The red slippers

Wow, so here's a thought. Spend years hiding away from the world becuase you have a price on your head, a price that would make even the most pro-life believer think about hunting you down, and in all that time you have to yourself write down your thoughts and try and connect them into a story.

I doubt very many of us would be able to put our thoughts and memories in such an eloquent manner as Salman Rushdie did in his short story about the Auction of the red slippers. But still i'm sure every one of us has a story to tell and when faced with the cabin fever of isolation i think it makes even the most insignificant details of a story absolutely significant.

As i was saying, nothings safe, and i mean nothing. Rushdie completely smears his thinking into a mesh of references that vary between E.T., the love of his life Gale (his cousin), and the diverse degree of bidders at the auction for the ruby slippers.

According to rushdie the slippers are so important becuase they would protect us from witches, which he then goes on to say there are so many of lurking after everyone. The bidders for this item include anything from rich folk in Tokyo and L.A., movie stars, fanatics of the wizard of oz movie and what i even thought to be a group of to-to's sitting in a corner of the room.

Now when Rushdie said that everything was for sale at this auction he truly meant that everything was for sale. Even human souls! Red stained demons stopped by the purchase from a wide degree of human souls it said in the story and it didnt stop there. You could also buy and sell your wife/husband, purchase a new one, or even as the orphans thought - take the slippers as a time machine to reunite with their loved ones. Odd i know, but as i said in the face of isolation odd just isnt enough.

As far as the narrator i think this screams Rushdie, i mean there is just no other guess for me as to who would even be close to thinking in the same way he does. In the couple of short TV interviews i have seen him in the way this story is written just seems to me to be the exact way he thinks.

I think the fact that he wrote this while he spent his time in hiding makes perfect sense becuase how else would you have the time (boredom), in a sense, to just write down your thoughts and interpretations on life and link them almost one by one into a weaving and intertwining melody of a story. All of the characters and the items for sale at this auction are just metaphors for what he thinks are direct or indirect links to society. I mean afterall its not like Rushdie is the biggest advocate for following the crowd, this guy is practically a living, breathing, and walking counter-culture.

His small references to E.T., Man stuck on mars, 2001 space odyssey, and even the red slippers themselves all must have been things he either watched or heard about again while spending his time hidin away. I know i've found myself shooting through thoughts after thoughts, most of them having nothing to do with the previous one, while spending some time alone. have you ever heard the idea of finding yourself, and i mean you cant really do that with everyone else around you. I just think Rushdie does a great job of linking all of his random little thoughts and actually making them make sense. It takes a genius to link nothing to something and Rushdie, well lets just say he does some good writing while he's alone.