Grimus by Salman Rushdie
"Grimus" is the debut novel of Salman Rushdie, centering on the journey of Flapping Eagle, an immortal Axona Indian searching for his missing sister, Bird-Dog. His quest takes him to Calf Island, an alternate dimension where he must navigate complex social dynamics and confront the enigmatic figure known as Grimus, the creator of this dimension. Flapping Eagle is accompanied by Virgil Jones, a former associate of Grimus, as he climbs Calf Mountain and encounters the philosophical rationalist Ignatius Quasimodo Gribb and his socially influential wife, Elfrida. The narrative explores themes of love, identity, and reality through Flapping Eagle's relationships and philosophical conflicts within the town of K.
As Flapping Eagle delves deeper into the mysteries of Calf Island, he learns of the Stone Rose, an artifact that controls the island's shifting dimensions. The tension escalates as Flapping Eagle's existential struggle leads to a confrontation with Grimus, revealing a connection between them that challenges the nature of reality itself. The novel culminates in a battle for imagination and consciousness, where the fate of Calf Island and its inhabitants hangs in the balance amidst the collapse of their perceived rationality. Overall, "Grimus" presents a rich tapestry of myth, philosophy, and the quest for understanding in a world defined by the fluidity of belief and reality.
On this Page
Subject Terms
Grimus
First published: 1975
Type of work: Novel
Type of plot: Fantasy—Magical Realism
Time of work: Undefined
Locale: An alternate dimension called Calf Island
The Plot
Salman Rushdie’s first published novel, Grimus, follows Flapping Eagle, an immortal Axona Indian who searches an alternate dimension known as Calf Island for his missing sister, Bird-Dog. Guided by Virgil Jones—an exiled associate of Grimus, the dimensions creator—Flapping Eagle must climb Calf Mountain, survive the mind-altering dimension fever, and infiltrate the complex society of K, the town where others who have chosen immortality have come to live. By learning all he can about K, Flapping Eagle hopes to find the mysterious Grimus, uncover the secret of his sisters disappearance, and locate the source of Calf Islands shifting dimensions—the Stone Rose, an ancient instrument of imagination that controls dimensional space.
In K, Flapping Eagle is a guest in the house of Ignatius Quasimodo Gribb, a rationalist philosopher who has convinced the towns inhabitants that Grimus and the Stone Rose are meaningless myths. Gribb is the author of “The All-Purpose Quotable Philosophy,” a book of clichés designed to spread his ideas among the people of K. While living with Gribb and his wife, Elfrida, Flapping Eagle also meets the towns leader, Count Alexsandr Cherkassov, a Russian aristocrat, and his wife, Irina. Both of the beautiful wives are mysteriously attracted to Flapping Eagle, but despite an affair with Irina Cherkassova, he falls in love with the more faithful Elfrida, who soon tells her husband that she loves the handsome Amerindian. His illusions about his marriage shattered, Gribb immediately loses his ability to conceptualize a rational world and dies as a result. The entire world of Calf Island begins to fall prey once again to the dimensional distortions of the Grimus Effect.
As the towns illusions begin to collapse, Bird-Dog appears and escorts Flapping Eagle to Grimus house on the summit of Calf Mountain. There, Flapping Eagle discovers that he and Grimus resemble each other and that Grimus has lured him to the mountain to take his place as caretaker of the Stone Rose. Grimus—whose name is an anagram for Simurg, a mythical phoenix—may in fact already be a part of Flapping Eagle, a version of the Amerindians self that has created all reality. To convince Flapping Eagle to comply with his wishes, Grimus enters the Axonas mind; the two meld into a single split consciousness in which the I-Grimus and the I-Eagle fight to control the minds imagination. The struggle continues until the I-Eagle realizes the secret of conceptualizing a new dimension. He quickly re-creates Calf Island in his mind, but without the Stone Rose. At the same moment, the angry townspeople, deprived of their belief in a rational world, ransack the house and kill Grimus. With the destruction of the Stone Rose, however, all the islands inhabitants and the island itself begin to dissolve into unshaped conceptual energy.