Department of Rhetoric and Writing | The University of Texas at Austin
Now reading the content area. Book of Khalid reading for Thursday, Sept. 22
Submitted by micklethwait on Tue, 09/20/2005 - 11:47am.
While the first book of The Book of Khalid, "In The Exchange," is dedicated to his Brother Man, the second book, "In The Temple," is dedicted to his Mother Nature. What do you make of these thematic divisions in the novel? Feel free to comment on any aspect of this reading that you found interesting, choose a couple of juicy lines, or respond to your classmates' thoughts. Bulaq: a neighborhood of Cairo Bohemia: although actually a region of the Czech Republic, it is a both a general term for the world of artists, swindlers, prostitutes and lunatics and, in this case, another name for Greenwich Village in lower Manhattan. Tammany Land: the world of politicians and a neighborhood which I suppose is in midtown Manhattan; Tammany Hall was the headquarters of Boss Tweed’s political party that controlled New York City for most of the 19th and early-20th century. Kaaba: a plain, square stone shrine built, according to legend, by Abraham around a meteorite in Mecca, Saudi Arabia. Today it is the most important site of pilgrimage in Islam. Shamrag: variant spelling of shamrock. Lèse-majesté: an offense against the sovereign. Salaam: a greeting, literally “peace.” Mammon: a devil symbolic of greed. Ottar: variant spelling of attar, the fragrant essence of flower blossoms. Aymakanenkan: A non-existent place composed of the Arabic sentence “Ây makân in kâna”, which means “Anywhere whatsoever.” Pashalic: Turkish word meaning governorate. Bassarides: wild warrior women from Greek mythology. Nephelococcygia: the art (or science?) of seeing shapes in clouds. |
The form and style in which the Book of Khalid is written feels really...dated? to me. Not that the subject or the story is dated but there's seems to be this wierd, like, "victorian glam" style to the narrative which is full of excited, witty almost hyberbolic descriptions. It reminds me of Dickens and others. I think this, along with the massive amounts of historical and literay aluusion, does a couple of things to the novel. It grounds it in this epic Westren literatary tradition that follows this "framed" storytelling mode and it also helps the slightly fantasic elements of Khalid's life more concievable( for instance his meeting with Boss Tweed.) I don't know it's an odd book...when i'm reading the narrators comments I feel like I moving at a break neck pace, whereas with Khalid's story things slow down and seem to have a more "real-time" fell about them.