'Sons of the Rumour is nothing short of a dazzling and genre-defying work of genius. Foster retells the tale of the legendary eighth-century King Shahrban of Persia who, furious at his wife's infidelity, has decided to marry and then behead a fresh virgin every day. But then the king meets Scheherazade, a beauty of such wiles and storytelling gifts she manages to entertain the him for 1001 nights, staving off death for both herself and her countrywomen. In the process, she also bears him three sons, wisely educates him in morality and kindness, and eventually convinces him to take her as his lawful wife.
'Intersecting with the historical tale is the story of Al Morrisey - a middle-aged, Anglo-Irish, former jazz-drumming everyman, on the run from a failed marriage, and cursed with Freudian daydreams of his mother and peculiar nightmares of all things Persian - as he vainly attempts to reconcile the past with the present and reclaim some of his youthful vigour.
'Ingeniously manipulating the frame tale of the Arabian Nights, and utilising all his narrative gifts of adventurous satire, David Foster has produced a work of fiction like no other.' (From the publisher's website.)
Epigraph:
Why, all the Saints and Sages who discuss'd
Of the Two Worlds so wisely - they are thrust
Like foolish Prophets forth; their Words to Scorn
Are scatter'd, and their Mouths are stopt with Dust.
'Umari-i-Khay of Khurasan / Edward Fitzgerald of Suffolk
'This reading of David Foster's Sons of the Rumour focuses on its frame story, a reworking of the frame story of One Thousand and One Nights. It provides an overview of the impact of One Thousand and One Nights on world literature and goes on to analyse how Foster reimagines One Thousand and One Nights in order to illustrate humanity's struggle between the spiritual and the material world. Foster constructs a parallel dilemma for Al Morrisey, a secular Australian Jew, and the Shah, a Persian Muslim. Differences between them favours Al's secularism over the Shah's Islamic faith, and tends to harden and exaggerate stereotypes, following a typical Orientalist pattern by recreating the structure of One Thousand and One Nights for a Western understanding of and taste for Orientalist material.' (Publication abstract)
Argues that a turning away from aestheticism in contemporary literature is one of the reasons for the critical neglect of the significant Australian novelist, David Foster.
‘In human reckoning, Golden Ages are always already in the past. The Greek poet Hesiod, in Works and Days, posited Five Ages of Mankind: Golden, Silver, Bronze, Heroic and Iron (Ovid made do with four). Writing in the Romantic period, Thomas Love Peacock (author of such now almost forgotten novels as Nightmare Abbey, 1818) defined The Four Ages of Poetry (1820) in which their order was Iron, Gold, Silver and Bronze. To the Golden Age, in their archaic greatness, belonged Homer and Aeschylus. The Silver Age, following it, was less original, but nevertheless 'the age of civilised life'. The main issue of Peacock's thesis was the famous response that he elicited from his friend Shelley - Defence of Poetry (1821).’ (Publication abstract)
‘In human reckoning, Golden Ages are always already in the past. The Greek poet Hesiod, in Works and Days, posited Five Ages of Mankind: Golden, Silver, Bronze, Heroic and Iron (Ovid made do with four). Writing in the Romantic period, Thomas Love Peacock (author of such now almost forgotten novels as Nightmare Abbey, 1818) defined The Four Ages of Poetry (1820) in which their order was Iron, Gold, Silver and Bronze. To the Golden Age, in their archaic greatness, belonged Homer and Aeschylus. The Silver Age, following it, was less original, but nevertheless 'the age of civilised life'. The main issue of Peacock's thesis was the famous response that he elicited from his friend Shelley - Defence of Poetry (1821).’ (Publication abstract)
Argues that a turning away from aestheticism in contemporary literature is one of the reasons for the critical neglect of the significant Australian novelist, David Foster.
'This reading of David Foster's Sons of the Rumour focuses on its frame story, a reworking of the frame story of One Thousand and One Nights. It provides an overview of the impact of One Thousand and One Nights on world literature and goes on to analyse how Foster reimagines One Thousand and One Nights in order to illustrate humanity's struggle between the spiritual and the material world. Foster constructs a parallel dilemma for Al Morrisey, a secular Australian Jew, and the Shah, a Persian Muslim. Differences between them favours Al's secularism over the Shah's Islamic faith, and tends to harden and exaggerate stereotypes, following a typical Orientalist pattern by recreating the structure of One Thousand and One Nights for a Western understanding of and taste for Orientalist material.' (Publication abstract)
