Swallowed Up by Rock

"All my life, I worshiped her. Her golden voice, her beauty's beat. How she made me feel, how she made me real, and the ground beneath her feet." Salman Rushdie, the writer who is perhaps more famous for the price on his head than his literary achievements is back with his first post-fatwa novel. Titled The Ground Beneath Her Feet, Rushdie's seventh novel is a global rock-and-roll odyssey that soars through the post-colonial and India before stumbling into pop-icon America. Inspired at least partly by Rushdie's association with U2. Rushdie made a rare public appearance at a U2 concert in 1993, coming onstage to greet lead singer Bono who was dressed (appro-priately enough for his meeting with The Satanic Verses' author) as the devil. A few years and a little hob-nobbing later, Rushdie, once a London music critic takes on the rock world from its birth in the '50s, through the glam '70s and into the technologically-driven '90s. Pop culture references abound; Elvis Presley, Bob Dylan, Madonna, Simon and Garfunkel, Andy Warhol and even Joh F. Kennedy. turn up somewhere, some of them slightly veiled by changed names. Rushdie's novel even had a rock band record its title song; yep, U2 did the honors on that one as well and will release the song on their next album.

The Ground Beneath Her Feet is Rushdie's first novel set primarily in America, though the main characters are Indian and a good chunk of the book takes place there. The first third of the book is a dense, atmospheric and compelling look at India during the beginning of British decolonization. The novel's featured three-some, beautiful Vina Apsara, musically gifted Ormus Cama and the narrator, Rai, are united early through friendships and tragedy. Vina, relocated to India from America after the murder of her family is adopted by Rai's parents, the Merchants. Soon, Vina meets Ormus Cama, the son of the Merchants' good friends; the three begin an epic love triangle that will continue for 30 years until Vina is swallowed up in an earthquake. Unfortunately, Rushdie abandons his most vivid characters, leaving behind Ormus' alcoholic Anglophile father and murderous brother, as well as Rai's gambling father and business-minded mother as the threesome for-sake their old world and are lured to America by the newborn rock-and-roll explosion.

In America, Rai becomes a photographer, while Vina and Ormus become full-blown celebrities through the success of their band, VTO (or V-2--The bands' name a fitting homage to Rushdie's real-life inspiration).

The novel loses a great deal of its magic and most of its charm when the focus moves to America. Rushdie's America is cold and empty, with a few discotheques and famous faces but lacking energy and life. The essence of America seems to slip through Rushdie's fingers, and a rich history of pop culture is reduced to a handful of amusing cameos. Narrator Rai becomes myopic in this foreign environment, keeping Vina and Ormus at a distance from the reader and failing to portray them as more than celebrated anomalies.

Rushdie's prose ranges from lush to breathlessly over-the-top to simply ridiculous; in an attempt to bring a more rock-and-roll feel to the work, he introduces slang, throwaway puns and silly lyrics that hinder his otherwise elegant style. He describes Vina as "Professor Vina and Crystal Vina, Holy Vina and profane Vina, Junkie Vina and Veggie Vina, Women's Vina and Vina the Sex Machine, Barren-Childless Tragic Vina and Traumatized-childhood-Tragedy Vina." Um, what was that again?

Ormus' musical elegy for Vina reaches a poetic level missing in the rest of his fabricated song lyrics. He sings, "and now I can't be sure of anything, black is white and cold is heat; for what I worshiped stole my love away, it was the ground beneath her feet." The words are expressive but minimal and emotional, a style Rushdie might have stuck to when writing other parts of the book. The nature of celebrity is a subject Rushdie tackles with aplomb, yielding a few entertaining bits of satire. His celebrities are drugged up, swaggering, stylized and often foolish. Through Vina and her famous friends, Rushdie shows us how fame is often unfulfilling, lonely and trifling. Andy Warhol's cultured set is brilliantly satirized, as is the delirious glam-rock movement that yielded Iggy Pop and David Bowie. Madonna Sangria is also skillfully caricatured and probably the reason why the real-life Madonna shredded her advance copy of the book.

The reason why Rushdie's book feels incomplete is that although music is the focus of his novel, he does not infuse enough of this music into his language and text. Ormus' songs lie flat on the page, and Rushdie's descriptions of VTO's music often leave more questions than answers. Rushdie also fails to deliver completely on his promise to present a rock version of Orpheus and Eurydice. Though he invokes the myth to great effect at the beginning of the novel, the theme is ultimately neglected. Perhaps Rushdie stretched himself too much by venturing into the world of rock, a realm he seems to know a bit about through association, but that just won't cut it in a full-blown novel. Though there is something admirable about Rushdie's intentions in The Ground Beneath Her Feet, it fails to fufill its tremendous potential. Perhaps we should reserve judgement until we hear the soundtrack, though. Music can make all the difference in the world.