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You Know Who's Funny? Salman Rushdie

In 1988, esteemed author Salman Rushdie released his 4th novel The Satanic Verses. Almost immediately, clerics in Iran found the novel blasphemous toward the Prophet Muhammad and declared a fatwa for death in relation to Rushdie.


Young Fred was aghast and bought the Satanic Verses in support of Rushdie and tenets of Free Speech. But when I tried to read it....


In the year 2022, I described the experience thusly: "I actually tried to read the damn thing and it was impenetrable." Let me expound just a bit though, I don't like feeling stupid, I read the first chapter and didn't understand the book at all. There were paragraphs that I read over and over and I was convinced the book wasn't even in English. As a hack writer, I can easily say that The Satanic Verses was the hardest thing I have ever read, by a mile, and I didn't even come close to finishing it.


But I still supported Rushdie and his interpretation of free speech. Part of my problem as a reader is that I believed I was going to read something cartoonishly evil, like the literary version of the metal band Anthrax. What I got was a doctoral-level dissertation about good and evil, physics books were more accessible.


For fleeting moments over the years, I considered reading some of Rushdie's other novels, but I didn't need that headache.


So imagine my surprise when Salman Rushdie named his memoir Knife, which is hysterical considering that he was stabbed by a religious zealot. When promoting Knife, Rushdie mentioned that the guy who stabbed him only read 2 pages of his book.


The subtext being, if you're going to stab a guy, at least read his book.


Now here's my dilemma. I'm really tempted to read Knife, it's getting good reviews.


Yet part of me doesn't want to feel that dumb again. Then a voice whispered in my ear: "At least you're not as brainless as the guy who stabbed Rushdie. You have to be an absolute moron to stab someone in anger without knowing why you're angry."



Great. I feel much better now.

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