His hobbies include, partying, playing guitar, travel, philosophical conversations and reading Mr Men books to his housemate's little boy Tom.
He is also a member of the film-making cooperative Lluvia Nexus. You can e-mail him if you like.
Site Information.
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About The Author.
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David Robison is
a 1st class honours degree graduate from a college of Leeds
University in Media and English BA. He now lectures
in Recording for Pop Music, Media Theory and various
other topics. He is also studying an MA in English Literature
as well as constructing web sites for Supadupa Web Solutions. His hobbies include, partying, playing guitar, travel, philosophical conversations and reading Mr Men books to his housemate's little boy Tom. He is also a member of the film-making cooperative Lluvia Nexus. You can e-mail him if you like.
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About This Site. Midnight's Children - The Critical Reader is a website constructed for a module I was doing as part of my Media/English MA. I had to read the book anyway for English so I thought I might as well combine the two projects and produce this site. I have included (below) the report that I had to hand in to go along with it
The Report. The idea for my Internet site came about through my reading of Salman Rushdie's work Midnight's Children. The book is one that hinges on the reader's ability to participate in and understand a wide variety of contemporary literary discourses and to have some knowledge, or an ability to think about issues regarding representation and reality. The book refers to a number of 'intertexts' such as Laurence Sterne's Tristram Shandy and Gunter Grass's The Tin Drum. It refers to a number of Indian, particularly Hindu myths from the ancient Sanskrit texts The Ramayana and The Mahabarata. It also refers to countless events, people and places from the history of the Indian subcontinent and uses countless literary styles and narrative techniques to do all this.When a student encounters a complex book like this - an understandable response might be to reach for the "York Notes on...." or some sort of guidebook that could summarise what they needed to know and alert them to the issues and techniques that critics might be on the lookout for when reading. However, this guidebook for Midnight's Children has not been written. Despite the fact that the book has won the Booker of Bookers prize and is likely to be a part of the literary canon (meaning it will be studied) for a long time to come, nobody has undertaken this excerise. There are probably several reasons for this gap in the market. It might never have occurred to anyone to do it - but more likely any potential author realises that Midnight's Children subverts the possibility of linear summary. Any comprehensive book of notes would have to be as long - if not longer than the book itself! This may be exaggerating a little but there are so many strands and competing aspects to the work that it would be very difficult for a student to try to investigate any specific area using such a guidebook. Unless... this guidebook was in hypertext! Hypertext and the use of the Internet provides an ideal medium for the study of such a work. Its unique ability to include graphics and text as hyperlinks means that issues and historical/mythical strands can be navigated in a much more fruitful and efficient way. As Teague writes in The Independent:
The fact is that we human beings reason in far more chaotic, far more
intricate and far more cryptic ways than can ever be described by mere
lines. We learn through exploring, searching, discovering and finding.
We learn by mistakes, by trying again and again. We often learn by
complete accident. We rarely learn in a straight systematic line.
1
Because of the different ways that different people want to
approach Midnight's Children, it makes sense to be able to
navigate a guide to it in different ways. I have tried to design
the interface of my web site to enable the user to do this.
Supposing a student wished to research an essay question -
for example:- " 'The Novel is one way of denying the official
politician's version of "truth" ' (Rushdie). How does Saleem's
narrative subvert official 'truth' ?". This is a complex question
which requires insight into the process of narration, the writing
of history, 'truth', specific aspects of India's 'truth' and
Rushdie's idiosyncrasies generally. The student might use my web
site to begin answering this question by first clicking on the
History/ Contexts option from the main menu. They will be presented
with an overview of the section and a list of further options.
If the student reads the overview to this section (s)he will find that:
[...] The narrator Saleem Sinai uses historical events in his
narrative - but not always accurately - he gets several important
dates "wrong" and his version of events is often significantly
different from "official" or more generally believed versions.
The book cannot therefore be treated as an 'real' history of India -
despite is encyclopedic nature.
It is useful when reading to have some "official" knowledge of
India's history,
religions and geography.
This section is designed to help you find some versions of the major
"real world" elements referred to in the book so that you can compare
them to Saleem's versions.
Already, they will notice that whatever concept of 'truth' Rushdie
must have been referring to in the quote from the essay question, it
cannot be a scientific truth. Throughout all the sections various words
are underlined and it is by clicking on these that the linearity of
the learning process is broken down - and the student should be able to
find at least some relevant material on almost any question they might
care to ask.
From the side menu they might select an option about
historical narrative - which talks about how the 'truth' behind
history is in narrative. History itself is a narrative, a fiction
that we tell about the past. From this option they may wish to
follow a link to information about post-colonial literature - or
the literature of the oppressed - and from there go to the links
page which provides an number of subsectioned options for sites
which can give further information about specific issues.
It is important to stress that this site cannot write an
essay for the student, what it aims to do is be a self-learning
tool. The student should be able to come away from it with a
greater understanding, perhaps in areas they didn't even realise
they were investigating when they started.
Brody reminds us that "[d]esign is always a
grounding process that relates the object to the world we live
in." 2
Because of the nature of the object of study (a book in the 'world'),
a large proportion of my site is text-based, and while it is,
admittedly easier to read text off a page than a screen, I have
tried to make up for this by using, for the most part, small
chunks of text that are clearly labeled and coloured. I have also
used graphics were they are appropriate to liven up the pages a little.
Interesting features of the site include the clickable image maps
that you can get to from the "History/ Contexts"
options on the main menu and then clicking on "Places"
in the sub-menu. You will be presented
with a map of the Indian Subcontinent. If you click on India,
you will be given a further map in which the locations visited by
characters in the book are highlighted with a red blob.
If you click these you can get information about and see pictures
of the towns/states represented. These graphical aids are
intended to make the reading of the book more vivid and enjoyable
and to help students activate other cognitive functions such as
spatial ones (e.g. where in India is this character) not normally
associated with reading text. Basically, I have used graphics
wherever there is a good enough excuse to do so. The pages have
background textures that are designed not to obscure the text,
but to make the site look more 'polished'. There are pictures
of Indian gods which you will find if you follow the "Religions"
link as well as some pictures of authors, historical figures and
various other miscellaneous images. The pictures are all converted
to GIF format because these are less bulky and quicker to download
than JPGs.
I have used lists, tables and, on occasion, pre-formatted text to
ensure that sections are clear and that nothing is obscured by
scroll-bars and the like. I can't guarantee that the site will look
as good on all browsers but it seems to be okay on all the formats
I have tried. It is best viewed in 640/480 screen mode with 256
colours or above. I constructed the site with Notepad, using
Netscape Navigator 4.02 as my browser.
I have collected together quite an archive of information which I
have organised under subheadings in traditional fashion but which
can be traversed and jumped about to and from in a way that is more
helpful than a linear book. It is possible to get lost in
this site (which I believe is a good thing) but you can always
get back to the main menu - or click on the 'How2?' option if you
get stuck. I have also included an 'index' page that simply lists
all the subjects in alphabetical order and tells you if there are
any pictures associated with them.
Most of the information on the site has been written by myself
and a lot of the graphics and buttons etc. were from public
domain sites and described as copyright free. Where I have used
the work of others I have referenced it appropriately (although I
realise this does not mean I am free to use big chunks of
copyrighted work).
In the history section I have produced edited
versions of historical accounts that have been taken from other
people's Internet sites and referenced accordingly. In each case
I e-mailed the person who had written the work and received
permission to use it.
There is included in the site an essay (that I have edited to
a more appropriate format) which claimed to be "copyright (1997)
by John Lye" - accompanying this statement however were the
words "This text may be freely used, with attribution, for
non-profit purposes." Elsewhere I have used dictionary and
encyclopedia definitions and small quotes. All these fit the
criteria of "Fair Use". They are for non-commercial purposes,
the work is factual rather than creative, the amount used from
any one source is small, and there should be no effect on the
market for the copyrighted work.
I am pleased with how this site is progressing and while
it is not complete in the sense that it is not totally comprehensive,
I feel it does include a lot of 'stuff', and provide links for a lot
more. It cannot contain the whole world of Midnight's Children,
and doesn't aim to. It is fair to say this site 'ran away with me'
as I was writing it and I found there was no place to stop. Ideally
this site would be one that is continually updated and added to.
It would be nice to have a message board or a conference center
where students could discuss the work and the issues surrounding
it. It would also be nice if the chapter summaries and
commentaries and the history/events sections were more detailed.
As a format the site seems to work well, I have shown it to
students who have used it at various stages during the
development process and the response was generally positive.
I have tried to use their comments for improvement. Overall,
I think it at least fulfills its primary objective of being
a help rather than a hindrance to the learning process.
Bibliography
1 Teague, Jason Cranford. The Independent - Network, 10/2/98, p. 6.2
2 Brody, Florian. Interaction Design - State of the Art and future Developments: An argument for information design.
Credits.
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