Rushdie and Borges: threads, trust, and whatnot

Rushdie carries and weaves threads across 500+ pages and Borges does so predominantly within chapters, but both are amazing at setting up 'ethereal' threads: ideas, concepts, issues, or statements that don’t physically exist in other parts of the story but have perpetual effects on the way one reads or interprets. For example, in the beginning of Midnight’s Children Saleem says, “I must commence the business of remaking my life” (4). So, from the outset we know there is the possibility of this not being entirely truthful—that he is “remaking” things. But another line, “In a kind of collective failure of imagination, we learned that we simply could not think our way out of our pasts” (131) implies a sense of unavoidable truth…indicating that he (they) would have it different if they could. Similarly, the opening story in Labryinths is about a conspiracy to create a fictional world and make it part of the “real”. Plus, the story of The Garden of Forking Paths tells us about a book/labyrinth. Both give us uncertainties to work with throughout their texts, perhaps knowing that the uncertainty would/could point us to some other understanding.

In addition to these things, Borges’ narrators as well as Rushdie’s Saleem have similar styles—a perpetual uncertain trustworthiness. You want to believe them, need to believe them, but know you can’t believe them in totality. That uncertainty, and their awareness of it, produces similar authorial tones.

But more than that, they have direct correlations; in the chapter Funes the Memorious Borges writes, “The truth is that we live out our lives putting off all that can be put off; perhaps we all know deep down that we are immortal and that sooner or later all men will do and know all things” (92 in my text). This seems to me to echo the actions of the narrator of Rushdie’s work: Saleem, always trying to put off things—to put off telling parts of the story—as well as his own awareness of immortality. Plus, Funes creates his own system for classifying all the information he takes in—one which is not based on any preexisting system—and Saleem works similarly once he gains his incredible sense of smell (one that allows him to categorize smells that not everyone can smell—i.e., anger).

Any number of connections can be drawn between these two authors and we can examine their works in a variety of lights, but it seems to me that what stares at me the most is that I’m not sure how (or from what lens) to approach these two texts. They tend to work in the spaces between literature, history, philosophy, social commentary, and such. It’s a merging of styles to create.

Authorial Trust...can/should we?

I made it in, again, finally!!!

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I think the most important (and profound) statement in Rushdie’s Midnight’s Children occurs on page 242:
‘I told you the truth […] Memory’s truth, because memory has its own special kind. It selects, eliminates, alters, exaggerates, minimizes, glorifies, and vilifies also; but in the end it creates its own reality, its heterogeneous but usually coherent version of events; and no sane human being ever trusts someone else’s version more than his own.’
This passage, along with many others moments throughout, put us in a position of questioning the reliability of our narrator. On the one hand, we should trust the narrative because it is a truth—a memory’s truth, but a truth nonetheless. The narrator is not trying to deceive us, but rather positioning himself as being aware of the potential faults of memory, or story, or autobiography, or history.

On the other hand, the fact that it is ‘creat[ing] its own reality’ should raise caution flags. Lines like ‘Sometimes legends makes reality, and become more useful than the facts’ (47) and ‘because in autobiography, as in all literature, what actually happened is less important than what the author can manage to persuade his audience to believe’ (310) tend to lead one onto a path of skepticism. The narrator leaves these types of moments, along with open admission of mistakes in his ‘history’ or ‘chronology’ of events, and in doing so the trust is shaken.

The question for me, then, becomes does it matter? As we read this narrative—whether as historical commentary, social criticism, fiction, autobiography, philosophy, allegory, and so on—is trust necessary to take away what one needs? More importantly, is the uncertainty of trust exactly what the narrator needs? If we trusted him completely, would we possibly expect less meandering and uncertainty in the writing? If we didn’t trust him, would we need more moments of ‘proof?’