all affiliations of blood and place, a decision which implied a certain ruthlessness, and hinted too, at instability. He was his own invention, and it should have occurred to Aurora – as it occurred to Abraham and to many members of their circle, as it occurred to my sisters but not to me that the invention might not work, that in the end it might fall apart.“ (Rushdie, 1996, p.222).

„I was secretly rejoicing in all that compacted humanity, in being pushed so tightly together that privacy ceased to exist and the boundaries of your self began to dissolve, that feeling which we only get when we are in crowds, or in love.“ (Rushdie, 1996, p.272).

„There was a knotty tree-stump pf a mole – signifying the recalcitrance of true faith – on her upper lip, and from it there protruded like arrows – hinting at the sufferings of a true believer – half a dozen needles of hair.“ (Rushdie, 1996, p.297).

„The very nature of this inter-community league of cynical self-interest gave the lie to Mainduck’s vision of a theocracy in which one particular variant of Hinduism would rule, while all India’s other people bowed their beaten heads.“ (Rushdie, 1996, p.3465).

„In room after empty room I found the settings of Aurora’s pictures brought to life, and I half-expected her characters to walk in and enact their sad narrative before my disbelieving eyes, half-expected my own body to frow into that lozenged, particoloured Moor whose tragedy – the tragedy of multiplicity destroyed by singularity, the defeat of Many by One – had been the sequence’s uniting principle.“ (Rushdie, 1996, p.570).

„Follow your instincts and outstincts! Here he may be undercover but you have seem him overcover!“ (Rushdie, 1996, p.581).

„Why should I believe a word of that Minto story, after all? O, I was lost in fictions.“ (Rushdie, 1996, p.583).

„How, when the past is gone, when all’s exploded and in rags, may one apportion blame?“ (Rushdie, 1996, p.584).

„’All of you ... terrible, terrible.’ Then after a pause: ‚Couldn’t you all have just ... calmed down?’“ (Rushdie, 1996, p.597).

„The Alhambra, Europe’s red fort, sister to Delhi’s and Agra’s – the palace of interlocking forms and secret wisdom, of pleasure-courts and water-gardens, that monument to a lost possibility that nevertheless has gone on standing, long after ist conquerors have fallen.“ (Rushdie, 1996, p.605).

„to that most profound of our needs, to our need for flowing together, for putting an end to frontiers, fort he dropping of boundaries oft he self.“ (Rushdie, 1996, p.605).

Dickens - Oliver Twist - 2006

Before reading it, I somehow thought it’s a children book. But it is oh so good: amazing, involving, colourful in tis language. Dickens paints pictures, surprises you, knocks you out. You name it.

So it is not single ideas, but the sheer power of language, that makes this book such a treat. 

„Although I am not disposed to maintain that the being born in a workhouse, is in itself the most fortunate and enviable circumstance that can possibly befall a human being, I do mea nto say that in this particular instance, it was the best thing for Oliver Twist that could by possibility occurred. The fact is, that there was considerable difficulty in inducing Oliver to take upon himself the office of respiration – a troublesom practice, but one which custom has rendered necessary to our easy existence; and for some time he lay gasping on a little flock mattress, rather unequally poised between this world and the next: the balance being decidedly in favour oft he latter. Now, if, during this brief period, Oliver had been surrounded by careful grandmothers, anxious aunts, experioences nursesm and doctors of profound wisdom, he would inevitably and undubitable have been killed in no time. There being nobofy by, however, but a pauper pöd woman, who was rendered rather musty by an unwonted allowance of beer; and a parish surgeon who did such matters bny contract; Oliver and Nature fought out the point between them. The result was, that, after a few struggles, Oliver breahed, sneezed, and proceeded to advertise tot he inmates oft he workhouse the fact of a new burden having been imposed upon the parish, by setting up as loud a cry as could reasonably have been expected from a male infant who had not been possessed of that very useful appendage, a voice, for a much longer space of time than three minutes and a quarter.“ (Dickens, 2006).

„But nature or inheritance had implanted a good sturdy spirit in Oliver’s breast. It had had plenty of room to expand, thanks to the spare diet of the establishment.“ (Dickens, 2006, p.14).

„Morning drew on apace. The air become sharp and piercing, as its first dull hue – the death of night, rather than the birth of day – glimmered faintyl in the sky.“ (Dickens, 2006, p.146).

„“The gallows,“ continued Fagin, „the gallows, my dear, is an ugly finger-post, which points out a very short and sharp turning that has stopped many a bold fellow’s career on the broad highway. To keep in the easy road, and keep it at a distance, is object number one with you.“

„Of course it is,“ replied Mr. Bolter. „What do yer talk such things for?“

„Only to show you my meaning clearly,“ said the Jew, raising his eyebrows. „To be able to do that, you depend upon me. To keep my little business all snug, I depend uponyou. The first is your number one, the second my number one. The more you value your number one, the more careful you must be of mine; so we come at last to what I told you at first – that a regard for number one holds us all together, and must do so, unless we would all go to pieces in company.“ (Dickens, 2006, p.227).

„Of all bad deeds that, under cover oft he darkness , had been committed within wide London’s bounds since nighthung over it, that was the worst. Of all the horrors that rose with an ill scent upon the morning air, that was the foulest and most cruel.

The sun – the bright sun, that brings back, not light alone, but new life, and hope, and freshness to man – burst upon the crowded city in clear and radiant glory. Through costly-coloured glass and paper-mended window, through cathedral dome and rotten crevice, it shed ist equal ray. It lighted up the room where the murdered woamn lay. It did. He tried to shut it out, but it would stream in. If the sight had been a ghastly one in the dull morning, what was it, now, in all that brilliant light!“ (Dickens, 2006, p.250).

Several short sentences on writing – Verlyn Klinkenborg 2012

This is a very interesting book that eliminates the fear of writing. Klinkenborg writes elegantly simple and urges the reader not to focus on meaning, style and structure but helps her on writing sentence by sentence. And all his tips will make you write better brief. Even just reading his style, will do so.

„One by one, each sentence takes the stage.

It says the yery thing it comes into existence to say.

Then it leaves the stage.

It doesn’t help the next one up or the previous one down,

It doesn’t wave to ist friends in the audience

Or pause to be acknowledged or applauded.“ (Klinkenborg, 2012, p.3).

„Many people assume there’s a correlation between the reader’s experience while reading and the writer’s experiencve while writing – her state of mind, her ease or difficulty in putting words together.

There isn’t.“ (Klinkenborg, 2012, p.8).

„Why short sentences? (...)they carry you back to a prose you can control. (...) Short sentences make it easier to examine the properties oft he sentence. (...) They help eliminate transitions. They make ambiguity less likely and easier to detect.“ (Klinkenborg, 2012, p.9).

„The obsession with transition negates a basic truth about writing,

A magical truth.

You can get anywhere from anywhere,

Always almost instantly.“ (Klinkenborg, 2012, p.26).

„The idea of a writer’s block, in ist ordinary sense,

Exists largely becaus oft he notion that wirting could flow.“ (Klinkenborg, 2012, p.69).

„Pursue clarity instead.

In the pursuit of clarity, style reveals itself.“ (Klinkenborg, 2012, p.85).

„We assume that thought shapes the sentence.

But thought and sentence are always a collaboration.“ (Klinkenborg, 2012, p.92).

„Try this:

No outline.

Research, reading, noticing, interviewing, traveling, paying attention, note taking – all the work you do to understand the subject, whatever it is, whatever kind of piece you’re writing.

Reread your notes, and take notes on them.

And again.

Take notes on your thoughts.

Most of all, take notes on what interests you.

Be certain you’ve makred out what interests you.

Don’t make an outline from your notes.“ (Klinkenborg, 2012, p.97).

„Sit back from the keyboard.

Sit back, and continue to think.

That’s where the work gets done.“ (Klinkenborg, 2012, p.105).

„The assumption that logic persuades the reader

Instead of the clarity of what you’re saying.

There’s little actual logic in good writing.“ (Klinkenborg, 2012, p.117).

„Writing doesn’t prove anything,

And it only rarely persuades.

It does something much better.

It attests.

It witnesses.

It shares your interest in what you’ve noticed.“ (Klinkenborg, 2012, p.117).

„And the scattering of rethorical tics – overused, nearly meaningless words and phrases.

In fact.

Indeed.

On the one hand.

On the other hand.

Therefore.

Moreover.

However.

In one respect.

Of course.

Whereas.

Thus.“ (Klinkenborg, 2012, p.118).

„These words take the reader’s head between their hands and force her to look where they want her to.

Imagine how obnoxious that is,

That persistent effort to predetermine and overgovern the reader’s response.“ (Klinkenborg, 2012, p.119).

„The false belief (...) That persuasion is just a „thus“ away.“ (Klinkenborg, 2012, p.119).

„If it doesn’t interest you, how could it possibly interest anyone else?“ (Klinkenborg, 2012, p.135).

„How else to explain our love of even difficult writers?

Their agility evokes our agility.

We move at their speed, elliptically, obliquely,

However they move.“ (Klinkenborg, 2012, p.141).