Dusting off books of 'Dark Ages'

All Things Literary

The first time I came across Salman Rushdie, if my memory dutifully serves, had to have been sometime during middle school. This was during the period of my youth when books were the furthest things from my mind — a time I, half-jokingly, refer to as the Dark Ages.

Whenever I'd walk into the storage room, I'd see high on a shelf a thick hardback book with the title "The Satanic Verses" written in ancient script on the spine.

Was this some secret book of the occult? Had I stumbled on some illicit partnership between my parents and the horned, spike-tailed fallen angel himself? It's a shame that so much of our juvenile imaginings turn out to have the stalest of explanations.

I quickly found from my father that "The Satanic Verses" was no collection of conjuring spells or wicked curses, but merely a novel he never had gotten around to reading. Ho-hum and back to comic books I went.

It only was after discovering the controversy behind the novel in high school that I finally sat down to read it. Since then, I've read every single work by Rushdie. If all readers have some literary master they crawl to on hands and knees in worship, then for better or worse, Rushdie is mine.

Thus, it was with great surprise and joy that I came across his first novel, "Grimus," recently republished after years in abysmal abandonment by critics, readers and even the author himself.

"Grimus" is, first and foremost, a mess. The story centers on the wanderings of Flapping Eagle, a Native American living in a secluded community on top of a plateau who, given the gift and curse of immortality, spends the next 750 years of his life wandering the world. Yet, as it often does for immortals, life gets old and Flapping Eagle, at the apex of his emotional trauma, finds himself washed ashore on the mysterious Calf Island.

It is there that he meets an eclectic cast of characters, both human and other-dimensional, including his appropriately named mentor and guide, Virgil Jones, and a bevy of prostitutes with suggestive names like Kamala Sutra, "Boom-Boom" de Sade and Le Kok Fook. Whatever the cost, Flapping Eagle ascends Calf Mountain in an attempt to regain his mortality, not realizing that he is the catalyst for the mountain's survival or destruction.

"Grimus" is a mixture of the science fiction and fantasy genres that, in its final stages, descends into jumbled clumps. Character arcs, events and heavy-handed questions are resolved at random; the reader gets the sense that Rushdie, not knowing what to do once his novel had to come to a close, merely chose the easiest — and first — way out.

If there were anyone out there looking for a new read, they would do well to stay away from Rushdie's introductory work.

If there is a method to the literary madness of "Grimus," it is that the novel provides a study for scholars and appreciators of Rushdie. In the pages of his first novel, readers get a feel for the larger themes of exile and metamorphosis that are to come to the forefront in the author's later — and better — works like "The Ground Beneath Her Feet" and the aforementioned "The Satanic Verses."

With someone as verbally witty and linguistically serene as Rushdie, there is technically no such thing as a bad book. While "Grimus" the novel is a less than savory read, "Grimus" the first work by Rushdie is an interesting, reflective bookend for those of us devoted to his more famous works.