.: The Absent Narrative :.

The Satanic Verses gives an apocryphal retelling of the founding of the Islamic religion, in which the angel Gibreel (who spoke to the prophet) is actually the fever dream of a 21st century Indian movie star, all of which may have been a ploy of the Adversary, who narrates the novel.  Told in Rushdie’s oceanic Eastern Magical Realist style, in which philosophic and pop culture references spill over each other and circle the plot, this is not an “easy read;” one has to submit to the language and pace before appreciating the ideas and beautiful images presented.  While a friend suggested this style draws on the Semitic tradition of storytelling (like the Torah or a Burton translation of the Arabian Nights), it likewise echoes the hysterical postmodernism of Pynchon, often to such an extent that it seems like Rushdie would rather show off his erudition or linguistic bombast than tell a story.

While the infamous Fatwah incurred against Rushdie for The Satanic Verses‘ publication came about merely as he used a reference to Islamic scripture in a representational way, and not because the Ayatollah Ruhollah Khomeini read the book (he did not), Rushdie still offers here some critiques of Islam, both in terms of its dogmatic practices against women and the veracity of spiritual revelation in general.  The style however contains such tongu-in-cheek humor that it is hard to feel a sense of emotional honesty or spiritual necessity to the work, beyond the mocking of the author’s native traditions as a spectacle for Western audiences:  all the positive spiritual characters die, while those who reject their cultural values and literally become devils live happily ever after.  Despite the beauty of the writing and courage to confront  the historical axe of religion, the message this left me with was one along the lines of “we cannot change the world and religious history through a new approach to spirituality, only run away and laugh.”  Given the demonic nature of the narrator this seems a particularly satanic verse, but not exactly a hopeful or useful moral for the modern world.