The Wine-Dark (Snotgreen) Sea of Stories

I read Haroun & the Sea of Stories on Saturday.

I loved the swift reference to the musical "The Fantasticks" (52). At least I assume that's what the reference was to. Snooty Buttoo says, "Admit, at the very least, that it is all Super-Marvelloso, Incredibable, and wholly Fantastick." (And he even italicizes stick so that the spelling stands out.)

"The Fantasticks" is all about following and remembering a story. The players draw the audience into a sort of dream world and ask them to share a story with them and remember their own stories.

"The Fantasticks" begins with a song. Here is one verse:

Try to remember when life was so tender
That no one wept except the willow.
Try to remember when life was so tender
That dreams were kept beside your pillow.
Try to remember when life was so tender
That love was an ember about to billow.
Try to remember, and if you remember,
Then follow.

Follow, follow, follow, follow, follow,
Follow, follow, follow, follow.

And as I mentioned, they ask you to follow. This musical is such a wonderful story, and it's riddled with references just as is Joyce's Finnegan's Wake (though far far far less complex and numerous.)

In one encounter between Luisa and Matt over "the wall," Matt expostulates,

I don't what to call her!
She's too vibrant for a name!
Should I call her...Juliet!

Luisa replies, "Yes, dear!"

Helena!

Yes, dear!

And Cassandra, and Cleopatra, and Beatrice
And also Guenevere.

All of these women in about 8 lines.

------------
In general, the play is about a boy and a girl who are in love. Their parents put up a wall between their houses as some sort of a reverse psychological tactic to make sure that their kids do fall in love. The fathers' famous last words, "Make sure you just say no."

Why did the kids pour jam on the cat?
Raspberry jam all over the cat?
Why should the kids do something like that,
When all that we said was no?

I don't think Rashid ever directly says 'no' to Haroun in order to induce the opposite results, but I still find the storytelling element and fantastical telling of tales in the Fantasticks to match up quite wonderfully with Haroun's story. Both stories are poetical and simple with deeper themes woven in. The lines in both are lyrical and melodic.

In Haroun & the Sea of Stories, I loved the lilty, thesaurus-like voice that Rushdie assumes quite often. He writes, "Outsize, super-colossal, big" (151). It really fits, just as do Luisa's words, "Perhaps I'm bad, or wild, or mad."

I also enjoyed how Haroun discovers "that silence ha[s] its own grace and beauty (just as speech [can] be graceless and ugly)" (125). Matt and Luisa also reach a similar discovery when they find out that the romanticized world they left each other for is not quite so grand as they expected.

When the dance was done,
When I went my way,
When I tried to find rainbows far away,
All the lovely lights
Seemed to fade from view:
They were you.
They were you.
They were you.