About the Class

English 204 has been a great experience. I found myself developing as a writer, and most importantly, as a thinker.

Surprisingly enough, the poetic analysis paper was the best part of the class. It gave me an appreciation for poetry which I was lacking all this time. I also appreciate the fact that we did not dwell on nit-picky details and still managed to do some in-depth analysis of the texts we read. In high school, I was accustomed to getting carried away with every little symbol, trying to find meaning in every little thing. An example of a text that has been ruthlessly dissected is The Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man by James Joyce. Reading this book in an AP English class in high school made me realize just how ridiculous it was to take a book and spend hours talking about one tiny little detail which Joyce may have just randomly stuck in there. So I asked my teacher if Joyce really intended us to pick up on all these things and if they were indeed as meaningful as we had been trained to interpret them as. And she said, "No, Joyce would probably make fun of us!" Indeed, later I found the quote by Joyce himself: "I've put in so many enigmas and puzzles that it will keep the professors busy for centuries arguing over what I meant, and that's the only way of insuring one's immortality."

I don't care much for Joyce. His book was is not the most interesting but his prose is often brilliant and he left his mark in the world of classic literature and keeps us "busy for centuries arguing over what [he] meant." This is what writing tends to do: immortalize the writer and baffle/confuse the reader. This is very good. All books should seek to confuse their readers because confusion will provoke readers to discover something about themselves and the world. As we saw in the class, that discovery can also be that the book itself sucks or that the book is excellent.

Perhaps the greatest thing about a college English class is that the professor does not direct students to pick up certain literary techniques. Whatever we pick up on is what we ourselves have discovered. There is no forced interpretation and the scope of interpretation itself is very broad and liberal.

Just taking a glance at my previous blog entries, I can see a tremendous change in my writing. The best part about being an English major is that I will continue to see my writing develop and this class has only made me a little more confident for the English courses I will take in the future. Thanks Professor Ramachandran!

My Unhealthy Obsession with A's

I've spent quite some time explaining to my mom that A+'s don't exist in college. When I was little, if I came home with a 97 on a test, my mom would ask me, "Where are the remaining 3 points?" If I came home with a 100, my mom would ask me, "Where's the extra credit?" Such was life - The subject matter was irrelevant and the only thing of consequence was the grade.

Growing up, I had a hard time in school. I was expected to excel in everything but I couldn't get my head out of books; in all other subjects but English and Social Studies, I was a mediocre student. If I could bring myself to care enough about doing well in a subject I didn't care about, I would excel in it but I was often unable to generate that much ambition. But in high school, I realized that I was, in fact, in love with the act of learning. Information and the act of thinking is what has and continues to sustain me as an individual. So I gave up the mechanical process of generating A's in subjects I couldn't care less about. I began to focus on things I actually liked doing such as writing. But still, the mechanical part of me remained; as long as I was getting A's, I felt as though I was writing well. An A- would leave me devastated. Though I was doing what I truly liked, I was restricting it and making it an unnatural thing. I had trained myself to follow the conventions of conventional writing. And I was rewarded for these conventional, hackneyed essays with A+'s which reinforced my misconception that I was writing great things. This combined with my fairly decent grades in everything else got me ranking amongst the top 25 of my graduating class. It hadn't been my goal, yet still, I found myself rejoicing.

Then I came to college and took a writing class, quite confident of my writing abilities, only to discover that an A+ paper in high school is a B/B- paper in college. This convinced me that high school had low standards making my writing low standard. So I emailed my writing professor an obnoxious number of times to figure out how to bring every paper up to an A. And when I did get an A, I thought I had finally learned how to write good papers.

In truth, I am only beginning to learn how to write now. I got an A in Writing 102, but aside from forming grammatically correct, complex sentences, my papers didn't say very much. A good paper is not testimony to the fact that the conventions of grammar are working, but rather a substantiated statement of the writer's opinion about something. In order to make the statement have any effect upon anyone, it has to be readable. It shouldn't leave the reader puzzled and irritated. I was brought to the epiphany this semester that needless words, rigid sentences, and the need to sound sophisticated creates a rather crappy paper. What good is something that is well written, if it only makes the reader miserable in the act of reading it? So, I've been brought to the realization that I have a bad case of perfectionism which is making my papers boring.

It's hard not to be grade-oriented in college. I can be totally idealistic and say, "No, learning alone is the purpose of college" but in truth, no grad school/med school will want to accept someone whose grades suck. A's will always be most desirable and satisfying but at the same time, I've found that when I write loosely, without the A obsession, I most importantly end up conveying why I care about the topic. Writing loosely also allows me to omit half of the needless words which would otherwise serve as space-fillers and attempts to sound sophisticated. This is the most important lesson I've learned about writing: no matter how profound the subject matter, boring, repetitive writing will reduce it to crap. In that sense, Odysseus in America was not a completely pointless read/skim. It is a fine example of a book that misconstrues length as a means of substantiating its thesis. In the future, I may find myself referring to this book as an example of the type of writing I should not be doing; as Professor Ramachandran said in class today, "Don't write like Shay in your paper."

Dangerous Women? Catharsis?

By now, I've come to the conclusion that Jonathan Shay's PHD/MD drivel is pretty much shit and the only reason I still have things to say about it is because it's so bad. I was completely stunned (in a bad way) by the essay (for that is what it ultimately is) when I got up to the chapter called, "Witches, Goddesses, Queens, Wives--Dangerous Women." Whatever we know of literature comes from perspective. Shay's perspective, as far as I comprehended it at least, is that the Odyssey presents women as dangerous and untrustworthy. Oh. That's one interpretation but to be convincing, Shay would have to argue against the countless ways in which women are presented as strong, powerful, and supportive towards men. Having read the Odyssey I think differently and I get so distracted by how much I disagree with Shay's interpretation due to his lack of convincingness that I forget that the point of the essay is to talk about the Vietnam veterans. There we go. The extended Odyssey allusion/reference fails.

It continues to fail throughout. Sure, I like the idea of Shay's book but the way he wrote it makes me side with a good friend of mine who said, "The only thing worse than war is a book about war." A person who hasn't read the Odyssey will be able to concentrate only on the information about the veterans. A person who has read the Odyssey will become totally distracted like I did. I became more interested in Shay's interpretation of the Odyssey, as opposed to its connection with the war veterans. But wait, that's because the connection becomes increasingly stupid and relentlessly pointless as the essay goes on (and on and on).

There are several reasons why I am bitter. For one thing, large paragraphs are dedicated Shay's retelling of the Odyssey. I have tremendous respect for anyone who has the patience to fill 253 pages, even if it is 253 pages full of bullshit. It takes a tremendous amount of time, effort, and dedication. But I'm not saying Shay has written bullshit; Shay has simply written a decent essay that does not work for many reasons. First of all, I do not need to read a summary of a book I've already read. But that's just me. Now, here's what I gathered from this chapter: Dangerous women and whores, and sex with prostitutes renders army veterans distrustful of and dissatisfied with their wives. Not being a psychologist, I can't ever know if that's a logical argument. But maybe that's the problem with this book--maybe it only reaches out to policymakers and psychologists?

When I read the Odyssey, I thought that women were presented as powerful. Nausicaa habitually handed Odysseus over to "toughs who habitually kill strangers?" Euryclea is the kind of woman who "can accidentally get you killed by seeing through your disguise?"
Oh, now that I think about it, this is a great excerpt and I must quote it in its entirety:

"Turning back to Odysseus as a veteran (rather than as a military leader), the Odyssey shows how dangerous a woman may be to returning veterans: she can trick you onto a fragile sea raft from the safety of dry land and then drown you (Calypso), she can betray you to assassins who lie in wait for you (Clytemnestra and--who knows?--maybe Penelope), she can see through and betray your disguise, getting you killed (Helen's chance to blow Odysseus's disguise to the Trojans), she can accidentally get you killed by seeing through your disguise (Odysseus's old childhood nurse, Eurycleia), she can hand you over to toughs who habitually kill strangers (Nausicaa), she can turn you into a caged pig eating acorns or castrate you in her bed (Circe), she can fill you with such obsession that you forget to eat and starve to death (Sirens), she can literally eat men alive (Scylla). [Oh look, the sentence finally ended]. She may have gotten you and your friends into the war to begin with, where most of them were killed (Helen)."

These two sentences were slightly more difficult to type than they were to read. Shay's writing style makes me not want to read this book. Furthermore, I can't help but feel that Shay's interpretation presents women in a worse way than Homer does. True, Clytemnestra ruthlessly kills her husband and this makes us wonder whether Penelope will do the same--or rather, it makes Odysseus wonder. But what about Penelope as the loyal wife? What about Penelope as Odysseus's equal who actually does understand Odysseus when he returns? What about Penelope's own compromise? After all, she takes back a man who has been sleeping around with countless women for over ten years. Also, what about the fact that if it were not for Nausicaa "handing Odysseus over" to her people, he would still be wandering perhaps.

But I still get where Shay is trying to go with this. He's trying to say that this is a misconception men have of their wives when they return. But so what? What if veterans have this misconception? What do we do about it? How do we stop veterans from beating up their wives? How do we prevent them from feeling lonely because they longer can have sex with whores in Vietnam? How do we cure their fear of the dangerous prostitutes they had sex with in Vietnam? I perused this chapter, but could not place my finger on a spot where Shay offers a solution to this problem.

Here's what Emerson says:

"Regret calamities, if you can thereby help the sufferer; if not, attend your own work, and already the evil begins to be repaired. Our sympathy is just as base. We come to them who weep foolishly, and sit down and cry for company, instead of imparting to them truth and health in rough electric shocks, putting them once more in communication with their own reason."

We can't help PTSD. Yes, it hurts character. Yes, it's wrong for veterans to have to go through this. But what can we do? We can be nicer and that will make things easier but it won't solve the problem. And contrary to what Emerson says, the veterans have had so many "electric shocks" that they've been put out of communication with their own reason.

I wish this book offered a solution. But maybe it proves that there is no solution. So everyone should attend to their own work, skim Shay's 253 page essay (which could have saved a lot of paper if it were shortened by even 100 pages), be nice to veterans and respect them for their tremendous sacrifice to our country, and "already the evil begins to be repaired."

To conclude, if I was trying to make the point that Shay's book ultimately serves no purpose, then this blog entry in many ways serves no purpose, for it is just as incohesive as this chapter and countless other chapters which I've given myself the pain of only skimming. But I do like the letter "A" a whole lot, especially the way it appears on Solar. It will be a nice contrast to the "C" I will get in Calculus.

A War Poem

I've noticed that often, songs/poems about war work better than books about war. Often, the Vietnam War becomes a hackneyed topic in literature. So much of modern literature seems to have been dedicated to the Vietnam War. At one point, we stop and wonder, "what's the point of it all?" We're never going to know how war veterans feel because the simple fact of the matter is, we have never been to war. The writer is either begging for sympathy (a wasted/wasteful emotion) or trying to get his story and his feelings out. Why are songs/poems a better medium? Well for one thing, usually, poems are short (unless you're talking about the Odyssey) and poems will focus on one emotion which is transmitted to the reader through the poem's artistic nature. Sadly enough, what we're ultimately concerned with is entertainment. Even when we think we want to gain insight and be enlightened, it seems as though our ulterior motive is entertainment. We want to have other-worldly experiences. We want to sit in the comfort of our homes and get a glimpse into what the warfront looks like. What a good text makes us realize is that the idea of war is drastically different from the actual reality of war. But this message won't get to us, we won't realize how bad and horrible war is until the writer appeals to our interest.

Though I am completely annoyed with Shay's book, I love the fact that it has spurred so much class discussion. All of a sudden, we have so much to say because many of us don't like this book. I like the fact that we read a poem and heard a song, while reading this because the song and the poem gets to us while Shay's book doesn't. Perhaps the most valuable thing I've gotten out of this class is an appreciation for poetry, especially after I found myself completely immersed in Sylvia Plath's poem.

Here's a poem written about the Vietnam War by Bruce Weigl:

Song of Napalm

for my wife

After the storm, after the rain stopped pounding,
We stood in the doorway watching horses
Walk off lazily across the pasture’s hill.
We stared through the black screen,
Our vision altered by the distance
So I thought I saw a mist
Kicked up around their hooves when they faded
Like cut-out horses
Away from us.
The grass was never more blue in that light, more
Scarlet; beyond the pasture
Trees scraped their voices into the wind, branches
Crisscrossed the sky like barbed wire
But you said they were only branches.

Okay. The storm stopped pounding.
I am trying to say this straight: for once
I was sane enough to pause and breathe
Outside my wild plans and after the hard rain
I turned my back on the old curses. I believed
They swung finally away from me ...

But still the branches are wire
And thunder is the pounding mortar,
Still I close my eyes and see the girl
Running from her village, napalm
Stuck to her dress like jelly,
Her hands reaching for the no one
Who waits in waves of heat before her.

So I can keep on living,
So I can stay here beside you,
I try to imagine she runs down the road and wings
Beat inside her until she rises
Above the stinking jungle and her pain
Eases, and your pain, and mine.

But the lie swings back again.
The lie works only as long as it takes to speak
And the girl runs only as far
As the napalm allows
Until her burning tendons and crackling
Muscles draw her up
into that final position

Burning bodies so perfectly assume. Nothing
Can change that; she is burned behind my eyes
And not your good love and not the rain-swept air
And not the jungle green
Pasture unfolding before us can deny it.
(Poetryfoundation.org)

I wrote a poetic analysis paper on this poem for my AP English class during my senior year of high school. I remember flipping through the pages of a huge anthology book and being thoroughly disappointed by the selection of poetry it had to offer until i came across this one. I was moved by Weigl's ability to take one image and create such a powerful effect through it. It pertains to the subject at hand because it is captures post traumatic stress disorder so well. While at war, the soldier becomes overwhelmed to the extent that everything reminds him of the image of the warfront. The narrator of this poem looks at trees and he sees barbed wire. He hears thunder and he thinks of "pounding mortar." He writes, "she is burned behind my eyes." He creates the image of a burning girl which we see through his eyes and then he uses the word "burned" to describe the irreversible effect it had on his mind.

This poem grabs our interest before breaking the harsh reality to us. Once we are engaged, we can be unsettled into getting the author's point. The title of the poem is rather ironic. A song would be melodious and perhaps pleasant but napalm is a toxic substance that burns on contact with skin. He describes a tranquil melancholy setting in which he is disturbed by his own thoughts. The tranquility is then disturbed by the image of a girl described almost majestically--"I try to imagine she runs down the road and wings / Beat inside her until she rises." He transforms this image in his mind into one that is more beautiful than deathly. Then he realizes he can't fool himself into believing that she flew away from her pain gracefully. He writes, "And the girl runs only as far / As the napalm allows / Until her burning tendons and crackling / Muscles draw her up / into that final position / Burning bodies so perfectly assume." This is a horrific image. It allows the reader to see for himself what a war veteran has seen which leads to the understanding that war is a terrible thing. Most importantly, it allows the reader to understand why these war veterans are suffering from PTSD.

Does Odysseus in America work?

Authors who write books about war have to be very careful. The first thing to consider is, why a writer would choose to write about war. Clearly there is some message he is trying to convey. With regards to a book about war, this message is usually amplified by the content of the novel; the gruesome, harsh, bitter reality of war has to move us and unsettle us into wanting to read the rest of the book. In Shay's case, he wants us to have some respect for our veterans. His repeated use of the term "mind-fuck" really keeps his argument alive because it really sums up how the veteran returning from a traumatic experience is going to feel. The message is powerful. Shay poses the following question: how can you remove a civilian from his civilized society, dehumanize, mechanize, and harden him in every way possible, and then expect him to integrate himself, once again, into that civilized society?

This is all very well. We, as people, do need to wonder why war veterans who were sent to war as a result of being drafted are treated like shit by the political and social systems. However, as readers, we're hard to get to. Authors write that something is disturbing, something is surprising, something is unappealing but until they show us how it's disturbing, surprising, or unappealing, we won't care--that's why we have banned adjectives in English classes. It's best to let the reader infer based on telling details. Shay's novel is full of telling details, but he gives us the inferences too. This leaves no room for pondering, or coming to any particular realization about anything. I am currently enrolled in EGL 206, The Survey of British Literature, and often I am unable to engage in the discussion because it's a 100 people lecture hall and I end up having to listen to the same ten people talking. Oftentimes, I feel a little self-conscious when it comes to contributing and having 100 people looking at me, and at other times, I lack incentive. Anyway, the point is, there are some people who would prefer to sit through an 80 minute lecture and not say a word, and there are others, such as myself, who cannot sit in one spot for 80 minutes listening to a few people talk about their interpretations. It can lead to new insight, but usually it's boring. Similarly, Shay's book is full of insight, but it's boring because it's a 250 page essay which makes the inferences for us.

I picked up this book and expected to be dazzled by an authentic, unconventional discourse paralleling Odysseus and war veterans. I was thoroughly disappointed. As a reader, I want to read something I haven't read before. Style matters. I'm not against books about war. It just so happens to be that The Things They Carried by Tim O'Brien, one of my favorite books, is also about warfare. I would read this book over and over again. O'Brien says his book is fiction, but then again, it's not. The experience is real though the people are not. And he really captures the essence of the human sentiments running through a soldier's mind. His diction is eloquent and compelling. He sort of blends fiction and non-fiction in his novel.

I found that Shay's novel ultimately does not work and genre has nothing to do with it. Non-fiction can be terrific. Unfortunately this book is not terrific. For one thing, I thought the Odysseus allusion was really cool at first. I was stricken by Shay's take on Odysseus's interaction with the Phaecians. I hadn't thought about the fact that Odysseus could have been offended by the atmosphere and the Demodocus's singing. Another thing I hadn't thought about was how Odysseus's introduction of himself to the King is rather ridiculous and strange. He introduces himself as a wily man. Shay asks why someone who seeks shelter and help from strangers would introduce himself as a conman to imply that perhaps, Odysseus isn't as calm, collected and in control as we thought he was. As I read on, I began to feel as though the repeated parallels between Odysseus and the veterans become annoying and tedious. For one thing, I realized that this parallel stopped working. The Odyssey is about coming home and how hard it is to come home, but Odysseus is not a warrior. If there was a way around the fight that will lead to the same end, he'd be the one to contrive it. The troops however, are taught to reason less, and act more. Alas, Odysseus's experience is not exactly the same as the army veterans. And knowing Odysseus, his decision to introduce himself as a wily man seems to be well thought out rather than an instance in which he loses control. After all, the Phaecians seek to be entertained and entertainment is what they get. Maybe, Odysseus's way of introducing himself is his way of intriguing them. Yes, he does seek thrills in his episode with the Cyclops, but this does not have any physical implications. The war veterans have gone through physical torture primarily and seen physical torture which has left them emotionally scarred. It all boils down to how effective Shay's Odyssey theme is.

This is the problem with referring to a classic. One has to really consider the counterarguments which reveal the ways in which drawing such parallels doesn't work. If they outweigh the reasons why they do work, then it's best to leave the classic alone. Shay makes his point very clear. It just doesn't move the reader into buying it.

Also, not to sound as though I've been desensetized to the atrocities of war, I feel as though Shay's use of language is bland and uninteresting. As a person who loves words and believes in the potential of word choice and syntax to have an enormous impact on the quality of a written work, I am not moved at all by Shay's novel. From the perspective of someone who has a Chemistry and Calculus final to be tortured by, the tediousness of this book really begins to irritate. I'd rather be reading something that lets me think rather than doing all the thinking for me. I guess ultimately, Shay's book does get us to think, but not about what the content of his book is. Instead, we find ourselves wondering whether his argument and method works or doesn't work which is also a useful thing for it's own reasons, I guess. We have to read things which we find to be not so great or we wouldn't appreciate things that are great. In the end it's all about perspective.

"The Literary Imagination"

In my last entry, I mentioned that there were similarities between Charles Dicken's Hard Times, which I coincidentally happened to be reading for my British Literature class, and Rushdie's novel. Then I read the essay, "The Literary Imagination," by Martha C. Nussbaum and was surprised to find that her entire essay focused on Hard Times.

Nussbaum does a great job in talking about the value of literature and what the literary imagination does for us. She points out that if Mr. Gradgrind finds that literature must be suppressed, then clearly literature has great power over us. In Rushdie's book, the politician Snooty Buttoo hires Rashid to help him gain popularity by telling stories. Although he tries to utilize Rashid's storytelling for a political cause, it's the storytelling that intrigues people. In the end, storytelling has greater power. In fact, we are so intrigued by literature and the literary imagination that the more it is suppressed, the more we are drawn to it; when speech and storytelling are in danger of suppression, the Land of Gup finally goes to war with the Land of Chup. As the Cultmaster says, and as Mr. Grandgrind says, Fact is to be given the greatest importance and fanciful thoughts are to be shunned. Nussbaum adresses this question--"why novels and not histories or biographies?" She answers this question by writing, "Literary art, [Aristotle] said, is more 'philosophical' than history, because history simply shows us 'what happened,' whereas works of literary art show us 'things such as might happen' in human life."

But what happens in Rushdie's novel can't happen in real life. While reading the book, I was quite sure that Haroun's adventure would turn out to be a dream and was surprised when it wasn't. This is where literary imagination plays its biggest role. In presenting things that are absurd and unrealistic, it urges us to imagine a world of absurdity and surrealism. Through the surrealism, we are able to discern "what could happen." Though it's impossible for the Earth to have a second moon inhabited by creatures who are at war with one another about free speech, this fanciful story brings us to the realization that the suppression of free speech and the "public imagination" is all too real. This brings me back to what I wrote in my paper on Sylvia Plath's poem. Literary works shock us into realizing things. Nussbaum writes, "Because it summons powerful emotions, it disconcerts and puzzles. It inspires distrust of conventional pieties and exacts a frenquently painful confrontation with one's own thoughts and intentions...Literary works that promote identification and emotional reaction cut through those self-protective stratagems, requiring us to see and to respond to many things that may be difficult to confront." In his essay "Circles," Emerson says the same thing when he talks about the effect of being unsettled: "People wish to be settled; only as far as they are unsettled is there any hope for them." Literature "disconcerts and puzzles" us, or in Emerson's words, unsettles us. Emerson says that being unsettled is a desirable condition and Nussbaum explains that this is so because "[literary works] make this process palatable by giving us pleasure in the very act of confrontation."

Haroun and the Sea of Stories

Spring break may have involved a great deal of procrastination but somehow, I managed to finish reading Salman Rushdie's Haroun and the Sea of Stories. Even more shocking is the fact that I was able to finish reading it in one sitting, perhaps because I found it to be a lighthearted and enjoyable.

I've been meaning to read other books by Rushdie, only that I never got around to doing it. So I looked up Rushdie on Wikipedia and found that he wrote this book right after his highly controversial publication, The Satanic Verses. I wonder if this had anything to do with the blatantly emphasized themes in Haroun and the Sea of Stories. The most obvious of these themes is the suppression of free speech and more importantly, the pollution of people's imaginations. As a children's book, it encourages children to imagine. Reality is more often than not imposed upon us; it's enough that it's always with us. When the Cultmaster says, "You'd have done better to stick with Facts, but you were stuffed with stories," I was reminded of Charles Dicken's Hard Times which I finished reading only a few hours before picking up Rushdie's book. This is something Mr. Grandgrind might have said to Sissy Jupe. Dickens and Rushdie both write the word "fact" with a capital F. The first letter of various other words is capitalizes. This gives the word more emphasis and importance.

I also feel as though this book transcended its lighthearted tone in terms of its content. Rushdie presents a world in which all speech is barred being at war with a world that loves speech. This land of silence attempts to spread its influence over the land of speech. This entire scenario is very grave and serious if we take it outside the context of a children's book. What I found particularly interesting was the part where Rushdie talks about the burning of the Pages. It reminded me of excerpts I've read on censorship and the burning of books. Being strongly opposed to censorship, I appreciated Rushdie's book a lot. As the Hoopoe said, "Is not the Power of Speech the greatest Power of all? Then surely it must be exercised to the full?" (Power with a capital P. Speech with a capital S.)

Aside from talking about the suppression of speech and imagination, Rushdie seems to be making a big statement about what a good story is made of. General Kitab, who's name literally translates to mean book, "was on many occasions actually provoking such disputes, and then joining in with enthusiastic glee, sometimes taking one side, and at other times (just for fun) expressing the opposite point of view." This happens to be what good books do: present all aspects of a topic (though they eventually must take a stand.) Another instance in which Rushdie talks about good stories is when Blabbermouth says, "I always thought storytelling was like juggling. You keep a lot of different tales in the air, and juggle then up and down, and if you're good you don't drop any." To me, this also meant that in order to keep the appeal of literature in general, alive, one has to be good at keeping a balance in terms of the elements which the work is comprised of. For some reason, this reminded me of the differences between the Homeric Odyssey and Walcott's Odyssey which were created entirely as a result of a difference in language and setting. By juggling the olden tale with the contemporary language and the surreal settings, Walcott, too, presents something that is authentic and entertaining.

Authenticity is another thing that Rushdie talks about. If people rely on their imaginations, they can come up with innovative stories. Along with the need to be creative, Rushdie stresses the need for individuals to articulate their ideas as well. Silence pollutes and destroys great stories.