#salman rushdie

[asoftepiloguemylove]

HOW DID I GO FROM GROWING UP TO BREAKING DOWN? // ON GROWING UP

Mother Mother Mamma Told Me // unknown // 어른들은 몰라요 Young Adult Matters (2021) dir. Hwan Lee // Kristin Chang Churching // unknown // Salman Rushdie East, West // Lorde Ribs // Cameron Awkward-Rich The Child Formerly Known As _____ // Lorde // unknown // Leanna Firestone Least Favorite Only Child // リリイ・シュシュのすべて All About Lily Chou-Chou (2001) dir. Shunji Iwai // Richard Siken Crush // unknown // Hala Alyan I'm Not Speaking First

[chthonic-cassandra]

Consider Scheherazade, whose name meant "city-born" and who was without a doubt a big-city girl, crafty, wisecracking, by turns sentimental and cynical, as contemporary a metropolitan narrator as one could wish to meet. Scheherazade, who snared the prince in her never-ending story. Scheherazade, telling stories to save her life, setting fiction against death, a Statue of Liberty built not of metal but of words. Scheherazade, who insisted, against her father's will, on taking her place in the procession into the king's deadly boudoir. Scheherazade, who set herself the heroic task of saving her sisters by taming the king. Who had faith, who must have had faith, in the man beneath the murderous monster and in her own ability to restore him to his true humanity, by telling him stories.

Salman Rushdie, "Wonder Tales" in Languages of Truth: Essays 2003-2020

[iirulancorrino]

The idea—which has sprung to dangerous new life in America as much on the progressive as on the theocratic side of the argument—that words are equal to actions reflects the most primitive form of word magic, and has the same relation to the actual philosophy of language that astrology has to astronomy. Sticks and stones really can break bones. Words can never hurt you, just challenge your mind and categories. (And yes, of course, some words are vile and can be rejected by our calling them so. No one wants to protect authors from bad reviews, even those by autocrats; it is threats from bullies that they need protection from.) Everyone has a right to be offended by whatever offends them, and everyone on earth has a right to articulate their offense. No one has a right to maim or kill someone because our words offend them. Blasphemy is not a mighty category demanding respect but a pitiful invention of those who cannot tolerate having their pet convictions criticized. It demands no respect from anyone; on the contrary, it requires solidarity among all decent people in opposing it. An insult to an ideology is not the same as a threat made to a people. It is the opposite of a threat made to a person. To assume the criticism of ideas as assaults on people is the end of the liberal civilization. The idea that we should be free to do our work and offer our views without extending a frightened veto to those who threaten to harm us isn’t just part of what we mean by free expression—it is close to the whole of what we mean by civilized life.

Adam Gopnik, “Salman Rushdie and the Power of Words” (x)

[one-time-i-dreamt]

"Rushdie suffered an apparent stab wound to his neck and has been airlifted to a hospital, New York police say. His condition is unknown."

Link to the full story: Associated Press.

[alas-pooryorick]

I am my father's daughter

The Woman Destroyed, Simone de Beauvoir

Fleabag (2016-2019)

East, West, Salman Rushdie

Irish proverb

Franny and Zooey, J.D. Salinger

Along for the Ride, Sarah Dessen

The Father Tamer, Eileen Granfors

Cat's Eye, Margaret Atwood

Aristotle and Dante Discover the Secrets of the Universe, Benjamin Alire Sáenz

Franny and Zooey, J.D. Salinger

Foucault's Pendulum, Umberto Eco

A Room Called Earth, Madeleine Ryan

[literary-illuminati]

2024 Book Review #13 – Victory City by Salman Rushdie

One of my goals for the year is to read more proper literature (here defined as fiction I can mention reading to my mother without getting judged for it). I’ve never read anything of Rushdie’s before, but I did remember his name in the news recently due to the whole attempted-murder thing and, happily, my library actually had a copy of his newest work. So, picked this up and read it sight unseen!

The book follows one Pampa Kampana – a nine-year-old girl who, in the 14th century, witnesses her city destroyed, and her mother burning herself alive. She is then inhabited and blessed by a goddess, blessed/cursed with a lifespan measured in centuries and the destiny of raising an empire up and seeing it fall before she dies.

The narrative is framed as a modern adaptation/summary of the epic poem recounting her life Pampa completes before finally dying, finally discovered and translated after being forgotten in the ruins of te imperial capital for centuries. The story is largely a story of this miraculous, semi-utopian empire, as told Pampa’s eyes (and with a lengthy digression during the years she spends in exile).

This is a story that exists somewhere in the muddy middle ground between historical low fantasy and magical realism – it’s in some sense an alternate history of the Vijayanagara Empire, and replete with historical trivia and references, but is quite clear from the outset that accuracy is not really something the book cares about. Instead, the book’s Vijayanagara – always written as Bisnaga, as it was translated by a historical Portuguese chronicler whose also a minor character in the story, to prevent confusion – is basically allegory and morality tale with a light coating of history for flavour.

Not that I can really begrudge Rushdie for his strident politics (as far as I can tell I basically agree with him on all of it), but this really does feel like one of those old fantastical utopias, or a political treatise that gets past the censors by pretending to be the history of a foreign country, more than it does a novel. Which could definitely work! But in this case really didn’t, at least for me. There’s enough time spent on characterization and character drama to eat up pages, but not enough for it to ever feel like they’re people and not just marionettes acting out a show. I suppose the best way to get across the reading experience is that I was reading a proper 500 page history book at the same time as I read this, and this felt like the bigger slog by far.

Though part of that might just be disappointed expectations that I really had no right to have in the first place? As I said, I had Rushdie slotted in my head as a literary author, but really I don’t know nearly enough about him or his work to justify that. So I came to this expecting to be at least a bit wowed and bedazzled by the artistry and beautiful prose on display – and like, eh? Not bad, to be sure, the narrative voice and the framing device are both fun and fairly well done. But having read it there’s really not a single passage or sequence I can say has stuck with me.

The comparison that comes to mind is Kalpa Imperial by Angélica Gorodischer, which is also a book-length epic history of a fantastical empire that never was which laughs at all conventional wisdom about pacing, characterization and plot (and which also has been shelved as magical realism for what are basically reasons genre snobbery imo). It’s been a few years since I read it, but from what I recall that agreed with me far more. Maybe just because it abandoned the conceit of a single protagonist and family melodrama entirely, or maybe because it had a bit more subtle in its social commentary (or maybe it was just better written on a sentence-to-sentence level).

Though I should say, there’s every possibility I’m being a bit harsher on this than it entirely deserves – it’s an entirely competent book! The politics are blatant but like a) they’re politics I agree with and b) they’re nowhere near the most blatant or forced-feeling inclusion of progressive politics in fiction I’ve seen recently. However, this is also a piece of writing that’s among other things very clearly and directly about how important and sublime and world-changing the art of writing is. Which is like a movie about making it in showbuisness, or a musical about how great singing is. Automatic deduction of a full letter grade.

[dadsinsuits]

Salman Rushdie

[religion-is-a-mental-illness]

"The pope gets ridiculed every day, but you don't see Catholics organizing terrorist attacks around the world." -- Salman Rushdie

Islam isn't "just like every religion."

[sivavakkiyar]

oh that’s actually kinda cute

[oldshrewsburyian]

What every guest room needs is a whatnot with the books your guests didn't know they needed to read, right?

[dreaminginthedeepsouth]

Gustave Buchet (1888-1963). Sailing Ship.

* * * *

“Among the great struggles of man-good/evil, reason/unreason, etc.-there is also this mighty conflict between the fantasy of Home and the fantasy of Away, the dream of roots and the mirage of the journey.”

― Salman Rushdie

[waugh-bao]

“I met him [Leonard Cohen] once, when I presented an award to him on behalf of PEN. He was such a sweet man. I even have a photograph of myself being kissed by him. One of my most prized possessions.”-Salman Rushdie (Montreal Gazette, 2017)

"Leonard Cohen kissed me. Actually, this may be the most remarkable photograph I’ve ever been in."-Salman Rushdie (2021)

[mysharona1987]

[leer-reading-lire]

JOMP Book Photo Challenge || January || 18 || Book stack

[novlr]