The Satanic Verses
The Satanic Verses, Salman Rushdie
This book was odd. It contains so much stream of consciousness narrative with no obvious narrator (or, as later turns out to be the case, shifting narrators) and goes in and out of dreams, halucinations, and straight up magical realism moments without warning, rhyme, or reason... that I pretty much hated the writing. It was at least 2/3 through the book before I came to enjoy his language and style choices.
Then again, although the characters (and their relationships!) eluded me and the plot annoyed me A LOT, I could *not* put it down. Well, I did put it down again and again. It took me at least five or six weeks to read this book (about ten times longer than average for a novel of this length). But I was compelled to finish it.
Every couple of chapters there would be some nugget of truth hidden in dialogue or narrative... some clarion comment that supports me in thinking I have some kind of grip on reality that Rushdie's grip aligns with... those kept me going.
After I finished it, I happened upon a recorded lecture Rushdie was giving on some PBS station, tuning in during the Q&A session, on terrorism in the post 9/11 world. Having read the book, his comments made TONS of sense to me and illuminated the plot of his story and his characters and *the author's sense of humor* quite a bit. Almost enough to make me want to read another novel by him. But perhaps not for a long while. My magical realism tank is overflowed. [I'm such a whitey/norte americana...]
[Interesting but challenging] out of five stars.
Quotes:
"Fact is... religious faith, which encodes the highest aspirations of human race, is now in our country (India and/or England) the servant of lowest instincts, and God is the creature of evil."
I'm not myself today, he thought. The heart flutters. Life damages the living. None of us are ourselves. None of us are *like this*.
Should the inflight movie be thought of as a particularly vile, random mutation of the form, one that would eventually be extinguished by natural selection, or were they the future of cinema? A future of screwball caper movies eternally starring Shelley Long and Chavy Chase was too hideous to contemplate; it was a vision of Hell...
While Mahound climbs Coney, Jahilia celebrate a different anniversary. In ancient time the patriarch Ibrahim came into the valley with Hagar and Ismail, their son. Here, in this waterless wilderness, he abandoned her. She asked him, can this be God's will? He replied, it is. And left, the bastard. From the beginning men used to God to justify the unjustifiable. He moves in mysterious ways: men say. Small wonder then, that women have turned to me. -But I'll keep to the point. [You later realize that Satan has been alternating narration duties with God, and/or that they are alter egos of the same being. No wonder they declared a fatwa.]
This book was odd. It contains so much stream of consciousness narrative with no obvious narrator (or, as later turns out to be the case, shifting narrators) and goes in and out of dreams, halucinations, and straight up magical realism moments without warning, rhyme, or reason... that I pretty much hated the writing. It was at least 2/3 through the book before I came to enjoy his language and style choices.
Then again, although the characters (and their relationships!) eluded me and the plot annoyed me A LOT, I could *not* put it down. Well, I did put it down again and again. It took me at least five or six weeks to read this book (about ten times longer than average for a novel of this length). But I was compelled to finish it.
Every couple of chapters there would be some nugget of truth hidden in dialogue or narrative... some clarion comment that supports me in thinking I have some kind of grip on reality that Rushdie's grip aligns with... those kept me going.
After I finished it, I happened upon a recorded lecture Rushdie was giving on some PBS station, tuning in during the Q&A session, on terrorism in the post 9/11 world. Having read the book, his comments made TONS of sense to me and illuminated the plot of his story and his characters and *the author's sense of humor* quite a bit. Almost enough to make me want to read another novel by him. But perhaps not for a long while. My magical realism tank is overflowed. [I'm such a whitey/norte americana...]
[Interesting but challenging] out of five stars.
Quotes:
"Fact is... religious faith, which encodes the highest aspirations of human race, is now in our country (India and/or England) the servant of lowest instincts, and God is the creature of evil."
I'm not myself today, he thought. The heart flutters. Life damages the living. None of us are ourselves. None of us are *like this*.
Should the inflight movie be thought of as a particularly vile, random mutation of the form, one that would eventually be extinguished by natural selection, or were they the future of cinema? A future of screwball caper movies eternally starring Shelley Long and Chavy Chase was too hideous to contemplate; it was a vision of Hell...
While Mahound climbs Coney, Jahilia celebrate a different anniversary. In ancient time the patriarch Ibrahim came into the valley with Hagar and Ismail, their son. Here, in this waterless wilderness, he abandoned her. She asked him, can this be God's will? He replied, it is. And left, the bastard. From the beginning men used to God to justify the unjustifiable. He moves in mysterious ways: men say. Small wonder then, that women have turned to me. -But I'll keep to the point. [You later realize that Satan has been alternating narration duties with God, and/or that they are alter egos of the same being. No wonder they declared a fatwa.]