Review of "Quichotte: A Novel" by Salman Rushdie

Salman Rushdie's book Quicotte (pronounced key-shot) is an homage to the tragicomic literary hero Don Quixote. In Miguel de Cervantes' novel 'Don Quixote de La Mancha', published in 1605, a middle-aged Spanish gentleman named Alonso Quixano becomes addled after reading too many heroic romances. Quixano dubs himself Don Quixote and - taking up sword and lance - embarks on a crusade to help the poor and destroy the wicked.



Don Quixote acquires a sidekick named Sancho Panza who accompanies him on his quest, and they have a series of adventures - including fighting windmills (that Don Quixote thinks are giants). During his crusade, Don Quixote falls in love with a peasant woman named Dulcinea, whom he thinks of as his princess.



In Quichotte, an Indian-American gentleman named Ismail Smile works as a sales representative for his cousin's American pharmaceutical company, called Smile Pharmaceuticals. Ismail travels around the southwest United States, stays in cheap motels, and gorges himself on television, including 'daytime talk shows; late-night talk shows; soaps; situation comedies; hospital dramas; police series; vampire and zombie serials; housewives from Atlanta, New Jersey, Beverly Hills, and New York; singing competitions; cooking competition; business competitions; competition for the affection of bachelors and bachelorettes; baseball games; basketball games; football games; etc.



All this befuddles Ismail's mind, and he falls in love with a beautiful New York television host named Salma R, whom he's never met.



Ismail also starts to behave oddly with customers, so his employer/cousin Dr. R.K. Smile fires him, but provides a nice severance package.

Ismail is now free to pursue Salma R. Thus he renames himself Quichotte and embarks on a cross-country journey to prove he's worthy of her love. Quichotte magics up a teenage son named Sancho to accompany him, and Sancho - who's a phantom at first - becomes a real boy with the help of an Italian cricket called Grillo Parlante (aka Jiminy).



Quichotte keeps Salma R informed about his quest by way of letters, starting with this missive:

"My dear Miss Salma R,

With this note I introduce myself to you. With this hand I declare my love. In time to come as I move ever closer you will come to see that I am true and that you must be mine. You are my Grail and this is my quest. I bow my head before your beauty. I am and will ever remain your knight.

Sent by a smile,
Quichotte

This is followed by more notes, which alarm Salma R, who 'has a bad feeling about them.'

We soon learn that Quichotte is not a real person. He's the main character in a book by an Indian writer called Brother.



Brother, who's been publishing mediocre spy novels under the pen name Sam Duchamp, decides to try his hand at innovative fiction.....and he starts with the tale of "lunatic Quichotte and his doomed pursuit of the gorgeous Miss Salma R."

As Duchamp's fictional story takes shape, it's clear that Quichotte strongly resembles Brother. Both Brother and Quichotte are Bombay-born Indian-American men with physical ailments: Brother has a bad back and Quichotte has a bad leg. Both Brother and Quichotte have successful sisters who survived cancer and are estranged from their brothers, who did them wrong. And both Brother and Quichotte have sons who march to different drummers: Brother's son ran off and got involved in shady internet activities; and Quichotte's son sprang from his imagination. The story alternates back and forth between Quichotte's fictional quest and Brother's actual memories, so we learn a great deal about both characters.

The novel is a rambling affair that touches on myriad concerns of the current era. Brother (who I assume is a proxy for Rushdie) explains that, with his book, he was "wanting to take on the destructive mind-numbing junk culture of his time just as Cervantes had gone to war with the junk culture of his own age;



He was trying also to write about impossible obsessional love, father-son relationships, sibling quarrels, and yes....unforgivable things;



About Indian immigrants, racism toward them, crooks among them;



About cyberspies, science fiction, the intertwining of fictional and real realities; and the end of the world."



Duchamp also wanted to "incorporate elements of the parodic, and of satire, and pastiche", and to write "about opioid addiction too; the American opioid epidemic and the scams associated with it."



Rushdie accomplishes all this this by delving into the history of his characters as well as their ambitions, motivations, behavior, relationships, thoughts, activities, and so on. For example, Dr. R. K. Smile has become a pharma billionaire thanks to the development of a sub-lingual Fentanyl spray called InSmile, which is 100 times stronger than morphine. Dr. Smile got the inspiration for marketing InSmile during a visit to Bombay, where he came across a business card that read, "Are you alcoholic? We can help. Call this number for liquor home delivery."

Hence InSmile is now shipped to every city, town, village, and hamlet in the United States, where it makes a substantial contribution to the opioid epidemic.



In fact Salma R, who's bipolar and a proponent of electroconvulsive therapy, is a pharmaceutical addict who's trying to acquire a bounteous supply of InSmile. This is what eventually connects her to Quichotte, who has access to the drug.

Other noteworthy characters are Brother's parents - who had successful businesses in India; Brother's and Quichotte's sisters and their significant others - one of whom is a male judge who dresses in evening gowns and heels at home; Brother's pedophile grandfather; Dr. Smile's ambitious social climber wife, called Happy; Salma R's mother and grandmother - both of whom were famous actresses; Salma R's staff - who enable her drug addiction; scientist Evel Sent, who's built a portal to an alternative Earth; and more.



A good part of the book focuses on Quichotte and Sancho's road trip across the country, from the southwest United States to New York, where Quichotte hopes to meet and woo Salma R. Like their 17th century predecessors, Quixote and his Sancho have many memorable experiences. For instance:

- Quixote and Sancho camp at Lake Capote in Colorado, and take out a map to plot their journey. A stocky young white woman - suspicious of the map - approaches and says, "Where are your turbans and beards? You shave your faces and take off the headgear to fool us? You look shifty to me. You up to something. You can dress yourself out of J Crew but you don't fool me." The following kerfuffle with campers gets Quixote and Sancho ejected from the campgrounds.



- In Billy's Diner in Tulsa, a confrontation with fellow diners results in slurs like: "F**k you. Get out of my country and go back to your broke bigoted America hating desert shitholes. We're gonna nuke you all" and "Where did you hide your turbans and f**king beards?"



- Quichotte and Sancho stop at a New Jersey Motor Inn, where the owner wants to examine their ears, noses, and teeth before allowing them to check in. It seems that people in town are spontaneously morphing into mastodons....and wreaking havoc to their surroundings.



There's plenty more going on in the novel. Among other things, both Brother and Quichotte attempt to make amends with their respective sisters, which sheds light on the women's grievances; Brother meets his son after many years, and tries to coax him onto the right path; and Quichotte has a memorable interaction with Salma R.

I got a kick out of the novel's innumerable references to popular culture, which are liberally sprinkled throughout the book. It makes me smile to think of Salman Rushdie plonked in front of the television or computer, or trolling the streets, making copious notes.


Salman Rushdie

If you like literary novels, you'd probably enjoy this book, which is long-listed for the 2019 Booker prize.

Rating: 4 stars