Review: Yorick by Salman Rushdie
on Sheila Ash (India), 17/Jan/2018 07:50, 34 days ago
YorickbySalman RushdieMy rating:2 of 5 starsThis story is available online athttp://www.unz.org/Pub/Encounter-1982....I like it when reading to stumble across a previously unknown word to add to my vocabulary, but when this happens multiple times in a story, my readerships suffers - this is what happened in this reworking based on teh story of Hamlet, and I'm not just talking about unusual words but the very rarely seen variety eg "terigversation" which thedictionarydefines as (1) "an evasion of straightforward action or clear-cut statement, an equivocation" and (2) a desertion of a cause, position, party, or faith. Compound this with Rushdie trying to combine writing as per Shakespeare with a modernism narrator, this makes for a jolly complicated read which lost me. Yes, some bits are very clever, but for me his reworking didn't come off and more's the pity, because this is an ambitious piece of writing, one which I have no doubt the literary critics and academics will have a field day with, but one which I fear would be too confusing and thereby too challenging a read for readers unfamiliar with Shakespeare's Story and style.I read this as part of Salman Rushdie's short story collectionEast, WestMy Book ReviewView all my reviewsashramblings