Solaris, America, Disneyworld and Cyberspace: Salman Rushdie's Fairy-Tale Utopianism in Fury [printable version]

Justyna Deszcz

<1> In this paper, I discuss the figure of professor Malik Solanka, the protagonist of Salman Rushdie's latest novel, Fury (2001), and his attempts at constructing a fairy tale utopia as a means of establishing his identity. I try to elucidate this problem referring to the concepts of the fairy tale utopian as formulated by J. R. R. Tolkien, Ernst Bloch, and Jack Zipes, as their propositions can be regarded as the most effective exponents of the utopian imagination and seem very applicable to Rushdie's utopian attempts. On the basis of such a reading, I also reflect on the contemporary status of the genre, and in particular its existence online, as well as its resisting and copying the spellbinding and illusory images generated by Disneyland, which for many is now equivalent to the entire genre, and which is one of the most successful forms of the culture industry that corrupts the original fairy-tale utopian potential and mesmerizes audiences with projections of false dreamworlds. Finally, I explore Rushdie's utopian practice as his comment on America's potential to function as a departure point for constructing a utopia by a psychologically, culturally, and geographically displaced individual.

The Utopian Praxis

<2> Enchanting as fairy tales may seem, the stories about fairies, giants, or kings and queens can be ascribed to concrete struggles over power and hopes to stamp out social conflicts by altering dominant social orders, which in turn are often re-enacted in utopian realities that fairy tales enable their authors and audiences to build. It is these dramatic tensions, "whose resolutions allow us to glean the possibility of making the world, that is, shaping the world in accord with our needs and desires" (Zipes 1979, 20), that generate the incessant appeal of the genre. As Bloch explains the ever-present allure of the fairy tale, even though it describes "the atavistic and simultaneously feudal-transcendental world" which disappeared long ago, its principal focus is to convey "a wish-fulfillment" practice which "is not bound by its own time and the apparel of its contents," and thus occurs in our lives (qtd. in Zipes 1983, 133) [1]. More specifically, as Bloch avers, "the happiness of 'once upon a time'...still affects our visions of the future" (qtd. in Zipes 1983, 133), and is today evoked through numerous appeals to the attractive potential of the fairy tale that simultaneously provide the genre with a modern clothing.

<3> Expanding on Bloch's concept of Vor-Schein, that is, "the anticipatory illusion" (Zipes 1983, 132), Zipes notes that the utopian characteristic of the fairy tale resides in an individual's, or a community's, unfulfilled needs and wants, as well as their dissatisfaction with reality at a particular historical and political moment and the wish to transform it into a more satisfactory, spiritual and ideological homeland. Thus, the utopian serves as a projection of the real world's deficiencies and an encouragement to supply the missing elements by imagination. In this sense, fairy tale constructions of utopias can be seen as a fully rational and natural practice, and as such, they so powerfully attract contemporary audiences.

<4> Still, it could be argued that fairy tales rarely chart specific ways to alter the future and are rather vague in their depictions of how the perfected reality should look like. Whereas it is certainly true that the contours of fairy-tale utopias are hardly ever outlined in detail, we all cherish private and unique utopian visions. Hence, the only universally agreeable definition of an ideal land is our right and ability to live in our own versions of paradise. Consequently, Faery, the utopian realm, elusive as it may seem, does not function as a tempting shelter from reality, but "reacts on the latter, providing inspiration and guidance for reinstating what is out of place" (Butor 352). In other words, the utopian viewpoint offers, according to Zipes, "a critical, figurative reflection of everyday banality and subverts the arbitrary use of reason that destroys and confines the capacity of people to move on their own as autonomous makers of history" (Zipes 1983, 138). In this way, it detaches social concerns from the metanarrative of history and ideology, thereby disturbing the traditionally sanctioned society, as well as promotes autonomy and "validation of the self" (Zipes 1983, 146), the prerequisites for forming utopias. Therefore, with its indispensable structural and semantic tropes of wishful thinking and making dreams come true, the fairy tale emerges as a particularly efficient vehicle of utopian messages.

<5> To be more specific, the utopian effect of envisioning a society alternative to the present one operates in a twofold way: for the protagonist and for the reader. On the level of the homeless and often disenfranchised hero, it is a struggle for fulfillment which indicates "a socialization process and acquisition of values for participation in a society where the protagonist has more power of determination" (Zipes 1983, 174-5). If successful, the search is progressive and results in an effective transformation of the oppressive power relations, followed by the instatement of a more liberated social order, which signifies also the opening up of a radically novel psychological and intellectual plane.

<6> As long as the reader shares the intellectual and emotional deterritorialization of the character, the pursuit of home in the utopian world is re-enacted beyond the textual level, in the very reading of a fairy tale, during which the reader overcomes the confinements of reality and a paralyzing sense that the world cannot be changed. On the one hand, as Zipes points out, it is a psychological process reminiscent of Freud's "return of the repressed" or the uncanny, that is, the return to something that is familiar and old-established in the mind and which has become estranged from it through repression; on the other, homecoming transpires on a conscious, literary and philosophical plane, as "objectification of home as real democracy under non-alienating conditions" (Zipes 1983, 178). Hence, fairy-tale images, combined with people's dissatisfaction and the potential of the anticipatory illusion, that is, their dreams and wishes which in turn reflect their needs, alert readers to the imperative of altering reality. As Zipes depicts this fairy-tale activity, the stories "paradoxically remove us from our present situation to engage us with it. Their futuristic or otherworldly settings are deceiving, for they only set the framework for the author's political critique of the here and now, inviting readers to share the deception and confront the critique" (Zipes 1994, 119). This in turn gives rise to the awakening of "a utopian consciousness" (Zipes 1979, 139), and, as a result, readers can experience an actual emancipation that reflects "a process of struggle against all types of suppression and authoritarianism and posits various possibilities for the concrete realization of utopia" (Zipes 1983, 178).

<7> In this sense, and it this aspect of utopian practice that Tolkien sees as particularly important, the liberating imagination activated in the genre is not an individual issue, but ought to be shared, thereby reinforcing the nurturing and fortifying sense of community. As Zipes convincingly argues, the significance of the Tolkienian feeling of togetherness is exceptionally relevant today, as it "stimulate[s] a sense of sharing, reverence, devotion and communion...which cannot be found in the everyday relations of society itself" (Zipes 1983, 156). Indeed, it is hard to oppose this view if one thinks about the increasing fragmentarization that paradoxically ails the global community and which we continually encounter both on the public and the private level. This awareness of fellowship is in turn closely related, as Tolkien claims, to our participating in the common past. Although the past may appear as oppressive or simply mundane and unattractive, it can retain its relevance if we manage to perceive it in a new light. What facilitates such a change of perception is the fairy tale and its "luminous, estranged setting" (Zipes 1979, 143), in which everyday objects, and what could seem a static constellation of symbols, acquire different and unusual properties. In this way, the genre is instrumental in establishing new connections between the past and the present, which in turn is to let us address our concerns and progress towards an improved reality.

<8> Seen through such interpretative categories, the fairy tale focuses on a search of what has been stifled or denied, and stimulates in its readers the sense of real home, happiness, and satisfaction. It does so as it diagnoses the reasons for the dislodging and creates a space of opposition which in turn encourages dreaming ahead, that is, the arousal of a genuine revolutionary awareness which can alter history. As Zipes claims, to offer liberation, a given tale does not have to sound didactic or dogmatic. Instead, it should adequately "reflect a process of struggle against all types of suppression and authoritarianism and posit various possibilities for the concrete realization of utopia" (Zipes 1983, 179). With such hopes and dreams, Bloch writes, "virtually all human beings are futuristic; they transcend their past life, and to the degree that they are satisfied, they think they deserve a better life...and regard the inadequacy of their lot as a barrier, and not just the way of the world" (qtd. in Zipes 1983, 175) [2]. In this sense, the utopian creativity stimulated by the fairy tale and its idealized miraculous worlds can be seen as a radically subversive and liberating practice of contestation.

Salman Rushdie's Utopian Spark

<9> It is this human potential for conjuring, venturing into, and exploring imaginary realms that has long preoccupied Rushdie. More specifically, what he finds particularly attractive in the process of "inventing dream worlds" (Rushdie 1991, 122) is their "power to oppose this reality" (Rushdie 1991, 122). Such a rebellious practice, as he notes, is indeed extremely desirable at the time when Dystopias prevail, which is indicative of the conviction that it is no longer possible to engineer a happy ending and to metamorphose reality into the best life attainable. Still, despite all sorts of turmoil, Rushdie has never surrendered to this seemingly all-pervasive impoverishment of our imaginative faculties. His life-long commitment to destabilizing colonialist discourse by promoting his own versions of India and the West could actually be taken as replacing the lost "familiar habitats" (Rushdie 1991, 125) by constructing alternative realities. Interestingly, Rushdie depicts these efforts using fairy-tale phrasings that could be regarded as a household frame of reference: What happens once the writer ventures on a "surface which turns to [the] yellow brick [road], white rabbits scurry past...? What kind of place is Oz, or Wonderland?" (Rushdie 1991, 118). As the author defines this journey, the creation of utopias and the concomitant indication that through dreaming one can become powerful belong to the domain of art, which itself may turn into an imaginary realm: Such artistic means as "techniques of comedy, metaphor, heightened imagery, fantasy and so on are used to break down our conventional, habit-dulled certainties about what the world is and has to be" (Rushdie 1991, 122).

<10> However, it is not just determining an optional version, but an active struggle against reality that Rushdie focuses on: "Unreality is the only weapon with which reality can be smashed, so that it may be subsequently reconstructed" (Rushdie 1991, 122). In highlighting the militant aspect of utopian thinking, Rushdie actually comes close to the conceptions of the aforementioned fairy-tale theorists. Perhaps nothing better testifies to the significance of such a practice for Rushdie as his comment on Oz, one of the most famous and successful fairy-tale utopias. As he summarizes the universal and utopian appeal of Oz in his monography on the MGM film The Wizard of Oz:

[The imaginary land] finally became home...as it does for all of us, because the truth is that once we have left our childhood places and started out to make up our lives, armed only with what we have and are, we understand that the real secret of ruby [and silver] slippers is not that "there's no place like home" but rather that there is no longer any such place as home: except, of course for the home we make, or the homes that are made for us, in Oz: which is anywhere, and everywhere, except the place from which we began. (Rushdie 1992, 61)

It is clear that Rushdie realizes the fairy tale's exceptional capacity of harboring unfulfilled dreams and providing guidelines how to make them come true. As will be argued, Rushdie's novel can be approached as an instance of a modernized fairy tale utopia, as well as a move from the sheer critique of the present state of things to the anticipatory vision of a more hospitable world. It can also serve as a justification of why it is so crucial to devise, cherish, and live in the new realms of one's hopes and dreams.

Displacement

<11> Fury features numerous fairy-tale intertextualities and allusions: The competition between "the fat old toad" and a handsome Prince Charming (Rushdie 2001b, 249); metaphorical references to an unidentified Indian Ocean island, most likely Fiji, as Lilliput and Blefuscu; a revisionist reading of Peter Pan, in which "Captain Hook escaped the crocodile every time" (Rushdie 2001b, 127); the figure of a young copyrighter who introduces himself as "Mark Skywalker, from the planet Tatooine," but is nevertheless "markedly un-Jedi-knight-like" (Rushdie 2001b, 34); or serial killers disguising themselves in 'fancy-dress Disney costumes' (Rushdie 2001b, 130).

<12> Still, Fury's fundamental fairy-tale quality resides in utopianism, displayed in what Rushdie defines in another novel as "heterotopian tendencies, forays into alternative realities" (Rushdie 1999, 537). Briefly, Malik Solanka, already as a child living in Bombay, undergoes the disorienting separation from the East, when his father deserts him, and his mother remarries. Soon, he moves to England, where he studies, works, and marries. Finally, he ends up in New York, searching for a refuge from his personal problems. The city seems most suitable for such purposes: In New York, "everybody who needed...found...home away from home among other wanderers who needed exactly the same thing: a haven in which to spread their wings" (Rushdie 2001b, 157). No wonder this is so, as all over the world, America as such is associated with success: In India, "great pride was taken in the achievements of U.S.-based Indians in music, publishing...Silicon Valley and Hollywood...British journalist has work in U.S.A.! Incredible!" (Rushdie 2001b, 224). In other words, as Solanka, reflects, "American success had become the only real validation of one's worth" (Rushdie 2001b, 224). The only prerequisite is to "find a gateway" to the city's "magic, invisible, hybrid heart" (Rushdie 2001b, 87). Lured by New York's congeniality, Solanka decides to take part in this quest and leaves his English home, a loving wife, and a little son, as he gradually notices "the erosion of what once overwhelmed" (Rushdie 2001b, 185) and intends to erase the past by reinventing himself. As he contends, "nothing less than the unselfing of the self would do. If he could cleanse the whole machine, then maybe the bug, too, would end up in the thrash. After that he could perhaps begin to construct a new man" (Rushdie 2001b, 80).

Solaris/The Cybernetic Utopia

<13> Significantly, Solanka describes both his childhood and his present predicament in terms of living in a false utopia, that is, a place which in an escapist manner discourages any creative action aiming at transforming reality. Solanka often refers to the 1972 Russian science fiction film Solaris, Andrey Tarkovsky's cinematic version of Stanislaw Lem's classic about "an ocean-covered planet that functions as a single giant brain" and which is able to "read men's minds and make their dreams come true" (Rushdie 2001b, 220). Indeed, in the film, the ocean can project and materialize the deepest thoughts that lie in the minds of the humans living close by [3].

<14> As Solanka recounts, at the end of the film, its hero "is back at home at last, on the porch of his long-lost Russian dacha, with his children running joyfully around and his beautiful, dead wife alive again at his side" (Rushdie 2001b, 220). Still, the viewer soon learns that the house is actually located on a small island floating on the ocean of Solaris: "a delusion, or perhaps a deeper truth than the truth" (Rushdie 2001b, 220). The dacha finally becomes smaller and smaller until it disappears, whereas the viewer is "left with the image of the mighty, seductive ocean of memory, imagination and dream, where nothing dies, where what you need is always waiting for you on a porch, or running towards you across a vivid lawn with childish cries and happy, open arms" (Rushdie 2001b, 220). For Solanka, his family life is also such an immobilizing delusion, "a delusion of fatherhood, trapped in a cruel mistake of fatherly love" (Rushdie 2001b, 220), until he realizes that his role as a father "was a lie, a lie. There was no father. This was no happy home. The child was not itself. Nothing was as it seemed" (Rushdie 2001b, 220). The professor is so disgusted with his domestic life that he cannot bear it any more and one night finds himself on the point of stubbing his wife and little son to death, a vision that begins to haunt him mercilessly.

<15> Consequently, Solanka tries to transcend "his own life's ugly reality" (Rushdie 2001b, 169) by creating an imaginary self-sustained enclave in which his fears and obsessions could be replaced by a sense of self-fulfillment and control over his destiny. More precisely, he does so through conjuring up, first in his mind and then on the Internet, the civilization of the Rijk. "The world of 'Puppet Kings'" (Rushdie 2001b, 170), as his this is how he calls his utopian realm, stems from his long fascination with doll-making and constructing houses for his toys, in which he turns to "the material of his own life and immediate surroundings," and "by the alchemy of art," defamiliarizes it (Rushdie 2001b, 16). His American creations are also heavily influenced by his youthful reading of science fiction novels by Lem, Isaac Asimov, or Philip K. Dick, later recognized as the representatives of "the form's golden age" (Rushdie 2001b, 168). What most attracts Solanka is the genre's "parables and allegories...its flights of pure invention, its loopy, spiraling conceits -- a ceaselessly metamorphosing alternative world in which he felt instinctively at home" (Rushdie 2001b, 168). Thus, Solanka lets his imagination freely transform the reality of New York, "every random encounter, every newspaper he opened, every thought, every feeling, every dream" (Rushdie 2001b, 170), such as for instance his meeting with Babur, a young politician-rebel from Lilliput-Blefuscu, after whom Solanka names the two central islands of his civilization Baburia.

<16> Solanka resorts to such a practice as he wants to revise his "back-story" (Rushdie 2001b, 50), which he defines as a tale that "we brought with us on our journey across oceans, beyond frontiers, though life: our little storehouse of anecdote and what-happened-next, our private once-upon-a-time. We were our stories, and when we died, if we were lucky, our immortality would be in another such tale" (51). No wonder Solanka wishes to erase his previous narrative of unhappy childhood and failed adult life, including "guilty Desdemonas and the whole useless baggage of blood and tribe" (Rushdie 2001b, 51). As he reflects, he can use the chance to form a memorable back-story only in America: He arrived there 'as so many before him to receive the benison of...starting over" (Rushdie 2001b, 51). Full of expectations, the professor thus appeals to the continent's power to revision and refresh people's stories: "Give me a name, America...Bathe me in amnesia and clothe me in your powerful unknowing...Scan me, digitize me, beam me up. If the past is the sick old earth, then, America, be my flying saucer. Fly me to the rim of space. The moon's not far enough" (Rushdie 2001b, 51).

<17> It is this last plea that becomes particularly relevant to Solanka's quest for self-renewal. Following his spontaneous associations, he gradually constructs a universe which soon begins to marginalize actuality: "Real life has started obeying the dictates of fiction, providing precisely the raw material he needed to transmute through the alchemy of his reborn art" (Rushdie 2001b, 179). What comes out of these reformulations is the story of a scanned and digitized Solanka himself, the character by the name of Professor Akasz Kronos, a cyberneticist who, seeing the demise of his civilization, decides to design and create the "No-String Puppet Kings" (Rushdie 2001b, 163). In fact, these cyborgs turn out totally "string-free" (Rushdie 2001b, 163), as they can not only recreate themselves, but are also equipped with "ethical independence" (164), that is, they have "a series of multiple-choice options" how to interpret various moral issues (Rushdie 2001b, 164). As Kronos believes, such a solution fosters idealism and corresponds to the "inexpressible, obscure" "fullness of a living self" (Rushdie 2001b, 165). In this way, Kronos wishes to explore the secret nature of all "sentient creatures," which are constantly involved in the internal conflict "between light and dark, heart and mind, spirit and machine" (Rushdie 2001b, 165). Solanka's account documents the development of Kronos's experiment until the cyborgs expel the scientist from their land and participate in numerous conflicts arising between the nations of the Rijk civilization.

A Cyber-Fairy Tale?

<18> Solanka's cybernetic world becomes widely accessible, whereas the survival of the kingdom is secured though the Net. It is worth noting that the feasibility of such a venture, confirmed to some extent by Rushdie's tale, testifies to the fairy tale's plasticity when shifting to a new medium and its potential to address social and cultural changes, as for instance evidenced in his other novel, The Ground Beneath Her Feet (1999), in the online dissemination of Tolkienian tales about the main heroine's death. A story is circulated on the Web that before the mysterious event, one of Vina's admirers, believed to be a servant of Tolkien's Dark Lord, Sauron, gave her "a priceless but malignant ring, which had caused the subsequent catastrophe and dragged her down to Hell...One ring to rule them all, one ring to find them, one ring to bring the all and in the darkness bind them" (Rushdie 1999, 6). The question arises: Does this repackaging necessitate a wholly new critical vocabulary and indicates a far greater freedom of approach to the genre? Is the core of the fairy tale sustained as it becomes part of the new currency of cultural exchange?

<19> Certainly, the digitalized genre will not escape the danger of being treated as a commodity that can be owned, traded, or accumulated. On a more positive note, it seems that just as orality and literacy have never been mutually exclusive, the new "technology of expression" will not be "abrupt or immediate in its consequence" (Donoghue 152). Michel de Certeau, has pointed out that "epistemological configurations are never replaced by the appearance of new orders; they compose strata that form the bedrock of a present" (qtd. in Donoghue 152). [4] Thus, as Donoghue notes, an old medium and a new one are related in an "archaeological rather than historical or linear" way. This allows "choosing to live a life mostly archaic or nostalgic, by not capitulating to the Zeitgeist. Even if one thinks in linear terms, there is always an overlap between one technology and its apparent successor" (Donoghue 152).

<20> It in the case of the fairy tale, the new medium indeed does not erase the characteristic qualities and functions of the genre, but, at least for some time, reinforces them, for instance by intensifying the intertextual relationships between tales, their fluid merging into one another, and unimpeded possibilities of evolving into new stories. It may be worth mentioning that Rushdie has a come up with the concept of interweaving tales, albeit on a more imaginary level, in Haroun and the Sea of Stories (1990), his fairy tale per se, in the real Sea of Stories. The main setting for the events, the Sea, is actually a living and infinite library, or Liber mundi, very much similar to the Internet. As Haroun and his companions approach it, they can discern multitudinous currents, each of them of a different hue, "weaving in and out of one another like a liquid tapestry of breathtaking complexity":

each coloured strand represented and contained a single tale. Different parts of the Ocean contained different sorts of stories, and as all the stories that had ever been told and many that were still in the process of being invented could be found here, the Ocean of the Streams of Story was in fact the biggest library in the universe. And because the stories were held the in fluid form, they retained the ability to change, to become new versions of themselves, to join up with other stories and to become yet other stories; so that unlike a library of books, the Ocean of the Streams of Story was much more that a storeroom of yarns. It was not dead but alive. (Rushdie 1990, 72)

The Ocean is cultivated by a group of characters who preserve the stories in good condition. For example, the job of Mali, a Floating Gardener, is "maintenance...untwisting twisted Story Streams. Also unlooping same. Weeding." (Rushdie 1990, 83). As it turns out, Mali's intervention is particularly desirable in the case of popular romances which "become just long lists of shopping expeditions" (83), and thus, being too mechanical, can no longer nourish the readers' or the listeners' interest in the love plot they depict. Haroun also befriends local yarnspinners, the Plentimaw Fishes, who are popularly called the "hunger artists": When they are hungry, "they swallow stories through every mouth, and in their innards miracles occur; a little bit of one story joins on to an idea from another; and hey presto, when they spew the stories out they are not old tales but new ones...no story comes from nowhere; new are born from old -- it is the new combinations that make them new" (Rushdie 1990, 85-6).

<21> The most striking feature of the exquisite and powerful organism of the Ocean is its being a vast, all-inclusive and rhizomatic (to use Deleuze and Guattari's term for the nonhierarchical, structureless, and perambulatory) assemblage of thematically and historically diverse nomadic tales. Moreover, the stories exhibit unlimited autogenerative potential, as they harmoniously unroll into other narratives and replicate in new and bizarre patterns, thereby revealing their own structure. In its plasticity and decetralization of the tales, the ocean resembles the Web, itself a metaphor of exchange and connection unlimited by time or space, whereas its currents are redolent of hypertexts that also undergo the ever-changing process of the formation, reinvention, telling, and transmitting of narratives that literally occur in the Ocean. In this sense, hyper-fairy tales, just like their oral, and sometimes also typographic, siblings, may be interpreted as an ample and vivid metafictional concretisation of the "biology of storytelling" (Dégh 47) through which old elements are resurrected and recomposed so that the tales could delight and instruct the addressees of the stories [5].

<22> Even more importantly, by encouraging the addressee's participation both in the process of creation and in the perpetual making and unmaking, electronic fairy tales also foster a sense of community, although it will never be as direct as in oral transmission. Nevertheless, as Mila, the computer whiz, explains to Solanka, the new technology may not only considerably contribute to his creative efforts, but guarantee a constant possibility for further expansion: "Just the creative potential, what can be done with an idea now. The best sites are inexhaustible, people come back and back, it's like a world you're giving them to belong to" (Rushdie 2001b, 177). In this sense, the Web preserves the main value of the fairy tale, that is, its illimitable capacity of homemaking. But is using virtual reality to move to a different space the same form of displacement as in an oral or written tale? Can an electronic space be inhabited as a true home is?

<23> Judging by the number of visitors, the fantastic realm really is perceived as a promising alternative to reality. Mila thus summarizes its importance: "This new world is my life….It's where I feel most alive. There, inside the electricity" (Rushdie 2001b, 179). Indeed, it is almost impossible to resist being engrossed in Solanka's realm, and even he himself cannot help plunging into this "multidimensioned world" (Rushdie 2001b, 187): He is riveted not only by the characters and events he creates and controls, but also by "the shadow-play possibilities...of the two sets of doubles, the encounters between 'real' and 'real', 'real' and 'double', 'double' and 'double', which blissfully demonstrated the dissolution of the frontiers between the categories" (Rushdie 2001b, 187). The opening up of such a vast sphere of experience leads him to recognizing himself as an inhabitant of "a world he greatly preferred to the one outside his window, and thus came to understand what Mila Milo had meant when she said that this was where she felt most alive" (188). Still, Solanka's failure to regulate this certainly desirable exchange will result in the general failure of his enterprise.

<24> For the time being, however, the effects of Solanka's total absorption into his civilization are undeniably positive: He regains his a sense of self-dignity, as "who'd have thought...that an old duffer could come up with stuff as hip as this?" (Rushdie 2001b, 186). Even more importantly, he notices that he has become capable of exploring what he did in details, as well as of totally committing himself to his cybernetic venture, which in turn wards off his a sort of negative enchantment, or even a sense of an existential vertigo, by the recurring obsessions. Not to mention that such a determination is instrumental in the attainment of the fairy-tale utopia.

<25> As has been mentioned, what particularly delights Solanka in his Internet practice is the possibility of continual metamorphosis of the basic plotline on which his world is founded, and its unlimited capability of incorporating and transforming "its creator's history, scraps of gossip, deep learning, currents affairs, high and low culture, and the most nourishing diet of all -- namely, the past" (Rushdie 2001b, 190), including "[t]he ransacking of the world's storehouse of old stories and ancient histories" (190). Consequently, being offered the unlimited number of options to explore, Solanka experiences a miraculous enrichment of his imagination, which in turn imbues him with a feeling of strength and immunity to actuality. All the more so, as it seems to him that thanks to the computer technology "with its formal preference for lateral leaps and its relative uninterest in linear progression" (Rushdie 2001b, 186) he has been able to free himself "from the clock, from the tyranny of what happened next," and thus participate in "the divine experience of time" (Rushdie 2001b, 187): "Until the advent of hyperlinks, only God had been able to see simultaneously into the past, present and future alike...[Now] such omniscience was available to all, at the merest click of a mouse" (Rushdie 2001b, 187). As he reflects on his new position, "life had unexpectedly dealt him a strong hand, and he would make the most of it. It was time for a long, concentrated, perhaps even healing, burst" (Rushdie 2001b, 186).

<26> However, Solanka's initial enthusiasm soon wears off, as it turns out that once again nothing is as it seems. His venture, both cybernetic and real, is booming and even comprises: "a restaurant chain! A theme park! A giant Las Vegas hotel, entertainment centre and casino in the shape of the two islands of Baburia, to be set in an artificially created 'ocean' at the desert's heart" (Rushdie 2001b, 225-226). Still, it fails to provide a space in which genuine communication and collaboration could flourish: "In the electronic world, Solanka and the webspyders worked closely together for hours a day. Outside it, they were strangers. That was, apparently, how it had to be" (Rushdie 2001b, 215). Indeed, one may wonder whether for the generation of remote controls, pop images, consoles, and Internet browsers, so deeply entangled in the compulsive consumer activity, the urge to structure cybernetic dreamworlds does reflect any longing for an authentic experience of dislocation that could lead to forging a new sense of physical community and continuity no longer available in postmodern society.

<27> No wonder that, when interviewed by journalists, Solanka can no longer talk about his work, and even can "hear himself sounding false, knowing also that a second layer of falsehood would be added by the journalists' responses to his words" (Rushdie 2001b, 217). Perhaps the reason for Solanka's failure is that just like Kronos refrained himself from imbuing his creation with any stable value system, mistaking this kind of omission with idealism, the professor, enchanted with new technological possibilities, preferred to drag out his story of conflicts, feuds, and alliances, instead of bothering himself to answer any questions and conclude the tale in such a way that it could serve as Bloch's homecoming and guidance to independence.

<28> In conjunction with this, one should mention that despite some indubitably positive aspects of Solanka's moving outside temporal sequence, his not paying attention to a more general purpose and vision of the utopian venture has deprived both the professor and the users of the sense of growth through time and the gradual unfolding of utopian possibilities, which may result in lack of determination and commitment, so vital in the formation of successful utopian realms. Not to mention that with a little less egotism on Solanka's part, the creation of an Internet utopia through the spinning of a cyber-tale, so congenial for the addressee's participation, could become a genuinely communal and active practice. Significantly, the betrayal of the aforementioned fundamental utopian principles may prove extremely dangerous, as, according to Solanka, despite the fact that America's "paradigmatic modern fiction was the story of a man who remade himself -- his past, his present, his shirts, even his name" (79), the fragmentation of the self in the U.S. is deepening and may finally lead to disintegration. In a way, Solanka has already become infected with it, which can be detected in his enjoyment of giving up his individuality and merging with the crowd, "this sense of being crowded out by other's people stories, of walking like a phantom through a city that in the middle of a story which didn't need him as a character" (Rushdie 2001b, 89).

The American Cybernetic Utopia Disneyfied

<29> Solanka also learns that America is no longer a fairy-tale country, but a land with "excess of [people's] dashed and thwarted hopes" (Rushdie 2001b, 184). As he interprets the American failure, using fairy-tale imagery, "here in Boom America, the real-life manifestation of Keats's fabulous realms of gold, here in the doubloon-heavy pot at the rainbow's end, human expectations were at the highest levels in human history, and so, therefore, were human disappointments" (Rushdie 2001b, 184), becoming ever bigger "at a time when the future was opening up to reveal vistas of unimaginable, glittering treasures as no man or woman had ever dreamed of" (Rushdie 2001b, 184). The sense of defeat is even more acute, as America, in Solanka's phrase, was always "a land where the right to dream was the national ideological cornerstone" (Rushdie 2001b, 184), whereas now, dreams have become subordinated to the imperative of financial gain. As Solanka describes this wretched condition, "people were waking up...and realizing that their lives didn't belong to them. Their bodies didn't belong to them, and nobody else's bodies belonged to anyone, either. They no longer saw a reason not to shoot" (Rushdie 2001b, 184). What has any tangible value is money, as no-one knows "how to quarrel with money these days" (Rushdie 2001b, 224), and it is "the Promised Land" of America (Rushdie 2001b, 224) that abounds with it.

<30> Little wonder that the perplexed and disenchanted Solanka bitterly asks:

Were all empires so undeserving, or was this one particularly crass? Was nobody in all this bustling endeavour and material plenitude engaged, any longer, on the deep quarrywork of the mind and heart? O Dream-America, was civilization's quest to end in obesity and trivia...Who paved the Paradise and put up the parking lot? (Rushdie 2001b, 87)

His disappointment is so profound that he even refers to America's coming short of his expectation as a sacrilege of the quest for the Grail: It is "Yankee Galahads," "Hoosier Lancelots," or "Parsifals of the stockyards" that gather at the American "Table Round" or look for the keys giving access to "exaltation," that is, in American terms, wealth and "the joy of possession" (Rushdie 2001b, 86). This in turn means that "Arthur had fallen, Excalibur was lost, and dark Mordred was king. Beside him on the throne of Camelot sat the queen, his sister, the witch Morgan le Fay" (Rushdie 2001b, 88).

<31> For Solanka himself, the hegemony of money means, as he himself notices, becoming a mere "merchant of fairy tales and toys" (Rushdie 2001b, 217), seduced with America's illusory "brilliance" and "vast potency" (Rushdie 2001b, 87), and simultaneously inescapably drawn into the logic of insatiable consumption. Indeed, there soon appears the whole gamut of extremely popular paraphernalia that promote Solanka's creation, a "universe of toys...everything from soft dolls to life-size robots with voices and flashing lights, to say nothing of Halloween-special costumes…boxed games and jigsaw puzzles and nine kinds of spacecraft and cyborg neutralizers and scale models of the entire planet Galileo-1, and, for the real nuts, its entire solar system" (Rushdie 2001b, 214). The principal aim of such a business praxis is to awaken in the consumer appreciation, gratitude, obligation and conscious, or semi-conscious, loyalty towards the providers of the gizmos. In view of the increasing subordination of Solanka's part of cyberspace to the marketplace, one may wonder to what extent his utopian project actually encourages a genuine, free, and equitable exchange. It is only those who find themselves on the privileged side of the digital divide, the computer literate and the information-rich, or, in Solanka's words, those who have "the secret number" (read "money") that is, "the coolest and the highest" (Rushdie 2001b, 50) in society that may enjoy its beneficial influence. Still, however socially advantaged they are, their "wide-eyed thrilledness" (Rushdie 2001b, 50) prevents them from realizing they have actually been entranced by its gimmicks and lulled into passivity and compliance, which in turn has reinforced their consumerist status rather than addressed them as individuals. Such is the way of the things: After all, the seemingly magical contraptions employed by Solanka are closely connected to e-commerce, which is becoming the dominant form of international trade.

<32> The mercantilization of the Internet kingdom transforms this newly-fashioned realm into one more amusement park similar to Disneyworld, which lures audiences with false utopias of make-believe and happy endings, selling thus safety, charm and apple-pie order to those tortured by a nagging sense of "the insecurity of the present and uncertainty of the future" (Bauman 17). In the book, Disneyfication manifests itself in the corruption of Rijk's potential to become a self-sufficient fairy tale land, independent of objective reality in the way Oz or Narnia are. Instead, its functioning is regularized by the conditions of the culture industry, that is, it is contingent on the marketplace, which in turn commodifies the nostalgic search for simpler and safer times: Despite its being governed by chaos, fluidity, and change characteristic of the Internet, it has been reduced to a mass-produced commodity, to be purchased and owned, and to bring in substantial profit. Hence, it has degenerated into a false utopia that lacks any magical dimension and exists only as a fleeting and undemanding divertisement from everyday life, comparable to a visit to Disneyland and leaving no room for free thought. What really counts in the marketplace is performance, a fast, efficient, and routinized service, guaranteeing yield. To use Bauman's telling phrase, "the rationality of consumer society is built on the irrationality of its individualized actors" (17). In this sense, Solanka's utopian attempt becomes another embodiment of the dominant norms and ideals, and "the Weberian iron cages" of rationalization, "from which hope for escape lessens all the time" (Ritzer PAGE).

<33> Another Disney-brand aspect of Rijk is its expansion beyond the sphere of the imaginary or cyberspace and the continual spilling into the real world, referred to above. Rushdie provides an instance of such border-crossing with regard to Disneyworld itself, in the subplot involving serial killings of rich young girls, "women...born to be trophies, fully accessorized Oscar-Barbies" (Rushdie 2001b, 72), contemporary versions of traditionally passive heroines of classical and canonized fairy tales. The murders are committed by Disney figures that long ago became household names all over the world and can be identified automatically, without any meaningful reflection: "A Goofy...a Buzz Lightyear...Robin Hood himself, tormentor of the bad old Sheriff of Notting Ham, and now also eluding the Sheriffs of Manhatta" (Rushdie 2001b, 130). As Solanka muses on the crimes, the victims, "these Princesses of the Now" (Rushdie 2001b, 74), functioned as "mere totems of their class, the class that ran America, which in turn ran the world, so that an attack on them was also...an attack on the great American empire, the Pax Americana, itself..." (Rushdie 2001b, 74). Certainly, such interactions with actuality, seen by Solanka as "macabre proof of fiction's ability to cross that impermeable frontier" (Rushdie 2001b, 130), would not be at all desirable by the managers of Disneyworld, itself contingent on America's worldwide domination. Thus, any such relations are carefully scripted to rule out the unpredictable that deviates from the prescribed scenarios guaranteeing artificial saccharine happiness and considerable profit.

Solanka's Utopian Victory-in-Failure

<34> Solanka's profitable enterprise also acquires a life on its own. Naturally, such a liberation could be deemed welcome, as it would indicated a transgression of the highly regularized model established by Disneyland. Still, the professor notices that even though he can relish the "intervention of the living dolls of the imaginary planet Galileo-1 in the public affairs of actually existing Earth" (Rushdie 2001b, 226), his imaginary world does not affect it the way he would like it to and paradoxically calls for more committed attitude on his part. Whereas initially it was comforting to Solanka to know that none of his decisions was final and had no irreversible consequences, it slowly dawns on him such an attitude makes him incapable of searching for concrete solutions both to his biographical problems and to the challenges of contemporary life in general. Interestingly, Solanka's negligence recalls the typical consumerist acting on impulse and desire, which, in Bauman's words, is a "volatile and ephemeral, evasive and capricious, and essentially non-referential phenomenon; a self-begotten and self-perpetuating motive that calls for no justification or apology either in terms of an objective or a cause" (Rushdie 2001b, 13). Thus, consumption, which itself is its own purpose, does not satisfy such human needs as having something adequate to identify with, but, as Bauman contends, ensures that consumers should never be allowed to "awake" from their "dreams"; dreams which are nothing more than "the consuming desire of consuming" (13) [6].

<35> More specifically, Baburia does not serve as an alternative reality, whose existence may result in the fashioning of counter-discourses or the ironical unmasking of the inadequacy of established truths and norms. On the contrary, just as the Puppet Kings rebel against Kronos, Solanka has a feeling he is no longer in charge of the Internet realm, that is, he cannot use it for utopian purposes. As Kronos contends, "man is born in chains but everywhere seeks to be free...I loved my puppets, knowing that, like children, they might walk away from me one day" (Rushdie 2001b, 167). Solanka is also "in love" (Rushdie 2001b, 30) with his creation, but his feeling results from the fact that this is the only thing he can master, whereas reality, and in particular, the love he encounters in his life, remain beyond his control. One of his ex-wives thus summarizes Solanka's infatuation with the artificial world: "Your trouble is...that you're only in love with those...dolls. The world in inanimate miniature is just about all you can handle. The world you can make, unmake and manipulate" (Rushdie 2001b, 30). It turns out that even in this artificial world he is incapable of using two basic, but also most crucial, skills: The responsible mapping and navigation of his utopia, which results in overall chaos.

<36> Naturally, there is nothing wrong with the Baburian utopian attempt to overcome oppression as such, but in the case of Solanka's creative venture, the emancipatory drive to improve one's predicament soon becomes corrupted by a sheer greed for power and domination. It turns out that his puppets cross the border between fiction and actuality and appear on Earth as participants of a countercoup in Lilliput:

masked men raided Mildendo's biggest toy store and made off with its entire, just-imported supply of Kronosian Cyborg masks and costumes...The revolutionary Indo Lilly 'freemen' who had orchestrated the raid, as was afterwards revealed, identified strongly with the Puppet Kings, whose inalienable by Mogol the Baburian..of whom Skyresh Bolgolam [a politician] was accused of being an avatar. (Rushdie 2001b, 226)

Worse still, one of the masks, that of Commander Akasz, the leader of the rebels, is the image of Solanka's own face.

<37> Marked by only occasional clashes at first, the conflict exacerbates, as Solanka soon realizes to his horror, into another "revolt of the living dolls" (Rushdie 2001b, 227), with "hundreds dead, hundreds more seriously injured or classified as walking wounded" (Rushdie 2001b, 227). The rebellion is successful, whereas Commander Akasz, who, incidentally, turns out to be the Babur whom Solanka met in New York and even himself incorporated into his project, assumes despotic control over Lilliput-Blefuscu. Solanka has strong misgivings about the actual motives behind Akasz's seemingly idealistic, but in reality empty, slogans. As one of the natives recounts them, the rebellion marks "a great historical moment": "Indian people of Lilliput-Blefuscu have finally standed up for our right. Our culture is ancient and superior and will henceforth prevail...For one hundred years good-for-nothing Elbee cannibals drank grog -- kava, glimigrim, flunec, Jack Daniel's and Coke, every kind of godless booze -- and made us eat their shit. Now they can eat ours instead" (Rushdie 2001b, 238). Solanka is right to contend that the uprising is not going to change anything, if only because it lacks authenticity that has been obliterated by the masks. Moreover, Akasz has definitely not worked out "a miracle" and is "not the servant of a just cause, and while...Mandela and Gandhi weren't the only models for revolutionaries to consider, bully-boy tactics needed always to be called by their right name" (Rushdie 2001b, 228). No wonder the usurpation of Solanka's realm and the misuse of its utopian principle makes him feel totally dejected and powerless, so that, "standing alone of the high peaks of his life," he sees himself as Gulliver or Alice, two fairy-tale figures who experienced a similar predicament, being "like a giant among pygmies, invincible, invulnerable, suddenly felt tiny invincible figures tugging at his garments, as if a horde of little goblins were trying to drag him down to Hell" (228).

<38> What saves him is, in a typically fairy-tale way, is a very wordly and certainly not virtual love for Neela Mahendra, a gorgeous Oriental beauty who also happens to be an Indo-Lilly journalist and political activist, "the last big emotional gamble of his life" (Rushdie 2001b, 185). Solanka feels that "beyond her, if he lost her as he probably would," there would be nothing left but a desert (Rushdie 2001b, 185). Indeed, he describes Neela's love as a "flood" (Rushdie 2001b, 206) and a "philosopher's stone" (Rushdie 2001b, 206) that miraculously make himself confident again and free him from his Solaris obsession. Even more importantly, Neela uncovers in Solanka what he thought was totally absent in his life, that is, his capability of loving another person. As she once tells him: "The thing about you...is that you've got a heart. This is a rare quality in the contemporary guy...Finally, a man worth staying with" (Rushdie 2001b, 208). Little wonder that for Solanka, who has always thought he is devoid of any affection, Neela's soothing words are like "Love Potion Number Nine" and "the healing balm" (208), or an empowering magical spell.

<39> Unfortunately for the professor, they quarrel, and Neela leaves for Lilliput-Blefuscu, where she hopes to film the coup. Solanka, who finally becomes aware of what Neela has done for him -"he owed it to himself, having found so remarkable a woman, not to lose her by default" (236) -- follows her and soon finds himself in the earthly version of his kingdom. Significantly, on his way to the island, Solanka experiences the characteristic sense of disorientation similar to that of Moraes's heading for Spain. On the one hand, he sees himself as traveling towards the future, on the other, he moves back to the past, as the plane has a stop-over in Bombay. At the beginning, Solanka cannot even bear the view from the window, but soon recalls Neela's promise to take him to India to explore "the land of her forefathers with the man of her choice," and, as she strongly believes, the last man with whom she will ever sleep" (Rushdie 2001b, 236). Indeed, the workings of her love are very powerful, as Solanka feels that with Neela by his side, he could return to Bombay, where he could even undergo a sort of rebirth. Thus, even though Lilliput-Blefuscu is on the verge of civil war, with its president captured and "a high-tension-state of siege" all over the place (Rushdie 2001b, 239), and even though he sees himself more like "a fat old toad" than a "handsome Prince Charming" (Rushdie 2001b, 249), he is determined to do anything to win his lover back. The moment Solanka lands in Lilliput-Blefuscu, the action of the novel surges forward: The professor is arrested and imprisoned by the new versions of the Puppet Kings, who almost do to him what the publication of The Satanic Verses (1989) did to Rushdie. The sense of displacement he felt on the plane amplifies so much that he discovers he is no longer anchored in reality: All that has ever constituted his identity, his title, his past, future, and those who ever cared about him, vanishes -- so does he, as he dwindles to "an inconvenient nobody with a face that everyone knew" (240). To his horror, Solanka recognizes in Babur a mirror of himself. Still, he does not give in and pursues his only goal -- to find and rescue Neela, who in turn becomes one of the Commander's closest advisors. Solanka is sad to notice that her acquiescence in the coup has a detrimental effect on her: Once queenly and independent, she never questions the Commander's views. Still, it is clear she disapproves of Akasz's conceited manner and dictatorial inclinations.

<40> As if this had not been enough, the professor, himself a proficient inventor of worlds, has to witness the instances of Babur's own flights of creative vein: The politician intends to turn Lilliput-Blefuscu into an empire "upon which the sun never sets" (Rushdie 2001b, 245) by the sheer power of his words, which actually may turn out quite probable. No matter whether he says that "the moon is made of cheese," "the sun goes round the earth," or "the world is flat" (244), everybody accepts his dictatorial proclamations without demur. Babur's announcements are actually redolent of highly stereotyped scripts characteristic of Disneyworld and will certainly not allow the critical frankness inherent in truly utopian creations which may preclude situations of oppression. Faced with the total debasement of his utopian realm and the corruption of the potential that initially characterized the Puppet Kings as recreated by the people of Lilliput-Blefuscu, Solanka fully realizes his failure. He contends he has "discovered a personal Hell" (Rushdie 2001b, 246), and thus clarifies the mistake he committed while working on the imaginary civilization: "Even though he had [always] wished to be a good man, to lead a good man's life" (Rushdie 2001b, 246), he was never so, as he wasted his life forsaking "those whose only crime was to have loved him" (Rushdie 2001b, 246). Instead of reaching out to them, he preferred to withdraw into "an imagined world," which, lacking the fundamental element of love and a fortifying sense of communion, turned against him and grew "monstrous; and the greatest monster...wore his own guilty face" (Rushdie 2001b, 246). Just as Commander Akasz, who sought "to right a grave injustice, to be a servant of the Good," "had come off at the hinges and become grotesque" (Rushdie 2001b, 246), also Solanka wrecked his utopian venture by focusing only on his development and power.

<41> However, it is not too late for Solanka to undo his past errors. The redeeming power of Neela's "great untrammeled love" (Rushdie 2001b, 249) begins to exert its influence. She helps the prisoner to escape, but herself stays behind. Had she not remained, the escape would have been prevented by Babur. She dies sometime later, but before that she kills the Commander, whom she regards as "the murderer" of her hopes (Rushdie 2001b, 255). Still, she knows not all has perished as long as Solanka preserves the treasure of their love. Thus, she fortifies him with the following message: "Professor Sahib, I know the answer to your question...The earth moves. The earth goes round the sun" (Rushdie 2001b, 255).

<42> Indeed, it does. Solanka escapes from America, moves his enterprise back to England, separates himself from the rest of the world, and spends most of his time "trying to hear Neela's silenced voice" (Rushdie 2001b, 258). In this sense, his visit to America could be treated as another displacement and a prompt to embark on a new venture. Solanka does hear something, as the novel concludes with the image of Solanka bouncing joyfully on a trampoline at a fair in Heath. He jumps so high and shouts so loudly that his son can notice him, "his only true father flying against the sky...conjuring up all his lost love and hurling it high up into the sky like a white a bird, to live in the great blue vault of the only heaven in which he had never been able to believe" (Rushdie 2001b, 259). Sentimental as such an ending may be, it does reflect Solanka's rebirth and testifies to his being finally "ready for his life" (Rushdie 2001b, 257).

<43> All the more so, as before his flight to America, Solanka notices Asmaan's, his son, fondness of bouncing on his parents' bed and shouting "Look at me...I'm bouncing very well! I'm bouncing higher and higher!" (Rushdie 2001b, 105). For the professor, Asmaan, whose name, unsurprisingly, means "sky," is "the young incarnation of their [he and his wife's] old high-bouncing love" (Rushdie 2001b, 105) before the time when the Solaris "cracks" in their "fantasy of undamaged familial contentment" became intolerably apparent (Rushdie 2001b, 105). It seems that Solanka is now ready to declare his determination to remain loyal to the aforementioned optimistic vision of Asmaan, and thus, to the principle of hope embodied in his son. He decides he will no longer stifle his love towards others, and especially towards his son, who is definitely more real than the Solaris-like illusion the professor feared and detested so much, whose love is the only certainty in postmodern fragmentation. To confirm his resolution, he utters a powerful spell: "Look at me, Asmaan! I'm bouncing very well. I'm bouncing higher and higher!" (Rushdie 2001b, 259).

<44> Significantly, Heath, "London's treasure, its lung" (Rushdie 2001b, 102), was once the point of his departure. Now, after his failed pilgrimage to Grail-less America, it marks Solanka's return to life. In a way, he has come home, but it is a homecoming not so much in the literal, but in the Blochian sense, that is, a return that will lead to a new exploration of one's own potential and to the active formation of the future. Interestingly, it is then that Solanka notices Heath is studded with magical trees: "A giant fallen oak, its roots twisting into air, was one such enchanted zone. Another tree, with a hole at the base of its trunk, housed a set of storybook creatures, with whom Asmaan carried out ritual dialogues each time he passed this way" (Rushdie 2001b, 258). By choosing the enchanted Heath for the place of his rebirth and bouncing just as his son once did, Solanka initiates his new utopian venture, and it this utopian urge that has become the core of his new identity. Perhaps, having gained a lot of experience in utopian practice, he will still be able to envisage a workable fairy-tale utopia beyond the perfectionism of the saccharine and illusory images provided by Disneyworld and make it consistent with the principles indicated by Bloch, Tolkien, and Zipes.

Conclusion

<45> It is true that Rushdie avoids formulating a deterministic utopian vision that could be regarded an ideal blueprint or system for a perfect society, its fulfilment postponed to the future. Nor is his utopian solution a mere recreation of the petrified idea of Paradise Regained, the Golden Age, or Elysian islands, the entropies of utopian imagination very much reminiscent of America's failed utopian promise. Any utopia that represents a final meeting of goals and does not focus on the means to achieve them is non-progressive and cannot have any impact on the future. Thus, utopia should be taken as a specific type of praxis rather than as a concrete projection. Instead, it involves a certain way of reasoning that is aimed at transforming contemporary social conditions. This unstable character of utopia corresponds to the general fairy-tale configurations "onto which the reader can paste the necessarily more complex and idiosyncratic detail of their experience" (Sellers 16). With their promise of "anything can happen," fairy tales are able to "transport us beyond the confusions of our lives into a realm where destiny is clear, and where we benefit by example" (16). Just as the hope for happiness and fulfillment articulated in both in fairy tales and in any utopia is never fully satisfied, it is this very lack of definite conclusion that insures that the story will never be immobilized, but continues to metamorphose so as to suit the immediacy of changing situations, as well as counteracting the human inclination to forget the past. Thus, Rushdie's transient and open-ended utopian worlds testify to the impossibility of history coming to an end and promise some future development that actually surpasses the level of utopia. This is a precious promise in "the Lebenswelt" in which "continuous discontinuity is the only form continuity may take -- the only one to be found and the only one to be sensibly -- realistically -- coveted" (Bauman 23).

<46> Simultaneously, Rushdie offers his readers a direct experience of America before the attacks on the World Trade Center [7]. Superficial as the numerous glimpses of New York may occasionally seem, they offer insightful remarks on the commercialization of America seen as the mythical redeeming utopia. The continent is still commonly perceived as a magnet attracting exilic individuals who battle to create a congenial and convivial environment for themselves. It may have preserved some of its capacity to function as such, which can be attributed to its long tradition of utopian inclinations (such as the idealistic aims of the American Revolution or Robert Owen's community called "New Harmony") and its all-inclusiveness, the feature that curiously makes it resemble Rushdie's idealistic vision of India as the conglomerate of multiple cultures and religions. However, whereas in India the right to such a self-reincarnation is available to anybody, in America it has been infringed and regularized by the malevolent rules of the market-led world and changed into consumerism [8].

<47> Consequently, Fury functions as Rushdie's utopian marker about how to structure and protect our own home in reality. To quote Bloch again, Rushdie's practice advocates: "Consider yourself as born free and entitled to be totally happy, dare to make use of your power of reasoning, look upon the outcome of things as friendly. These are the genuine maxims of fairy tales, and fortunately for us they appear not only in the past but in the now" (qtd. in Zipes 1979, 135). Indeed, it is on them that Rushdie etches out his own utopian vision of a hybrid world. He understands, just as Oscar Wilde, another fairy-tale utopian author, that a "map of the world that does not include Utopia, is not worth even glancing at, for it leaves out the one country at which Humanity is always landing. And when Humanity lands there, it looks out, and setting a better country, sets sail. Progress is the realisation of Utopia" (qtd. in Zipes 1994, 119) [9].

Notes

[1] See Ernst Bloch, Die Kunst, Schiller zu sprechen. Frankfurt am Main, 1976: 10-14. [^]

[2] See his On Karl Marx. New York: Seabury, 1971: 30-1. [^]

[3] Tarkovsky's film won the Special Jury Prize at Cannes. There is an upcoming re-make from 20th Century Fox and Lightstorm Entertainment, which will be directed by Steven Soderbergh, the youngest-ever winner of the Palme d'Or at the 1989 Cannes Film Festival, and produced by James Cameron. [^]

[4] See Michel de Certeau, The Practice of Everyday Life. Trans. Steven Rendall. Berkeley, 1984: 146. [^]

[5] See Linda Dégh's "Biology of Storytelling." Folklore Preprint Series 7 (March 1979): 1. [^]

[6] In Haroun, such a consumerist approach to tales is exemplified by "Rapunzel" a stereotypical fairy-tale love story, which suddenly changes into a "Koshmar" (Rushdie 1990, 40): Haroun, who is supposed to rescue the Princess, undergoes a Kafkian metamorphosis into a black hairy spider, and instead of saving the Princess, gets stabbed by her with a kitchen knife. It is already an anti-story in which Haroun cannot become a hero and walk off "into the sunset as specified" (Rushdie 1990, 73). [^]

[7] Some passages in the later novel uncannily foretells the tragedy: "Islam will cleanse this street of godless...bad drivers...Islam will purify this whole city of...pimp assholes...and the victorious jihad will crush your balls in its unforgiving fist" (Rushdie 2001b, 65), as a young taxi driver Ali Majnu vehemently declares to his passengers. [^]

[8] However, the above remarks must be qualified: After September 11, 2001 Rushdie committed himself to a sort of America apologetics. In his numerous remarks about the present situation in the E.U. and worldwide, he no longer stresses America's dominating role in generating and maintaining the neo-colonial order, as well as functioning as the source of homogenized and homogenizing global culture. On the contrary, he draws attention to America's importance as the defender of civil liberties, that is, "freedom of speech, a multi-party political system, universal adult suffrage, accountable government, Jews, homosexuals, women's rights, pluralism, secularism, short skirts, dancing, beardlessness, evolution theory, sex" (Rushdie 2001a). Moreover, he decidedly dismisses anti-American sentiments, to which he refers "as bien-pensant anti-American onslaught [that] is such appalling rubbish" (Rushdie 2001a). As he writes, to justify the attacks by "blaming U.S. government policies is to deny the basic idea of all morality: that individuals are responsible for their actions" (Rushdie 2001a). For Rushdie, such increasingly prevalent attitudes, are actually another, beside the Taliban, enemy to be defeated, all the more so as in non-American West, they derive from stereotypical and prejudiced opinions, such as the reduction of America to "American patriotism, obesity, emotionality, self-centredness" ("America and Anti-Americans"). Hence, one could conclude Rushdie has evidently become post-deAnglicized American author, torn between repulsion and enchantment in relation to the myth of the New World as utopia, especially as has New York actually become his new home. As he now defines America, it is "a society that is drunk with money, energy, and power on the one hand but starving for purpose and feeling on the other" (Nollinger). [^]

[9] See his The Soul of Man under Socialism. Ed. By Rober Ross. London: Humphreys, 1912: 18. [^]

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---. Fairy Tale as Myth/Myth as Fairy Tale. Lexington: University of Kentucky, 1994.