Blog: A disfluent reading: Victory City

6th March 2023

Salman Rushdie's latest novel presents an interesting take on stammering cure depictions and uniquely imbues stammering with narrative potential, writes STAMMA Comms & Social Media Manager Neha Shaji. 

There are several delicate, well thought out and considerate representations of stammering in literary fiction, be it David Mitchell's semi-autobiographical Black Swan Green, or Stephen King's It. With these depictions, the stammering character is central — either a protagonist or one of the primary characters, where disfluency is given ample space in the text.

When it comes to supporting characters, film and fiction aren't so kind: the side-character who stammers is almost always the butt of the joke or an ill-conceived stereotype. Their contribution to the plot is nearly always negative: see Inkheart's Darius, whose disfluency triggers the villain's motivations, or Harry Potter's Professor Quirrell, who stammers because he has the baddie Voldemort attached to the back of his head. 

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Magical realism, historical fiction and fantasy are ripe for rich and meaningful discussions of fluency. Yet all too often, stammerers are tropes in these genres — reduced to one-dimensional archetypes of nervous dispositions, incomplete-ness and dishonesty. I want to see the spectacular and flamboyant stammerer, and an interrogation of inarticulacy as opposed to something slapped onto a character to indicate cowardice or shellshock. 

Cure narrative

Salman Rushdie's new book Victory City, however, presents a novel perspective made all the more interesting by the stammering character’s appearance only lasting a handful of pages. 

The Portuguese horse trader and storyteller Domingo Nunes appears early in the story, when "the stammering foreigner came to town". On surface reading, Nunes goes through what ostensibly seems a 'cure narrative' where the protagonist Pampa Kampana whispers a 'cure' into his ear with no prior warning nor after any request of the sort from Nunes to do so.

...this sequence makes it clear that disfluency is less a fault on the part of the disfluent, and more a societal inability to listen and receive adequately.

Cure narratives are, of course, a staple of fictional stammers. Characters often spend entire plotlines yearning for a cure which they inevitably receive after demonstrating that they deserve' it. Inkheart’s Darius for one, is an example: in the third book he astonishingly 'gains' fluency — because he was no longer on the antagonist's side. 

But Rushdie's play on this cure narrative is an intriguing departure from the norm; Nunes neither asked nor longed for a cure. His stammer is almost exclusively commented upon, neither negatively or positively, by those around him rather than himself. Narratively, the 'cure' has no bearing. There is no gratitude, no slavish loyalty due to it, and Nunes only momentarily remarks upon it, saying "she whispered in my ear" as opposed to describing it as a positive development. 

He does not enjoy the cure — far from it — he clutches at his throat and begs Pampa Kampana to stop as she whispers it, whilst telling him that she knows what he needs. This will be familiar to many: everyone and their mother seems to know what a stammerer 'needs'; too often we are told to breathe deeply, speak slowly, take our time or spit it out. It becomes evident then, that this cure narrative is less about the one 'cured', and more about the curer. That those inconvenienced by another’s stammering seek to cure it for their own convenience, rather than that of the person who stammers. Pampa Kampana 'cures' Nunes (and later, her daughter) of their stammers simply because she wished to, rather than it having any material benefit to Nunes. 

Victory City is a novel about people receiving stories. To that end, this sequence makes it clear that disfluency is less a fault on the part of the disfluent, and more a societal inability to listen and receive adequately.

Re-framing disfluency

The city of the book's title is named Bisnaga — Nunes's approximation of the city's actual name, Vijayanagar. This is first derided as coming from a "twisted tongue". However, Nunes states that he only names the city inaccurately due to his inability to pronounce Indian names, instead of being due to his stammer. Instead of the easier option of illustrating a name being illegibly butchered by a stammerer's tongue, Rushdie gestures towards the idea of a "twisted tongue" being an unstable category itself. That whilst Nunes may no longer stammer, his tongue is "twisted" for other reasons: because fluency is a spectrum, and a multifaceted concept that relies on societal perceptions of 'good speech', rather than a set of fixed characteristics. 

Rushdie breaks from the trope of a stammer being something lost, and rather frames it as something the reader gains, something rich with meaning and anticipation.

Finally, what I found most interesting about Nunes was Rushdie's writing of the stammer itself. Often, the easiest and thus most common way of conveying a stammer in literature is to repeat the first letter of a word. For instance "p-p-p-professor". When written as dialogue, this makes reading the sentence somewhat difficult — the stammer takes away from the reading experience; the pauses and repetitions become spaces where meaning is lost. Yet Nunes primarily stammers in whole words — words which are imbued with meaning themselves.

For instance, he asks about the city's "magic war war wall, the greatest won wonder": the city's name is a reference to victory, and it would later be plunged into dynasties of war. He wishes to see the "mum magician" who erected the city: the protagonist Pampa Kampana, who in later years would be seen as a mother figure by every second person. Imbuing Nunes' stammer with a subtle foreshadowing, Rushdie breaks from the trope of a stammer being something lost, and rather frames it as something the reader gains, something rich with meaning and anticipation.

Departure from the norm

Victory City is a novel about the intersections of narration and translation, an ode to language and history-as-story. That is precisely why its engagement with disfluency is both apt and remarkable. It was a unique portrayal of a stammer thanks to Rushdie's dexterous prose. He does not depict an unfortunate soul yearning for a cure, but explores the discomfiting reality of societal conceptions of fluency. 

It was an exciting read for me, even though Nunes was only a brief presence. It made visible an uncomfortable gap in fiction, of a stammer being neither a pity nor a punishment but rather someone who stammers being meaningful enough to name an entire city. 

Rushdie has previously written another very interesting person who stammers: Whiskey Sisodia in The Satanic Verses, who also makes a short appearance in The Ground Beneath Her Feet. Eloquent, confident and (exceedingly) chatty, Sisodia too is a departure from the norm and another example of imbuing a character's stammer with layers of meaning. Flamboyant and almost irritatingly persuasive: tongue in cheek, as opposed to tired twisted tongue tropes. I can only hope that more writers explore this ground, and write disfluent characters as fully fledged individuals in their own right who stammer meaningfully, as opposed to symbolic appeals to salvation-by-fluency.

Victory City by Salman Rushdie is published by Vintage Digital and is out now.

(Image courtesy of Vintage Digital)