Recently on The Literary Hub website -- a fine gathering of literary news, reviews, and articles from around the internet -- they have reproduced, via Random House, a short interview with famed novelist Salman Rushdie.
The author of The Satanic Verses and Midnight’s Children was asked several questions about the books in his reading life that are of particular importance to him for one reason or another.
Alice in Wonderland is the first book he fell in love with.
Humboldt’s Gift by Saul Bellow is the book he rereads the most.
James Joyce’s Ulysses is the book he most wished he had written.
And the new book he is most looking forward to is The River of Consciousness by the late Oliver Sacks.
I was fascinated by all his choices and his reasons, which always centered on the literary qualities -- beauty of sentences; weirdness of incidents and characters; brilliance of vision, seriousness of mind, even zany character names.
But his most interesting answer was to this question, “Name a classic you feel guilty about never having read.” Rushdie answered, “Never finished Middlemarch. Started it many times, tried to watch the long and meticulous British TV adaptation years ago, failed. Sorry. Something to do with the absence of any trace of humor. I understand however that this failure is my fault.”
Middlemarch by George Eliot -- which many people, especially other past and contemporary British novelists, consider the the best British novel ever written -- Middlemarch is the classic that Salman Rushdie cannot seem to finish. Is he an idiot -- or smarter than everyone else? Is he pointing out that the Emperor has no clothes, that maybe everyone else thinks that Middlemarch is the best British novel simply because everyone else thinks Middlemarch is the best British novel?
No, he’s not an idiot -- Salman Rushdie is a smart guy. He’s a smart guy because he demonstrates in his last sentence that he is a true lover of literature who knows that the quality of a work is not to be judged by his own biases, prejudices, tastes, or inclinations. That a book does not have to satisfy him to be a good book. That no work of art exists in a vacuum, pristine and perfect and always objectively viewed. That the reader brings as much to a book as the book delivers to him, creating a completely unique creation that no one else will ever be able to experience quite like he has.
“I understand that the failure is my fault” is an extremely self-aware and loving thing to say. And one deeply respectful of the art of literature. It does not demand that a book be valued by the very particular likes and dislikes of a particular reader. That just because a “classic” does not communicate to you -- possibly for something as simple as its lack of humor -- does not mean that it actually isn’t a classic and that everyone else has just simply gotten it wrong.
Having read more Amazon and Goodreads reviews than is healthy for any fragile human being, I find Salman Rushdie's reaction to Middlemarch refreshing, illuminating, and comforting.
Thank you Mr. Rushdie. You are one smart guy!
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