Excerpt from Midnight’s
Children by Salman Rushdie
“Oskar
died,” Ilse told him, sipping fresh lime water on my mother’s takht.
“Like
a comedian. He went to talk to the army and tell them not to be pawns. The fool
really thought the troops would fling down their guns and walk away. We watched
from a window and prayed they wouldn’t just trample all over him.
“All
right,” Naseem conceded, “so you’ve got a good chance landing a good job. Agra
University, it’s a famous place, don’t think I don’t know. University doctor!...sounds
good.”
“I’m
in love,” Aadam Aziz said to Ilse Lubin. And later, “...So I’ve only seen her
through a hole in a sheet, one part at a time; and I swear her bottom blushes.”
“Watercress sandwiches,” my grandmother said to me, whilst eating my mother’s famous mashed potatoes.
“It
was so silly. We hadn’t been dating for very long and so we were both still
nervous. For some strange reason I thought those would be adequate for an
evening picnic. We sat down in the park and I nervously took the sandwiches
out.
“That’s
excellent,” my uncle affirmed, “sounds like this school is working out well for
you. International relations, that’s a credible career, don’t think I don’t
know. US ambassador!...sounds good.”
“I
love it,” my cousin said with a grin. He paused, “There are some logistical
issues that need to be worked out, rent and other such things; but it’s going
to be great.”
“After
the picnic we were surprisingly not full at all,” she laughed.
Nice work Trey - you seem to have successfully mimicked the grammatical structure and "style" of Rushdie's excerpt all while maintaing a tone and voice that is all your own (although the parallels between Aziz's opportunities and yours at CGS I thought was a whimsical tip-of-the-hat to Midnight's Children).
ReplyDeleteWhat I really took away from the excerpts was the use of varying sentence structure to convey the relation between a character's actions and feelings. It seems that Rushdie will employ a longer sentence to describe a situation or occurrence yet his shortest sentences reveal the most about what someone feels. :- )
I agree with Mickey--lots of nice stuff here. It's interesting that you chose to mimic Rushdie's organization of information as well as his sentence structure--by having three different speakers, three simultaneous conversations, all thinly (if at all) connected. (You could have had a single speaker, so interesting to keep it as is. Does that mimic your Thanksgivings? People talking over each other? Separate but simultaneous conversations?
ReplyDelete