Thinking About a Review of Salman Rushdie's Knife

 No, I have not yet Salman Rushdie's Knife. The most recent book I have read (and not yet finished) is over 30 years old. 

I have read three of Rushdie's novels - those notes are buried in my prison notebook. Let me say, that I think he needs to be read for his books. And you should find his novels and read them.

I have also heard Rushdie interviewed about Knife. I do not think he wants to be a symbol of any sort. Because of his interviews, I would like to read it. Talk about a trauma plot!

Then there is Michael O'Donnell's Sharp Bookmark: On Salman Rushdie’s ‘Knife’. He reviews the memoir (he likes it). Then he takes ont he idea of Rushdie as a symbol.

Is Salman Rushdie an artist or a symbol? Can he be one but not the other? Or perhaps it’s an all-or-nothing affair and he is both or else neither. Ever since Rushdie, the author of 13 novels, was violently attacked onstage in August 2022 at a literary event, one line of thinking has it that his books should perforce be celebrated. The New Yorker embodied this view when it made the case, with very little discussion of Rushdie’s work, to award him the Nobel Prize in Literature. It was not an unpersuasive editorial, but in it, what Rushdie’s work represented outweighed what it contained. Yet if that’s the “both” case, the “neither” perspective feels even less satisfactory. Six days after the attempted murder, the American Conservative poured disdain on Rushdie as a free-speech icon and as a novelist, suggesting that anyone who mocks religion deserves a punch at the least and crassly asserting, “the fact that someone tried to kill an author doesn’t make that author’s books any good.”

I do not like the idea of Rushdie-as-symbol because it seems to leave him dehumanized. I am not sure O'Donnell cares for him as a symbol, either, 

I leave it to better critics to judge Salman Rushdie’s novels, but I will say this about his symbolic importance. With this memoir he now represents a book closing over a blade, as though making it into a bookmark; the blade is enveloped by a sheath of words and its sharp edge is neutralized. Sustaining creative inspiration over time through the application of discipline is hard enough—like running a marathon while holding a lit candle. If the race should be run with the flame intact a kind of miracle has occurred. All of society stands to benefit from this creative act. No one should have to attempt it with a gun pointed at their head, ready to be fired if the prose offends. Or, for that matter, a knife to their throat.

To be human is to have the ability to act; I do not think symbols have freedom of action. Finally, the greatest act of any human being is the creative. I will continue to read Rushdie for his writing (a rather humanistic writing, by the way).

sch 5/30