Highballs & Siberian Bananas

I've discovered a couple of rather interesting errors in some of Salman Rudhdie's works.... I wrote this in 1992, and a version of it (no longer extant) won the 1996 Bernard Ashton Raborg Award.

I've discovered a couple of rather interesting errors is some of Salman Rushdie's works, neither of which, let me hasten to add, is serious enough to significantly add to this brilliant author's woes. The first, an error in male anatomy, is rather fascinating as it appears in more than one of Rushdie's novels, and the second is an error in Japanese geography. The prime example of the first error I'm referring to appears in the novel Shame:

And when, shortly before his twelfth birthday, there strolled into this ocular moon the incomprehensibly appealing form of Farah Zoroaster, at the time no more than fourteen but possessed of a body that moved with the physical wisdom of a woman, then, in that exact moment, he felt his voice break in his throat, while below his belt other things slid downwards too, to take their appointed places, somewhat ahead of schedule, in hitherto-empty sacs.*

Each time the theme of descending testes appears in a Rushdie novel, it shows up with the same physiological error: namely that testes descend into the scrotum at puberty instead of shortly before (or soon after) birth. No critique I've ever read of Rushdie has made mention of the appearance of this error in some of his novels, and so I may well be the first person to suggest that Mr Rushdie suffered from undescended testes, a potentially dangerous condition that merits medical intervention. And his son either suffered from the same condition or was considered extraordinarily precocious by his proud daddy. At any rate, ignorance is bliss, and come puberty all seems to have turned out well in Mr Rushdie's case, but I do think that someone ought to sit him down and tell him the truth before he makes the same mistake in yet another novel.

Salman Rushdie's atrocious geography pops up in an essay from Imaginary Homelands:

.....he (Arthur Koestler) told us about two types of monkeys living on, I think, one of the northern islands in Japan. The two tribes live in close proximity in the woods near a certain stream, and subsisted, not unusually, on a diet of bananas. One of the tribes, however, had developed a curious habit of washing its bananas in the stream before eating them, while the other tribe continued to be non-banana-washers.**

If the monkeys in question really live on a northern island of Japan (the northernmost being claimed by Russia for Siberia), then subsisting on a diet of bananas would be very unusual indeed. Also, since bananas are peeled--and certainly monkeys can peel them--washing them would be a curious habit all right. OK, so the original error may have been Koestler's, but Rushdie quoted him and even added an "I think", although he obviously didn't very hard. My own "I think" is that the culinary item in question was sweet potatoes, not bananas.

I purchased my copy of Imaginary Homelands while living in Hiroshima. This collection of essays and criticism is, like Rushdie's novels, well worth reading. The error in Japanese geography appears in the essay entitled Is Nothing Sacred?, an intriguing title for an essay by the author of The Satanic Verses. I was in Japan when the Japanese translator of The Satanic Verses was murdered, victim of the destruction fundamentalists unleash in order to preserve their illusions.

*Shame, London: Pan Books, 1984, p.35.

**Imaginary Homelands, London: Granata Books, 1992, p419.

Reviews

[747]

Very interesting... I learned some new things today.

Your writing style makes it very easy to read your work, I quite enjoy it.

[Taylor]

Well first of all the title is priceless. A very quixotic piece and both informative and enjoyable. Would a Siberian Banana make a good frozen banana daiquiri? I'm not sure I'll be able to down the next highball.

[Woody]

love this one Roland. you are a funny guy. one only has to look at your picture to see wit and mischief lurking there (no disrespect).
Mr. Salman's anatomy is hilarious. you have a keen eyes, Hawk.

[mattavelli]

Congratulations!!
This is interesting work, Mr. Holmes.

[Nomenklatura]

Splendid. I'm not surprised it garnered a prize.

[Roland Petrov]

Thank you, Classifier of Things.