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cartoonmicah 's review for:
The Satanic Verses
by Salman Rushdie
The Satanic Verses is a work very much Indian and very much Islamic, a work full of history and literary allusion and about as complex as one could ask for, full of religion and myth and comic mishaps. In the large majority of situations, Rushdie’s writing lands well by paragraph and by chapter. On the whole, I found the conflict within the story disorienting, as if the reader is being intentionally discouraged by the narrator (God?) from coming to any conclusions about good v evil and reality v hallucination.
Background - With so little first hand knowledge about Islam, it helped me to know that the satanic verses is a reference to a handful of lines supposedly from Muhammad that legitimize other goddesses as demigods within the Islamic tradition. Apparently these verses were never canonized but their existence is used by Rushdie to draw a critical eye toward the question of purity of belief v taking shortcuts or making allowances to get results. The Satanic verses of Muhammad were expunged from the religion in his own lifetime by explaining that it was Satan and not the Angel Gabriel who gave him this specific revelation about these local goddesses.
The Satanic Verses follows the serendipitous and supernatural interactions of Indian actors Gibreel and Saladin, after the plane they both take from Bombay to London is hijacked and explodes over the English Channel. Gibreel is the most famous Bollywood star in India, recently experiencing strange episodic dreams that are slowly convincing him that he is the Angel Gabriel, divine spokesperson and conduit of inspiration for the Qu’ran. Saladin is the estranged son of a wealthy Indian merchant, a no nonsense Anglophile who is obsessed with British orderliness and works as a voice actor in England. Both men were once Muslim but Gibreel defiantly consumed pork when he at last rejected God and Saladin seems to have been a rational materialist since childhood. When the airplane explodes at 30,000 feet, these two men fall entwined, heads between one another knees in an almost yin-yang fashion and, in the midst of the descent, a surreal transformation begins. Gibreel takes on his angelic form and Saladin becomes his equal opposite, the personification of evil himself. Somehow, miraculously, they flap down to the surface of the ocean and survive. But when Saladin awakes, he finds the beginnings of horns sprouting on his head. And there is a glowing aura about the head of Gibreel.
What follows is a series of stories, some from the incredible intertwined lives of these men and some from the historically and religious informed dreams/transformations of Gibreel. These supernatural changes in the two men are regularly referred to as having reality in the world and effecting the people and society and weather around them, but they are also often written off as mental health issues or strange flukes. As the plot goes on, the strange events follow little coherent line I could make out, but the roles of the two men as good v. evil are regularly blurred and reestablished.
I like Rushdie’s style and his comic approach. I like the characters and the Indian perspective. I find the Islamic and Hindu elements interesting and enlightening. But the larger metaphysical and philosophical perspectives being pursued seemed really conflicted and the plot suffered from a nebulous meandering, as if coming to any conclusions about the hundreds of very distinct material and supernatural elements would somehow be eternally premature. Rushdie seems to want to say something but refuses to get to saying anything.
The second half of the book made me increasingly wonder where all this was going and the ending was satisfying in a way that seemed to sidestep all of the supernatural elements at its core.
Background - With so little first hand knowledge about Islam, it helped me to know that the satanic verses is a reference to a handful of lines supposedly from Muhammad that legitimize other goddesses as demigods within the Islamic tradition. Apparently these verses were never canonized but their existence is used by Rushdie to draw a critical eye toward the question of purity of belief v taking shortcuts or making allowances to get results. The Satanic verses of Muhammad were expunged from the religion in his own lifetime by explaining that it was Satan and not the Angel Gabriel who gave him this specific revelation about these local goddesses.
The Satanic Verses follows the serendipitous and supernatural interactions of Indian actors Gibreel and Saladin, after the plane they both take from Bombay to London is hijacked and explodes over the English Channel. Gibreel is the most famous Bollywood star in India, recently experiencing strange episodic dreams that are slowly convincing him that he is the Angel Gabriel, divine spokesperson and conduit of inspiration for the Qu’ran. Saladin is the estranged son of a wealthy Indian merchant, a no nonsense Anglophile who is obsessed with British orderliness and works as a voice actor in England. Both men were once Muslim but Gibreel defiantly consumed pork when he at last rejected God and Saladin seems to have been a rational materialist since childhood. When the airplane explodes at 30,000 feet, these two men fall entwined, heads between one another knees in an almost yin-yang fashion and, in the midst of the descent, a surreal transformation begins. Gibreel takes on his angelic form and Saladin becomes his equal opposite, the personification of evil himself. Somehow, miraculously, they flap down to the surface of the ocean and survive. But when Saladin awakes, he finds the beginnings of horns sprouting on his head. And there is a glowing aura about the head of Gibreel.
What follows is a series of stories, some from the incredible intertwined lives of these men and some from the historically and religious informed dreams/transformations of Gibreel. These supernatural changes in the two men are regularly referred to as having reality in the world and effecting the people and society and weather around them, but they are also often written off as mental health issues or strange flukes. As the plot goes on, the strange events follow little coherent line I could make out, but the roles of the two men as good v. evil are regularly blurred and reestablished.
I like Rushdie’s style and his comic approach. I like the characters and the Indian perspective. I find the Islamic and Hindu elements interesting and enlightening. But the larger metaphysical and philosophical perspectives being pursued seemed really conflicted and the plot suffered from a nebulous meandering, as if coming to any conclusions about the hundreds of very distinct material and supernatural elements would somehow be eternally premature. Rushdie seems to want to say something but refuses to get to saying anything.
The second half of the book made me increasingly wonder where all this was going and the ending was satisfying in a way that seemed to sidestep all of the supernatural elements at its core.