Salman Rushdie uses excessive language to cloud discordant plots, has a part-time occupation of scouring the news to write op-eds about evil Muslim organizations he reads about, and is obsessed with celebrity.Rushdie strangles his plot in The Satanic Verses by hitching every development to a forced and unnecessarily long description or metaphor. His overwriting prevents the development of narrative flow. He even returns to more metaphors about the same topic sometimes, like when he writes about stuff falling out of the plane in the first chapter again and again. It's not hard to read but it is distracting and he uses ingratiating language. He doesn't sound confident in his writing."Yaaaaaa! I'm falling out of an aeroplane! Wa-waaajaaaa!" The annoyance you now feel is the same feeling I felt when I started reading The Satanic Verses a couple of days ago. I don't oppose metaphors and I don't even oppose varied styles and formats of writing, so long as they are effective. There is a difference between figurative language and purple prose. Look at this punctuation, pg. 15: "Oh: don't forget: she saw her after she died." Ok: Thanks: I won't forget. Oh: and Rushdie: I don't like kitschy conversational prose."It was the death of God." pg. 16. What a way to start a paragraph! God just died? Aw man, false alarm, it's just more crap like: "It was part of his magic persona that he succeeded in crossing religious boundaries without giving offence." Oh it was? I'll keep that in mind about the character from now on. Nah, I'll probably forget it. It doesn't matter though because it didn't mean anything to begin with. At least he threw in a book recommendation, Akbar and Birbal, in that paragraph to make it worth something. It's out-of-place. He's certainly proven to me that he's a master of the Orient at this point, though. (Someone told me not to use the term "orientalist" because it was "stale" so I'll use master of the Orient instead.) He also gives a shout-out to Hinduism and Buddhism in this paragraph. Just name-drop those religions as fast as you can and move on, I guess. No Satanic influence there.Rushdie also relies on intentionally jumbled (what'sitcalledwhenyoudothisstupidthing?) words and run-on sentences. This sucks. I remember writing words like that in elementary school because I thought it was funny. It's not funny. It's cutesy at best. I don't like reading over 500 pages worth of giddy and bubbly writing just to get through a stupid plot.His realism is magical because he relies on controversial fairy tales to carry themes he is either too lazy or too incompetent to create through reality. His magical realism makes me feel like I'm watching what I imagine an Enya music video would look like. He's hiding a spastic plot behind mysticism. He fails to employ that mysticism to do anything more interesting than a competent author could do with the real and concrete.According to RUSHDORK, I mean Rushdie, Satan interrupted the divine dictation of the Koran. It was supposed to go from the Archangel Gabriel's mouth to Mohammad's ear and then to he People. Satan stepped in like the jackass in a game of Telephone who gets the message wrong on purpose. Later, Islamic ninjas covered up Satan's interference and Mohammad's mistake. This is the plot hook of The Satanic Verses. Mohammad was influenced by the Devil even though the Koran has no trace of the two goddesses introduced by Zoroaster. How the hell does that work? Was Mohammad like "My utterances at dawn: t'was Satan. Sorry, guys." Maybe that happened -- but Rushdie never explains this. But it was probably, as a huge amount of speculative western scholarship has "uncovered" in the years since Rushdie's inflammatory book was published, just a fight amongst a few Muslims who accused a few other Muslims of attempting, in compiling What the Prophet Said, to add their own idols, who they wanted to be included in religious scripture. THAT HAPPENED COUNTLESS TIMES DURING THE FORMATION OF THE KORAN and western historians, in all their ignorance of Islam, got involved, so when they saw Muslims accusing each other, they took the chance to say "they're fighting about Satan's influence." It was a few phrases that got chopped in the cutting room of the Koran, but were scooped off the floor. MAYBE. Someone called them "satanic," probably a westerner, as Daniel Pipes speculates, and it was on. Rushdie was ready to write.Misappropriating history with such lazy disregard for truth or context, with such an ignorance that turns condescending by transmission -- this is the hallmark of Dan Browns, not great authors. It's as though Brown seized on some of the more inflammatory screeds from the Arian Heresy and wrote a book that went like, "Aha! The Knights Templar were time travelers!" It's not good fiction. That this intentionally inflammatory claptrap rose to the level of world-renowned Great Art speaks more to the global prejudice against Islamic theology than to to the Satanic Verses' literary worth!If you believe that Gabriel spoke Allah's divine words to Mohammad, I bet you don't also think that Mohammad received false words from Satan, do you?If you believe that Gabriel did not speak Allah's divine words to Mohammad, I bet you also don't think that Mohammad received false words from Satan, do you?Anyone?The rest of this review has very little to do with The Satanic Verses but it does have to do with Rushdie:Rushdie lives a pampered celebrity life now that he's no longer hunted by hundreds of assassins. He's an English knight, so maybe he'll fulfill his fantasy and go to the Holy Land to vanquish Muslims, just the bad ones though, as he is so adept at finding. Another review on Goodreads said that he had a cameo in Bridget Jones's Diary. That's lame. Sir Rushdie came out of hiding by walking on stage at a U2 concert. I didn't know he was a rock star, wow. We get it, you really like attention. He teaches English now at Emory University, far away from where the following treacherous Islamists lurk. Here are some thoughtful articles he's written:http://www.independent.co.uk/news/peo...http://www.nytimes.com/2005/07/10/opi...http://www.faithfreedom.org/Articles/...http://www.timesonline.co.uk/tol/comm...Someone email Sean Hannity and just set up the interview already! Islam can't take this informed and logical onslaught much longer, Salman! Let it live!He's been married four times. I'm cool with that... I live in the U.S. so I know that judging someone for that it wrong. That must sting Rushdie's massive ego a bit. Maybe he just doesn’t care. A few parting shots:He was most recently married to a model who poses nude, is decades younger than him, sits interviews covering how she loves certain parts of her body, repeatedly proclaims that she isn't boastful, and is a judge on a cooking show. Spare me the whole "EVERYONE would want that in his life!" Here's some hubris on display from her steroidal celebrity Facebooky page:"'Being married to a giant cultural figure like Salman Rushdie, I wantto earn my seat at the table,' she says."Why stop at Rushdie's table? Why not surpass him and become The Greatest Human Being to Ever Live? Her authorship includes a cookbook called Easy Exotic. Too many jokes there.
For eight days we wrestled. "The Satanic Verses" and I locked in heaving struggle. At times it nearly escaped as I chased it uphill, my straining hand holding fast its heel as it wriggled; then I myself would seek respite from the battle, clutching for the out-of-bounds only to be pulled back in. But we finished the struggle, and were better for it."The Satanic Verses" is, I suspect, one of the most unread of best-sellers. It is, indeed, a cantankerous beast with sections that one must slog through, but overall I think its reputation for impenetrability is somewhat undeserved.The novel deals with migration, intermingling, hybridization of people, religion. The novel opens with two Indian actors with British ties and sensibilities falling from a plane blown up by terrorists over England. One, Gabreel Farishta, apparently comes to Earth as the archangel Gabreel (or its avatar), wearing a golden halo. The other, Saladin Chamcha, grows into a horned, hoofed devil. The two try to come to grips with their (temporarily) changed forms and try to cope with the struggles of life, their pasts and their relationships, romantic and familial. Gabreel experiences dreams in which he apparently is the angel he seems to be. This includes Rushdie's recreation/alteration of the prophet Muhammad's (here Mahound) supposed divine revelations, the Satanic verses of the title, and whether Mahound has himself altered these verses.Gabreel has modern visions, as well; he supposedly inspires a village to make a pilgrimage to Mecca in which the people will cross the Arabian Sea, which they think will part for them.When Rushdie first moves to the story of Mahound, the novel hits, temporarily, a brick wall that I was tempted not to clamber over. It is slow and disorienting at first. Our second visit to this vision, later, is much more involving. And the stories of Ayesha and her village's modern pilgrimage is by turns ponderous and incredibly beautiful (butterflies follow them, lighting on Ayesha like a blanket).I expected to be baffled by what exactly was happening at times. I really wasn't; my problems in comprehension dealt more with just exactly what Rushdie was up to. Though I see the interconnectedness of the past and present visions and the story of Gabreel and Saladin (who slowly plots a revenge on Gabreel after the two have been separated in the wake of their miraculous fall to Earth), I occasionally was confused by just how Rushdie wanted us to relate them to each other. Just what is Rushdie, in the overall, going on about?I really think Rushdie (and this novel in particular) would benefit greatly from end notes. Just as, with old classics, we might not in modern times understand archaic words or objects, so the non-Indian (or Britain-ized Indian) probably doesn't have a good understanding of Indian words or, particularly for me, Islam. Annotated edition, anyone?It's hard to separate "The Satanic Verses" from the fatwa declared on its author that put him in fear for his life for many years. It contributed greatly to its readership (or those who owned it in curiosity and soon gave up on reading it at all). I don't claim to know much about Islam or Muhammad, though calling for someone's death because of a few small scenes in a novel seems, er, a tad extreme."The Satanic Verses" is a sprawling and voluminous creature. I don't think it, on the whole, is great. A paring down and a sharper focus would have helped. But Rushdie is one hell of a writer; that's what carried the day for me. If I missed some of the nuances of how all of it tied together, I delighted in Rushdie's use of language, and there are several moving scenes. A section late in the book at the death bed of a character is just lovely.Would I recommend the book to others? Maybe. But NOT if: this is your first Rushdie (try "Midnight's Children"); you want a linear, easily comprehensible plot; you get frustrated when the plot doesn't to go where you want it to; you have to understand everything; you are impatient. Otherwise, if you're adventurous, have a go.
What do You think about The Satanic Verses (2000)?
واحدة أخرى من الروايات التي تمثل القيء الفكري بكل معانيه وكأن الرجل أبى أن يحمل كل هذا الوسخ بداخله فتقيئه علينا في شكل رواية فهو لم يعتدي فيها على الإسلام فقط بل على كل الديانات السماوية ولكن كان للإسلام ونبيه عليه افضل الصلاة والسلام النصيب الأكبر فدائما كان وسيظل الإسلام شوكة فى حلق أمثاله ممن كانوا إفراز نتن للثقافة والدعم الغربي ولنحطاط ولسذاجة الفكر الإلحادي فهذا فكر لم يعمي أصحابه فقط عن الايمان والأديان فالله الغني عنهم وعن إيمانهم ولكنه طمس على عقولهم وأصابها بحالة تيبس باتت غير قادرة حتى على التفكير السوي أو المنطقي فكثيراً قرأت في هذا الفكر فلم أخرج منه سوى بنوبات من الضحك المتواصل على ضحالة فكرهم وخلوه ليس من الايمان ولكن من العقل .تتبعها حالة حزن على المخلوق المكرم المزين بالعقل من قبل خالقه كيف عبث بعقله الى هذا الحد فتحول بما كسبت يداه الى هذا المسخ !!!في النهاية هذا عمل لم يحمل بين صفحاته ما يستحق القراءة لا فكر ولا إبداع ولا قصة ولا لغة ولا أسلوب أدبي لم يحمل سوى سموم فكرية وأمراض قلبية وعقلية ..
—Ghofran
Satanic Verses: A CompositionHe had just finished his thirty-fourth reading of the play. The unsaid hate, the unseen events, the half-imagined wrongs; they tormented him. What could cause such evil to manifest, he just could not figure. He loved him too much to believe the simple explanation.And then the idea starts growing on him - to explore the growth of evil just as Shakespeare showed, explored the tragic culmination of it. And because you show the growth, it can no longer be a tragedy, no, no it has to be a comedy. A tragicomedy. Yes. And he set to it. He painted Othello as an Indian actor, worshiped and adored and off on a mad canter to get his Ice Queen, his Desdemona. On his way he meets him - the poor man trying to forget his own roots and desperately reinventing himself, his Iago. Yes Iago too was once a man. What twists of fate made him evil incarnate? He sets out his prime motif: The question that’s asked here remains as large as ever it was: which is, the nature of evil, how it’s born, why it grows, how it takes unilateral possession of a many-sided human soul.Wait a minute, he blinks at his notes, if Iago is evil incarnate, does that not also mean that he is Satan incarnate? Chamcha then is Satan incarnate? Then Othello has to be God? A little bit more corruptible maybe? Let us make him the angel Gibreel, he decided. As an aside, as the angel, he can slip into that reality in his dreams and reenact the story (history?) of Prophet Mohammad in inflammatory fashion, maybe talk about the 'Satanic Verses' since his Satan can't help but gloat over his little jokes. Why not call the novel so too, except that it would mean something else - the verses that the real Satan of the story, Iago, sings in Othello's ear. He knows that this might be cause for misunderstanding, might ruffle a few feathers, but it is just a digression, the real story is beyond that - it is not the Event Horizon. But he can't help himself. He never could keep a story simple.Ah, now something beyond mere Othello is taking shape is it not? If Iago is Satan, then surely it is in character to enjoy with consummate pleasure the sight of his own jealousy consuming himself - the green-eyed monster that feeds on itself. So Satan decides to narrate the story of one of his incarnations? Or rather, possessions? The questions that are to run his plot are flowing freely now. How an ordinary man when in contact with an angel inevitably had to transform into Lucifer himself. How can one exist without the other. They meet and the spiral ensues and Iago mutates and agitates and like a cancerous growth his strange fate builds until he turns his wrath square on his angel, his Othello. And how can he then not try to destroy what he is not, what he can not be. There is the moment before evil, then the moment of, then the time after; and each subsequent stride becomes progressively easier. But what about before and after the madness? It surely must be an ordinary life, with ordinary joys and pains. It is a cosmic drama, he concludes.In the process, every insinuated implication in the play is to be played out in this story - Cassio does sleep with Iago's wife, Iago is madly lustful of Desdemona, Othello is a deserving victim of directed revenge for very real ills and Iago needs no invented or unbelievable reasons for his actions. He is justified. It was inevitable. Salman Rushdie sets down his pen. He has vindicated Iago, many a literature lover's favorite character.And for that, I am eternally thankful.
—Riku Sayuj
David Lodge observed somewhere that there are books you read and books you'd rather read about – I’ve often wondered during my lecture whether it’s the second that applies to Rushdie’s novel, with all the scandal and the death threats around the religious issues that went with. By the way, I doubt the author didn’t suspect his book would create controversies. Even if I don’t know much about Muslim religion I do know about fanaticism and you can find, if you want to, some pretty blasphemous allusions in the book, like the name Mahound, which was the derogatory name the English used for the prophet Mohammad during the crusades, or the devilish (in the book) image of Saladin, whose name is similar to that of another great Muslim hero during the same crusades, or the arguable Ayesha character, etc. It was interesting to learn (via Wikipedia, of course) what are the Satanic Verses: it is said that Mohammad thought that some verses, in which he was permitted prayer to three Meccan goddesses, were sent to him by God as part of the Qur’an, instead of Satan. Even more interesting was to know that the phrase Satanic Verses was coined by western academies, the Muslims calling them Bird Verses.I have to say I’ve had mixed feelings about this book right from the beginning. Many years ago, irritated by the awful (I thought then) truism of the first sentence, “To be born again, first you have to die!”, I decided not to read it but eventually (and evidently!) I reconsidered and here I am, trying to make sense of this love-hate relationship I developed all along my reading ☺What really annoyed me was that everything in this book is too ornate – as oriental carpets are and it is so tiring to follow such an intricate pattern sometimes! Indian immigrants, film industry, London noise, mystic revelations, religious pilgrimages, and so forth, in a jumble that turns your head, in order to build a colourful world in a frenetic, incessant to and fro movement similar to a tireless fair.The alienation through immigration and loss of religion is an interesting subject but it misses some sort of equilibrium, compositional equilibrium that is – for example I found the religious layer was too emphasized and overall that there were too many themes that in the end remained undeveloped: it leaves you with the sensation of unfinished and overstuffed at the same time.And yet. And yet. I don’t think I’ve ever read something more beautiful than the chapter “The Parting of the Arabian Sea”. And to suggest in the next chapter that it was only a scenario for a movie – absolutely brilliant! Also, I don’t think I’ve encountered a more suggestive rendering of the sound of the city, deafening, shrilling, exhausting, contributing to the alienation of the characters. The death of Saladin’s father is also an interesting example of sublimation of complicated relationships, whereas Gibreel’s death is somehow burlesque.I closed the book, I finished browsing my reading notes and I’m still not sure how I should feel about it. And I'm looking at Midnight Children on my shelf wondering whether I will read it or not. Maybe. Sometime.
—Stela
