I am reading
my way through Salman Rushdie’s new book, Two
Years, Eight Months and Twenty-eight Nights (a thousand and one nights.) I don’t know if I will finish the book; his
books usually tell Eastern metaphysical stories that I find difficult to follow
– and sometimes my interest in the outcome fades; but his thoughts, his
sentence structure, his jewels of complex reason keep me coming back.
A sentence
in this his new book crept into my mind like a song or melody you just can’t get
rid of.
“We are all
stories within stories.”
A parallel universe of stories.
There is a
story of me; a story of my family, a story of my birth family, a story of my
family tree, a story of my race, nation, my place in the world, the cosmos, and
all possible branches from each of those possibilities – and in each story I
take a lesser and lesser roll until I am minuscule.
We are each
a story within a story; but the only story that matters to our egocentric id is
the personal story of ourselves – because beyond that we matter less and less,
until we find ourselves totally unimportant.
the Ol'Buzzard
I like this. A parallel universe of stories. Yes, we truly are. Great thoughts. Thank you.
ReplyDeleteI love Rushdie's writing. Have not seen his latest book. I'll have to look into getting it through Inter Library Loan. I know it's never going to show up on the new book shelf in L'Anse; the person who does the book ordering has a weakness for mainstream best sellers.
ReplyDeleteOne of my favorites of his books is 'Haroun and the Sea of Stories' written for his then nine year old son when he had to be in hiding because of the fatwa.
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