It was after a long time that I read a Rushdie book. Salman Rushdie’s Joseph Anton: A Memoir (2012) is a summary of his life – a chapter dwells on his life prior to 14 February 1989 (the day of his fatwa) and the rest of his book is regarding his captive life after the fatwa in which he assumed the name Joseph Anton for reasons of safety.
I still remember vividly how eagerly I devoured his Midnight’s Children in my college days. Midnight’s Children was a revelation to me, my first exposure to “magic realism” and I wondered – as Keats presumably mused upon reading Chapman’s Homer – that a story could be told in such an innovative and powerful manner. It made me grateful and proud to be literate.
But when I later attempted to read The Satanic Verses I was puzzled. What was the author trying to do? In Joseph Anton Salman Rushdie writes that it is a book “about migration and transformation.” “A book of journeys”. But it felt to me to be a bewildering juxtaposition of disjointed images, something like the surrealistic movie Un Chien Andalou by Luis Bunuel and Salvador Dali.
Of the fatwa he writes (referring to himself in the third person): “When he was first accused of being offensive, he was genuinely perplexed. He thought he had made an artistic engagement with the phenomenon of revelation; an engagement from the point of view of an unbeliever, certainly, but a proper one nonetheless. How could that be thought offensive?” I think Rushdie is wrong there, or at least, rationalizing. He did not just make an engagement as an unbeliever. He made one from the point of view of a satirist. And a satirist pokes fun – as he had of Indira Gandhi in Midnight’s Children and of Pakistan in Shame. That is what, I believe, roused Muslim anger. It was not “a serious book” as Rushdie claims but a satirical one.
Anyway the book was published and the fatwa was issued. Rushie narrates his experiences as he moved from hiding place to hiding place and from location to location. He had his share of detractors such as John le Carre but also strong supporters such as Harold Pinter.
I envy Rushdie for the literary society in which he moved, hob-nobbing with Graham Greene and Thomas Pynchon and Gunter Grass. What was very grating was the way he ungratefully deserted his loving wife and infant son Milan to spend his time philandering in America.
All in all, worth a read if you have the time and patience to plough through a 600+ page book. And are a fan of Rushdie’s oeuvre.
I still remember vividly how eagerly I devoured his Midnight’s Children in my college days. Midnight’s Children was a revelation to me, my first exposure to “magic realism” and I wondered – as Keats presumably mused upon reading Chapman’s Homer – that a story could be told in such an innovative and powerful manner. It made me grateful and proud to be literate.
But when I later attempted to read The Satanic Verses I was puzzled. What was the author trying to do? In Joseph Anton Salman Rushdie writes that it is a book “about migration and transformation.” “A book of journeys”. But it felt to me to be a bewildering juxtaposition of disjointed images, something like the surrealistic movie Un Chien Andalou by Luis Bunuel and Salvador Dali.
Of the fatwa he writes (referring to himself in the third person): “When he was first accused of being offensive, he was genuinely perplexed. He thought he had made an artistic engagement with the phenomenon of revelation; an engagement from the point of view of an unbeliever, certainly, but a proper one nonetheless. How could that be thought offensive?” I think Rushdie is wrong there, or at least, rationalizing. He did not just make an engagement as an unbeliever. He made one from the point of view of a satirist. And a satirist pokes fun – as he had of Indira Gandhi in Midnight’s Children and of Pakistan in Shame. That is what, I believe, roused Muslim anger. It was not “a serious book” as Rushdie claims but a satirical one.
Anyway the book was published and the fatwa was issued. Rushie narrates his experiences as he moved from hiding place to hiding place and from location to location. He had his share of detractors such as John le Carre but also strong supporters such as Harold Pinter.
I envy Rushdie for the literary society in which he moved, hob-nobbing with Graham Greene and Thomas Pynchon and Gunter Grass. What was very grating was the way he ungratefully deserted his loving wife and infant son Milan to spend his time philandering in America.
All in all, worth a read if you have the time and patience to plough through a 600+ page book. And are a fan of Rushdie’s oeuvre.
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