Grimus

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To a large extent it has been disparaged by academic critics; though Peter Kemp's comment is particularly vitriolic, it does give an idea of the novel's initial reception: [1] "His first novel, Grimus (1975), a ramshackle surreal saga based on a 12th-century Sufi poem and copiously encrusted with mythic and literary allusion, nosedived into oblivion amid almost universal critical derision.

With Grimus, Rushdie composes a distorted reflection of The Conference of the Birds, magnified by a casual allusion to the misshapen birds which people “Grimushome” at the end of the novel, and indulges in a methodical, flippant undercutting of Attar’s epic poem. I don't recommend anyone who is thinking of reading Rushdie to think that as this is one of his shorter ones it would be a good one to start with, it really isn't a good read.In Grimus, the protagonist’s obsession with “home” is conveyed by a metaphor that owes much to The Conference of the Birds, as Grimus points out Flapping Eagle’s urge to home to roost: “Once you were nidifugous, fleeing the nest which bore you. There has been little gradual awakening to his own deliberate intellectual and moral non-conformity; it simply comes regardless. But after 777 years of sailing the world's seas, he becomes weary of life and sets out to find the mystical Calf Island, a place where his fellow immortals have gathered and created their own version of the human race. Philosophers, prostitutes, hunchbacks, ghosts, frog gods and tons of people crop up during the novel and they all leave an impact on Flapping Eagle's psyche but drag him into the weirdness of Calf Island and change his destiny. Mélanie Heydari is a former student of the Ecole Normale Supérieure Lettres et Sciences Humaines, Lyon.

In compliance with The Conference of the Birds, union and annihilation are therefore closely linked, although Sufi fusion is transposed from the spiritual to the material realm. This was my first Rushdie book and in retrospect was probably a strange book to chose as my first Rushdie book. The burden of immortality , with which the protagonist grapples throughout the novel, sheds light on the absurdity of our daily neccessary denial of our own mortality.Grimus certainly occupies a unique place in Salman Rushdie’s literary production, owing notably to its ahistorical quality, which makes it more difficult to grasp the author’s intent: “it is less immediately apparent what the reality is that Rushdie is seeking to smash, and why it is that he wishes to smash it” (Teverson 112).

So the fact that Rushdie could be writing an autobiography in metaphor is no indication that he actually did. However, with Grimus 's lack of initial commercial success and the furore over The Satanic Verses, most critics have overlooked the far more interesting exploration of religious tropes embodied in the pairing of Grimus and Flapping Eagle. Both real and legendary, their purpose was to proclaim the authority of the Stuarts as divinely appointed rulers of Scotland. More than a mere setting, Calf Island points to Rushdie’s palimpsest-like condensation of eastern and western references, an “international compendium of myth” (Brennan 74) that creates innumerable layers of meaning, investing the narrative with a peculiar universality.Rushdie thus asserts the prevalence of the signifier over the signified, exploring language’s potential for confusion. Much of the criticism available on Grimus looks at migration as an extension of Rushdie’s personality: the East Meets West collision of religious, social, and political beliefs and the alienation of the immigrant within the new cultural landscape. At Grimus Ski Centre we pride ourselves on having a quality and well maintained rental fleet, alongside competitive pricing to get everyone involved.