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Salman Rushdie

Salman Rushdie: 'The Arab spring is a demand for desires and rights that are common to all human beings' | From the Observer | The Observer

I was remembering just after the fatwa that you wrote something about being "in a looking-glass world", where things that seem most improbable become real. Are you writing a memoir of that time?

A looking-glass world was probably more fun than where I was. But yes, I have been immersed in that stuff. And it is almost done. Substantially it is about the period that began with the writing of The Satanic Verses in late 1984 until the police protection ended in early 2002.

Do you ever reread The Satanic Verses?

No, not really. The thing is, when I wrote it I thought it was the least political novel I had ever written. I thought it was a deeply personal book about migration, about examination of the self. One thing that does strike me now, though, is that if I go and talk in colleges, the students were barely born when it was published. All the stuff that went on is like ancient history to them. So they can just begin to read it as a book again, which is great.
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Memoir? Sounds interesting.
 
I have read just one book by Salman Rushdie, 'Moor's Last Sigh' and I found it quite boring, and literally struggled to keep myself glued till the end ( I hate to abandon books midway). I kept wondering why is he one of the most read authors. I could hardly find anything interesting in the aforementioned book.

But, after reading this thread, I feel that may be I picked up a less worthy work. Even a good author can not produce quality stuff every time. So, I am now thinking about Midnight Children or Satanic Verses. Any suggestions as to which one is better?
 
Don't know about Midnight's Children. Satanic Verses vacillates between being brilliant and tedious. It is a mix of magical realism/surrealism/stream of consciousness, all in Rushdie's linguistically playful style.
 
Are Satanic Verses actually verses:innocent:, I mean whether the book is written in the form of a longish poem or is it in prose. Excuse my ignorance, but I have burnt my hands once and want to be sure whether Rushdie is really worth the high price tag?
 
anu said:
Are Satanic Verses actually verses:innocent:, I mean whether the book is written in the form of a longish poem or is it in prose. Excuse my ignorance, but I have burnt my hands once and want to be sure whether Rushdie is really worth the high price tag?
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The Satanic Verses is a novel about the so-called "satanic verses" that were supposedly removed from the Qur'an (wikipedia).

And he definitely is worth it, though perhaps less so in his more recent novels. (And really, the novel is out in paperback, how high can the price tag be?) The first time I read The Satanic Verses is still one of my most jaw-dropping reading experiences. From all the hubbub about the novel I'd been expecting a confrontational, politicized pamphlet, and what I got was one of the most beautiful, lyrical, captivating novels I've ever read.

''To be born again,' sang Gibreel Farishta tumbling from the heavens, 'first you have to die. Ho ji! Ho ji! To land upon the bosomy earth, first one needs to fly. Tat-taa! Taka-thun! How to ever smile again, if first you won't cry? How to win the darling's love, mister, without a sigh? Baba, if you want to get born again . . .' Just before dawn one winter's morning, New Year's Day or thereabouts, two real, full-grown, living men fell from a great height, twenty-nine thousand and two feet, towards the English Channel, without benefit of parachutes or wings, out of a clear sky.

'I tell you, you must die, I tell you, I tell you,' and thusly and so beneath a moon of alabaster until a loud cry crossed the night, 'To the devil with your tunes,' the words hanging crystalline in the iced white night, 'in the movies you only mimed to playback singers, so spare me these infernal noises now.'

Gibreel, the tuneless soloist, had been cavorting in moonlight as he sang his impromptu gazal, swimming in air, butterfly-stroke, breast-stroke, bunching himself into a ball, spreadeagling himself against the almost-infinity of the almost-dawn, adopting heraldic postures, rampant, couchant, pitting levity against gravity. Now he rolled happily towards the sardonic voice. 'Ohe, Salad baba, it's you, too good. What-ho, old Chumch.' At which the other, a fastidious shadow falling headfirst in a grey suit with all the jacket buttons done up, arms by his sides, taking for granted the improbability of the bowler hat on his head, pulled a nickname-hater's face. 'Hey, Spoono,' Gibreel yelled, eliciting a second inverted wince, 'Proper London, bhai! Here we come! Those bastards down there won't know what hit them. Meteor or lightning or vengeance of God. Out of thin air, baby. Dharrraaammm! Wham, na? What an entrance, yaar. I swear: splat.'

Out of thin air: a big bang, followed by falling stars. A universal beginning, a miniature echo of the birth of time ... the jumbo jet Bostan, Flight A 1-420, blew apart without any warning high above the great, rotting, beautiful, snow-white, illuminated city, Mahagonny, Babylon, Alphaville. But Gibreel has already named it, I mustn't interfere: Proper London, capital of Vilayet, winked blinked nodded in the night. While at Himalayan height a brief and premature sun burst into the powdery January air, a blip vanished from radar screens, and the thin air was full of bodies, descending from the Everest of the catastrophe to the milky paleness of the sea...
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Thanks for your early response. The quote definitely seems intriguing (especially the last para), though full of slangs. The book is on my TBR now.
 
Nice quote. Says more about the book than all the barrells full of wordy bashing and thrashing to date. More than enough to get me interested.
 
beer good said:
Jesus christ, enough already. It's been 25 years since The Satanic Verses. Let go and move on.
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I'm sure Mr Rushdie would appreciate your point but I think it's going to take a bit more than a forum post to lift the Fatwa placed upon him by Ayatollah Khomeini...
 
Or maybe I just meant to gripe a bit. If people can complain about the Fifty Shades woman being the single most persecuted author in literary history, can't I at least be a little bit frustrated that a (at least once) truly great writer still can't do anything without it being "controversial" simply because of one book he wrote 25 years ago?
 
The Ayatollah's order has meant that Salman Rushdie has had an extremely security conscious life for the past twenty five years. The fanatics haven't got him so far but they'll settle for books and cinemas.

If I was a film distributor in India, I wouldn't touch the movie.
 
beer good
The Satanic Verses is still one of my most jaw-dropping reading experiences. From all the hubbub about the novel I'd been expecting a confrontational, politicized pamphlet, and what I got was one of the most beautiful, lyrical, captivating novels I've ever read.
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I would definitely agree with you on that. I don't understand the criticism of the writing of that book at all. It was descriptive, but not overly so of every pain sticking detail.
 
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