Title: Knife: Meditations After An Attempted Murder by Salman Rushdie
Summary:
From internationally renowned writer and Booker Prize winner Salman Rushdie, a searing, deeply personal account of enduring—and surviving—an attempt on his life thirty years after the fatwa that was ordered against him
On the morning of August 12, 2022, Salman Rushdie was standing onstage at the Chautauqua Institution, preparing to give a lecture on the importance of keeping writers safe from harm, when a man in black—black clothes, black mask—rushed down the aisle toward him, wielding a knife. His first thought: So it’s you. Here you are.
What followed was a horrific act of violence that shook the literary world and beyond. Now, for the first time, and in unforgettable detail, Rushdie relives the traumatic events of that day and its aftermath, as well as his journey toward physical recovery and the healing that was made possible by the love and support of his wife, Eliza, his family, his army of doctors and physical therapists, and his community of readers worldwide. (Publisher)
The book is profound and very literate. I was touched by so many of his meditations/essays and wanted to capture them by sharing a few excerpts.I will let these excerpts speak for themselves instead of relying on just my own thoughts on the book.
Rushie expands on his thoughts on 'knife' as an idea:
- A knife is used to make the first cut on a wedding cake;
- A kitchen knife is essential for the creative act of cooking;
- A Swiss Army knife is a helper, able to perform small but necessary tasks;
- Knives can be conceptual like cutting through bullshit;
- "Language, too, was a knife. It could cut open the world and reveal its meaning, its inner workings, its secrets, its truths...Language was my knife" (85).
Referring to the book Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance and how literature spoke to him during his recovery:
"I didn't want to repair any motorcycles, I learned that through literature, I could repair myself" (90).
On reflecting on the past with regret, he says:
"To reject what your life has been is true folly, I told myself, because the person doing the regretting has been shaped by the life he suhe subsequently regrets" (94).
With his own mortality on his mind he offers thoughts on grief after the death of a friend:
"It is the trivia of the past that one mourns as much as greater matters (such as literary talent) when one is saying goodbye to a friend" (127).
Rushdie imagined a conversation with his would-be assassin (I've quoted this reflection several times when I've noticed how some people seem to have no sense of humor about anything):
"There's a thing I used to say back in the day, when catastrophe rained down upon The Satanic Verse and its author: that one of understanding the argument over the book was that is a quarrel between those with a sense of humor and those without one. I see you now, my failed murderer, hypocrite assassin, mon semblable, mon frere. You could try to kill because you didn't know how to laugh" (168).
I enjoyed how Rushdie referred to the works of other writers or poets to explain his thoughts. Here Rushdie reflects on the Raymond Carver's poem "Gravy" and the concept of second chances. Carver lived ten years after a fatal diagnosis. Carver described that time as gravy.
"That was a good way to think of it. Every day of life, was gravy" (171).
On making a new life going forward and the importance of his relationships:
"Everywhere I looked, as I contemplated my next steps back into the world, I felt the reassuring arms of friends around my shoulders" (172).
Rushdie emphasized several time how writers have an important role in responding to the ugliness of the world (and these quotes help me, too, as I digest all the misinformation [lies] that got Trump re-elected):
"How should we respond? It has been said, I have said it myself, that the powerful may own the present, but writers own the future, for it is through our work, or the best of it at least, the work which endures into that future, that the present misdeed of the powerful will be judged...Even after Orpheus was torn to pieces, his severed head, floating down the river Hebrus, went on singing, reminding us that the song is stronger than death" (180).
"Above all, we must understand that stories are at the heart of what's happening, and the dishonest narratives of oppressors have proved attractive to many. So we must work to overturn the false narratives of tyrants, populists, and fools by telling better stories than they do, stories within which people want to live" (181).
On closure:
"I remembered a Doonesbury comic strip which one character tells another: "You know, I really miss September 10th." That sentence, speaking so tenderly as it did of lost innocence, even a lost world, had stayed with me...I wanted very badly to be, once again, that carefree fellow...a writer with a new novel soon to be published, and a man in love." There may not be closure but there could be a reconstructed happiness...a wounded happiness and there was and perhaps would always be, a shadow in the corner of it. But it was a strong happiness nevertheless, and as we embraced, I knew it was enough" (203, 207)
The book wasn't an easy read. The topic is very distressing and so were the details, but I did enjoy the way Rushdie made so many literary references and talked about his life as an artist and the power he and other writers have in righting the record. For some reason that gave me a bit of hope for our future.
My rating: 4 stars.
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