I just finished Salman Rushdie’s memoir, Joseph Anton. The book– which runs over 600 pages– contains multitudes, running from engrossing to annoying to boring.
Anyone who wants a signed copy should check out Square Books, which had a few last I checked.
The center of the book is the impact of the publication of The Satanic Verses and the fatwa declared against Rushdie. The first fourth is an account of his career up to about that point, followed by a stretch about the publication of the book, the public controversy, and the period Rushdie had to go underground and into protection of UK security. Those first parts are fascinating and very engagingly written. There’s an account of his family background and education, the sources and creation of his books up to and including Verses, and the drama of the period he had to go into hiding. There’s a three-dimensional portrait of his life up to about the first year or so of the fatwa. A bit of score-settling, but understandable because mostly targeted at folks who did not seem to understand that this was a free speech issue, and consistent with my memory of the time, of people like John Le Carre not measuring up to what one would hope, or like Roald Dahl, who pretty much conformed to what one had heard (with these and others, Rushdie trots out not-entirely-convincing anecdotes that take their responses as personal pique– Le Carre over Rushie’s bad review of The Russia House, and Dahl’s over a personal interaction with Rushie over a decade before the fatwa).
The score settling ramps up as the book proceeds. It seems that Rushdie marries well in odd-numbered marriages– in his account, one and three were to noble women Rushdie to some degree wronged and who bore him sons (although he viewed their financial claims as a bit much), and two and four were to fairly famous women (an American novelist, and American/Indian model) both depicted as varying degrees of crazy. The people Rushdie encounters quit having three dimensions and become Famous People You Have To Know From Tabloids. There’s no hint of what, say, Bono is like, although he keeps turning up, as do a number of other politicians, writers, film stars, and the like.
A part of what makes the second half of the book a drudge is the fault of the material: At some point, the details of living in a cage become pretty boring, just as they were to the author. But that doesn’t mean anyone needs to read a couple of hundred pages of that enlivened (if that’s the word) only with the regular appearance of Bold Faced Tabloid Names he met.
I kept reading because I wanted to see how he got his freedom back; I cared about that before I started the book, and the first third reinforced that feeling. I would recommend the first half to anyone, particularly anyone who cares to any degree about Rushdie’s fiction or the issues raised by the fatwa. Somewhere after the halfway point it becomes a book I wouldn’t recommend to anyone. And then there’s this: The first third of the book presents the author as an entirely sympathetic character who has to deal with an impossible hand. A couple of views people take of him– “He knew what he was bringing on himself,” or “He provoked that on purpose”– seem to me outrageous. In the second half of the book, in his own self-presentation, he comes off as someone I do not wish to be around.
One passage early on made me think of Anderson– writing about public school, he described a history teacher who had an impact, but “Less valuable, perhaps… was also the person who introduced him to Tolkien’s The Lord of the Rings, which entered his consciousness like a disease, an infection he never managed to shake off.” There’s also this bit that made me laugh:
The police agreed that he could go to Bernardo Bertolucci’s private screening of his new film, The Sheltering Sky. After the screening he had no idea what to say to Bernardo. There wasn’t a single thing about the film he had enjoyed. ”Ah! Salman!” Bertolucci said. ”It is very important for me to know what you think of my picture.” At that moment the right words came to his head….. He put his hand on his heart and said, “Bernardo… I can’t talk about it.” Bertolucci nodded understandingly. ”A lot of people have this reaction,” he said.
“which entered his consciousness like a disease, an infection he never managed to shake off”
I doubt Rushdie has written anything so virulent.
Funny Bertolucci story. Haven’t seem the film, but the novel likely wouldnt film well for anyone.
I will pass on buying a copy of the book, thanks for the interesting info. TBA don’t bother about the movie it is a story of a couple who go to North Africa for unknown reasons, it left me wondering why anyone would have paid to see it, as I did.
I seem to remember Bowles’s being a little too interested in cruelty for its own sake.
My favorite Rushdie memory from that time is Dennis Miller on SNL news update looking into to the camera and saying ” so much much for that peace train, huh Cat”
Funny story about the film. I’m going to remember that one for my own future use in a similar situation.
Funny about Cat Stevens, too, Charles.
I didn’t see the movie, but thought the book, The Sheltering Sky, though a bit heavy on the consequences, hammered home the important point that we’re all nuts if we think we can leave our own culture, centuries in the making, and go into another totally different culture and accomplish much beyond our own suffering. Chinua Achebe’s Things Fall Apart one ups it by demonstrating how much harm we can do to another culture when we interfere with it, even under the pretense of “doing good.” I won’t mention any link between these lessons and our “freedom building” and “nation building” and “democracy building” in places like Iraq and
Afghanistan and Pakistan, for fear of stirring up more righteous indignation and fire and brimstone than I believe this post warrants.