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Apr. 23rd, 2024 04:18 pmso i read Knife by Salman Rushdie.
the greatest irony is i had never heard of the dude before he got stabbed in 2022.
the second i heard about the attempted assassination, i was reading about him and immediately brought The Satanic Verses, for which he's most infamous for. Why? Partly out of emotional support to a fellow beleaguered creative, partly because I was concerned the latest attack there would make it harder to get the book. Knife is his account of the before-and-after of the stabbing, recovery, and making sense of life.
* oh, he's the kind of writer that can consistently give you chills. i see why he's so famous (infamous?). honestly even though there wasn't really a super consistent thought-line through the book, it was honestly just nice metaphorically sitting beside him and hearing him ... talk. his casual pros is a constant act of word play. he enjoys words and how they're strung along together. and it's strangely emotionally relatable even though our specific lives don't have much in common.
* i haven't read any nonfiction written after 2017, so hearing "current" events or even little quips about covid specifically was jarring. He makes it work (most times), but it's still. one of the most interesting passages of this is when he's imagining a conversation (debate?) between he and his attempted assassin. and one of the things he brings up is how both the assassin and his own younger son are really good players of call of duty, and isn't it such a strange quirk of fate how they may have matched up with each other unknowingly? delivered in the style of an "old world" author it's such an interesting blend of old/new.
* he's quite accurate with both the highs and the lows with trauma recovery, as you'd expect it from a writer who lived it. that up-down yo-yo of bad-good-bad-good days, the inexplicable oddness of ICU-level painkillers and night patterns, the psychic aftermath of survival, and living in a meatbag stitched together by what feels like spit and tape.
* he loves his stories and literature - by that i mean he throws out references to other works constantly. he might be the only author that's done that that i'm not immediately irritated with; they're both highbrow and lowbrow works, and after some thought you always get the emotional resonance of the quote. he's not trying to bedazzle you, just sharing a moment of kinship.
i don't know if i'd full throttle recommend this to just anyone; it's good, but it's one of those where you have to want to read it. the kind of work that invites itself in your lap.
the greatest irony is i had never heard of the dude before he got stabbed in 2022.
the second i heard about the attempted assassination, i was reading about him and immediately brought The Satanic Verses, for which he's most infamous for. Why? Partly out of emotional support to a fellow beleaguered creative, partly because I was concerned the latest attack there would make it harder to get the book. Knife is his account of the before-and-after of the stabbing, recovery, and making sense of life.
* oh, he's the kind of writer that can consistently give you chills. i see why he's so famous (infamous?). honestly even though there wasn't really a super consistent thought-line through the book, it was honestly just nice metaphorically sitting beside him and hearing him ... talk. his casual pros is a constant act of word play. he enjoys words and how they're strung along together. and it's strangely emotionally relatable even though our specific lives don't have much in common.
* i haven't read any nonfiction written after 2017, so hearing "current" events or even little quips about covid specifically was jarring. He makes it work (most times), but it's still. one of the most interesting passages of this is when he's imagining a conversation (debate?) between he and his attempted assassin. and one of the things he brings up is how both the assassin and his own younger son are really good players of call of duty, and isn't it such a strange quirk of fate how they may have matched up with each other unknowingly? delivered in the style of an "old world" author it's such an interesting blend of old/new.
* he's quite accurate with both the highs and the lows with trauma recovery, as you'd expect it from a writer who lived it. that up-down yo-yo of bad-good-bad-good days, the inexplicable oddness of ICU-level painkillers and night patterns, the psychic aftermath of survival, and living in a meatbag stitched together by what feels like spit and tape.
* he loves his stories and literature - by that i mean he throws out references to other works constantly. he might be the only author that's done that that i'm not immediately irritated with; they're both highbrow and lowbrow works, and after some thought you always get the emotional resonance of the quote. he's not trying to bedazzle you, just sharing a moment of kinship.
i don't know if i'd full throttle recommend this to just anyone; it's good, but it's one of those where you have to want to read it. the kind of work that invites itself in your lap.
