The Satanic Verses

The Satanic Verses - Salman Rushdie

I find it hard to believe that it has been 24 years since this book came out and that it has taken me this long to get around to reading it. I guess my expectations of the book had been somewhat dampened at the time, having overheard conversations, one in particular where the quality of the book and Rushdie's own personality were called into question by people who, nevertheless were loudly condemning the Fatwa and defending Rushdie. Not that they should like the book, or Rushdie, to object to the Fatwa but it lowered my expectations. Which is a good way to approach a book.

Fury is Five

Fury - Salman Rushdie
This started like a modern updating of Saul Bellow's Herzog, the academic in late middle age unable to stay with any woman and hurling his incohate fury at the world. It ended as a mixture between Myth, The Mouse that Roared and a theatrical farce and more besides - science fiction, child abuse, the media world, the internet...
However it suffers greatly by comparison with Bellow and is an often awkward and very uneven work. Much of the dialogue and inner thoughts seem mere paraphrases of sunday magazine speculation and the tone is uneven and unconvincing. (I did enjoy the frisson where he talks of the power having moved from cultural commentators in the seventies to advertising executives in the nineties, the opposite journey to Rushdie.) There are also constant references to Swift, Kafka, Yeats and any number of cultural touchstones.