Joseph Anton

Joseph Anton confirmed two things for the reader. She confirmed Salman Rushdie to be a talented writer. She also confirmed Salman Rushdie is not a likeable man.

It was interesting (though a bit tedious) to hear of the days of the fatwah (plus some before and after) from the author's view. The interactions with other notable authors or public figures was also intriguing. Even the snippets from letters (the one that suck out in her mind was a thank-you note to Tony Blair, which might be clever, even witty, but ultimately came off to the reader as arrogant and insulting), journals, and articles lent depth to the narrative.

However, the lasting impression for the reader was that Salman Rushdie is essentially a rather unpleasant person. He loves his sons. He loved his wives (though arguably more before he married them than while he was married to them.) However, maybe it was the use of the third person during the entire memoir, but the author of Joseph Anton failed to engender much sympathy from the reader through the course of the book. In fact, there were a few times when she could be heard shouting "You idiot!" or "You arrogant sod!" at the audio book innocently playing on the sound system.

There were several things that engaged the reader's attention and became a part of her mind's wonderings when the book was no longer playing. One was her own memories of those days covered in the book: the way the world changed in 1989 besides the news of one author's plight, back when mobile phones didn't exist, and email was still years away, through to the death of Princess Diana, 9/11, and other world events. Another was her interest in how the title of the book was chosen (though she had to wait well into the book to discover that.)

The third bit that might just be the "take away" from this book for the reader came not from Rushdie, but from his mother. She said she has not a memory, but a "forgetory" where she placed all the memories she did not wish to confront again.

All in all, the reader was glad to have listened to the book, particularly since she was able to do a lot of other things while the book was being read to her. If she had to give up actual time that could have been productive in other ways to sit and read it, she would have been most unhappy.

She wishes Mr Rushdie good luck with the rest of his life. ( )

Rushdie provides an at-times inspiring recollection of his life since Iran's Ayatollah Khomeini issued a fatwa calling for his death because The Satanic Verses was "blasphemous." He takes us into the difficulties he faced living as Joseph Anton, his nom de plume for security and illustrates the ramifications of and his struggles against the seemingly increasing tendency for such claims to trample free speech. Too often, though, the book feels like a recap of his social diary (with plenty of name-checking), making it longer and more of a struggle than it should be.

(Originally posted at A Progressive on the Prairie.)

He didn't need the publicity, he didn't need the money, he knew as a highly-educated man brought up as a Muslim, exactly what he was doing and still he did it and brought death and destruction in the wake of his book, [b:The Satanic Verses|12781|The Satanic Verses|Salman Rushdie|http://d.gr-assets.com/books/1281988101s/12781.jpg|1434467].

It was a kind of Pyrrhic victory, being morally in the right but impossible to justify when weighed against the many deaths that resulted. Those fundamentalist Muslims were determined to enforce at least outward respect for their 'values' just as he knew they would.

They were all, to a man, completely wrong. It was a book, it was a popular book, not great literature destined to live forever. So it trod on religious sensibilities, was it worth all the killings and burnings just so the perpetrators could feel they had avenged themselves, saying it was their prophet they were avenging? Islam, the word itself has the root 'peace' (the consonants SLM, salaam, shalom) yet the more fervent fundamentalist interpreters of that religion practise anything but that.

Would Mohammed himself have rejoiced or condemned all the killings just because of his depiction in such a piece of ephemera? If he would have rejoiced in all those killings, wouldn't it give anyone pause for thought that this leader might not be showing the right path through life? Or, much, much more probable, that they had (mis)interpreted Mohammed in such a violent and wicked way because that was their natures, their intentions projected on to him to justify their own disgusting actions. Nothing to do with this, but I want to read [b:American Jesus: How the Son of God Became a National Icon|145960|American Jesus How the Son of God Became a National Icon|Stephen R. Prothero|http://d.gr-assets.com/books/1316636868s/145960.jpg|140856] on the same sort of moulding and interpreting according to cultural norms rather than the reality of the man himself.

The book is quite a good read, Rushdie writes well and his life is not-uninteresting, but as with all his books with the possible exception of [b:Shame|4831|Shame|Salman Rushdie|http://d.gr-assets.com/books/1348893969s/4831.jpg|855015], he does go on and he is so full of himself.

In the end, with the Satanic Verses, he swapped fame for notoriety and this autobiography isn't going to help put him back on his literary pedestal. ( )

On February 14 1989, Salman Rushdie got a call asking how he felt about being sentenced to death. The call was from a journalist who told him that the Ayatollah Khomeini has put a fatwa on him. His novel The Satanic Verses was accused of being “against Islam, the Prophet, and the Quran.” This is a memoir of the 10 years he went into hiding and was under police protection because of this fatwa.

When they asked Rushdie to pick an alias the first thing he did was think of the writers he respected, in this case Joseph Conrad and Anton Chekhov. This is a memoir of complete honesty about the effect his novel The Satanic Verses had on his life. I found Rushdie to be very honest about the whole situation, from the bonds formed, the struggles, the fears and the idea of freedom of speech.

One thing that really stood out to me was the use of a third person narrator; a rarity in a memoir but it seemed to really work. It was like Salman Rushdie was telling a story of someone else. I’m not sure if Rushdie was trying to look at the situation from another perspective or if he felt like the situation changed who he was, but it really worked.

I remember The Satanic Verses and I know I had to research Islam to understand the book, but I never thought of it as a religious insult; I always viewed the book as one man’s struggle to make sense of his religion in a culture completely different. The importance of this book and its literary achievements really was out shadowed by the controversy. In Joseph Anton, Rushdie really does try to look at the entire situation in a unique way.

Salman Rushdie’s healing process is displayed on the page for everyone to see, but you can still see the bitterness and animosity in his narrative. This is what I found made this book so great; the author never held back and never tried to hide his emotions. It would have been a scary time of his life and I’m glad to understand what he went through a lot more than I expected.

This review originally appeared on my blog; http://literary-exploration.com/2013/02/08/book-review-joseph-anton/ ( )

[Joseph Anton] by [[Salmon Rushdie]]

The title of the book, a memoir about Rushdie’s years under Fatwa, is taken from the alternate identity he developed while in hiding. Joseph Anton represents the first names of two of Rushdie’s favorite writers—Conrad and Chekov. The British Secret Service called him ‘Joe”, which he didn’t particularly like.

The book highlights how hard it would be to be in hiding; not able to use your own name; not able to run simple errands on your own, and having to sneak around to visit with your 9 year old son. The difficulties are compounded by fearing for your life and the lives of those close to you. Hitoshi Igarashi, the Japanese translator of [the Satanic Verses], was stabbed to death on 11 July 1991. It was also hard that Rushdie faced criticism from a number of sources who felt that he should no have insulted Islam.

Clearly, Rushdie’s intent was not to insult. As a secular Muslim, he was using his own stories, the stories from his culture, to create a work of art.

The book, all 600 plus pages, is written in third person. I particularly enjoyed the first half which provides a lot of context to Rushdie’s novels, and which feels intense and suspenseful. There is also lots of information and gossip about Rushdie’s wives, friends, and fellow literary figures. The second half drags a bit, as I believe that living in hiding dragged for Rushdie.

I love Rushdie’s view of literature and it’s role in society: “Literature tried to open the universe, to increase, even if only slightly, the sum total of what was possible for human beings to perceive, understand, and so, finally, to be. Great literature went to the edges of the known and pushed against the boundaries of language, form and possibility, to make the world feel larger, wider, than before. Yet this was an age in which men and women were being pushed toward ever-narrower definitions of themselves, encouraged to call themselves just one thing, Serb or Croat or Israeli or Palestinian or Hindu or Muslim of Christian or Baha’i or Jew, and the narrower their identities became, the greater was the likelihood of conflict between them. Literature’s view of human nature encouraged understanding, sympathy, and identification with people not like oneself, but the world was pushing everyone in the opposite direction, toward narrowness, bigotry, tribalism, cultism and war. There were plenty of people who didn’t want the universe opened, who would, in fact, prefer it to be shut down quite a bit, and so when artists went to the frontier and pushed they often found powerful forces pushing back.” ( )