Midnight's Children

I finished re-reading Midnight’s Children. I really should have spend the time reading something else. It’s not the monumental work of literature so many profess it to be. It’s rather good, with a sophisticated but simple and playful narrative tone, some amusing circumstances and lashings of India, but I’m not sure it will endure. It’s just too specific, too limited, too personal. And I find magical realism quite tiresome, being neither one thing nor the other, and lacking the freedom of either. And to be honest, it all gets rather tiresome.

One thing I didn’t expect it to be is dated. But it is. Literature needs to move on, I feel, and I think the first step is cultural acceptance – which doesn’t mean writing lots of Eastern-influenced pseudo-esotericism (though admittedly I’m using that bandwagon as a hook in my attempts to get a literary agent – but it never influenced my writing, and my influences are the nicely mashed-up, non-specific works I’m propounding). It means not thinking that because something is influenced by another culture, it is mystical, superior and above editing. A good story is a good story, wherever and whenever it is set, by whomever it is told. Similarly, some books, like Midnight’s Children, are bloated and ponderous and in need of major cutting, even if they’re intertwined with the identity of a specific country.

Cultural acceptance is when we recognise the influences beneath the themes of a novel, absorb them, recognise them but do not dwell on them. If anything, pigeonholing Rushdie and any other writers from other cultures (including émigré Russian literature) is reductive, counterproductive and destructive: a twee rhyme that encapsulates how risible I find notions such as, ‘This must be good because this is ancient’, ‘It’s Chinese so it must have deep spiritual value’ or indeed, ‘It’s Japanese: it’s cool’. Each writer must be assessed on their merits. I for one am tired of hearing that because a writer is black, Indian, feminist, working-class, young or indeed a struggling single mother, their work must be above all criticism.

This has strayed a long way from Rushdie’s book, and I’m not criticising writers. It’s the zeitgeist, not some nefarious plot. Rushdie has talent, but his book did nothing for me emotionally, except occasionally raise a smile. I didn’t dislike it – nor is it the great masterpiece it’s supposed to be. I think that it hit a nerve, but then, so did dozens of forgotten Booker winners. Time will tell what endures. If Rushdie’s book does, I will be surprised.