Hit the subway with a copy of Salman Rushdie’s The Ground Beneath Her Feet in hand: 575 pages – should do nicely for a few morning commutes. The back cover has a quote from the London Times, claiming it’s “the first great rock ’n’ roll novel in the English language.” And indeed, Rushdie is a linguistic genius, and his descriptions of Bombay are sublime. But it doesn’t rock.
Is this the way music history is seen by those who aren’t obsessive music fans? It’s hard to know, being a member of said group. The Ground Beneath Her Feet recapitulates rock’s history as a celebrity exercise, albeit with Rushdie’s interjection of a trio of protagonists from India. In the novel’s version of rock, stars receive their musical talent from the gods and ascend to their place in the pantheon of celebrities out of nowhere, without any sense that what comes out of the mainstream - good or bad - only represents the tip of the iceberg, while thousands of unsung (literally, sometimes) musicians lie around. And that’s why I dislike media obsession with AvrilJustinBritney. Regardless of what I think of their music’s quality, it seems almost disrespectful to say that these are the only forces at play in the world of music.
Still, publishing The Ground Beneath Her Feet gave Rushdie the chance to write a song with Bono. (To work pro Bono? Salmy and Bonno? Boy, all these awful puns are coming into my head.) Maybe we’ll soon see other writer-singer collaborations. I can see it now, J.K. Rowling and Eminem. Hey kids! Do you like violence?