{"id":2316,"date":"2024-07-11T10:44:20","date_gmt":"2024-07-11T17:44:20","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.timporter.com\/seconddraft\/?p=2316"},"modified":"2024-07-11T10:44:24","modified_gmt":"2024-07-11T17:44:24","slug":"bookshelf-knife-meditations-after-an-attempted-murder-salman-rushdie","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"http:\/\/www.timporter.com\/seconddraft\/?p=2316","title":{"rendered":"Bookshelf — Knife: Meditations After an Attempted Murder \u2013 Salman Rushdie"},"content":{"rendered":"\n

All memoirs should be measured against this harrowing account by Salman Rushdie of the 2022 attack that nearly killed him and left him half-blind: detailed, unblinking, contextual, and surprisingly soulful \u2013 all packed with precision into two-hundred pages.<\/p>\n\n\n

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To hijack a phrase I\u2019m sure I picked up from someone else\u2019s review: \u201cKnife\u201d is a display of Rushdie in full command of his talents: inventiveness, intellectual breadth, insight into the foibles of humanity, and an emotional spectrum that runs from anger to fear to love to outrage.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Rushdie lived beneath the sword since 1989 when Ayatollah Khomeini of Iran issued a fatwa calling for his execution, proclaiming that Rushdie\u2019s book, \u201cThe Satanic Verses,\u201d defamed Muhammad.  With time, the threat seemed to diminish. Still, says Rushdie, he was not surprised one day, while standing on stage, to see a young man appear from the audience and lunge toward him with a knife.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u201cI confess,\u201d he says, \u201cI had sometimes imagined my assassin rising up in some public forum or other and coming for me in just this way. So my first thought when I saw this murderous shape rushing toward me was: So it\u2019s you. Here you are. It is said that Henry James\u2019s last words were \u2018So it has come at last, the distinguished thing.\u2019 Death was coming at me, too.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

The book begins here and follows Rushdie\u2019s journey of recovery and rediscovery \u2013 of who he is, of what he loves and why, and of the importance of art and honesty in a pluralistic society.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u201cI had to write the book you\u2019re reading now.\u201d he says, \u201cbefore I could move on to anything else. To write would be my way of owning what had happened, taking charge of it, making it mine, refusing to be a mere victim. I would answer violence with art.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Indeed, \u201cKnife\u201d is art \u2013 it is personal, yet universal; it is wisdom distilled from pain; it answers the question everyone must face when calamity confronts them: \u201cOne has to find life … One can\u2019t just sit about recovering from near death. One has to find life.\u201d<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

All memoirs should be measured against this harrowing account by Salman Rushdie of the 2022 attack that nearly killed him and left him half-blind: detailed, unblinking, contextual, and surprisingly soulful \u2013 all packed with precision into two-hundred pages. To hijack … Continue reading →<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"ngg_post_thumbnail":0,"footnotes":""},"categories":[784],"tags":[770,906,908],"class_list":["post-2316","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-books","tag-book-review","tag-knife","tag-memoir"],"yoast_head":"\nBookshelf - Knife: Meditations After an Attempted Murder \u2013 Salman Rushdie - Tim Porter's Second Draft<\/title>\n<meta name=\"description\" content=\"All memoirs should be measured against this harrowing account by Salman Rushdie of the 2022 attack that nearly killed him and left him half-blind: detailed, unblinking, contextual, and surprisingly soulful \u2013 all packed with precision into two-hundred pages.\" \/>\n<meta name=\"robots\" content=\"index, follow, max-snippet:-1, max-image-preview:large, max-video-preview:-1\" \/>\n<link rel=\"canonical\" href=\"http:\/\/www.timporter.com\/seconddraft\/?p=2316\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:locale\" content=\"en_US\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:type\" content=\"article\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:title\" content=\"Bookshelf - 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