Good Cause, with Reservations

This is the review I wrote for Amazon of Salman Rushdie's memoir, Joseph Anton:

Clever Idea for a "Novel"

What a brilliant premise for a work of fiction! Have a protagonist write a score-settling memoir after having written a novel that gravely offended fundamentalists in a semi-literate, terrorist breeding-ground country. (Man, don't you hate when that happens?) The protagonist valiantly fights the good fight for a righteous cause - in this case, freedom of speech; heck, his right to life - but as the layers are pulled back it's revealed that the protagonist is so vain and clueless and tone-deaf that whole swaths of people who hate censorship as much as he does are turned off. This incenses him almost as much as the religious fanatics' threats. Publishers who chose not to risk their, their family's, or their employees' lives on publishing the (frigging) PAPERBACK edition of the book are never forgiven. Having the Her Majesty's Government giving him round the clock protection is a grave insult. (It was shameful how these [professional, yet probably culturally illiterate, working-class] people talked to him!) No one, he moans, understands LIT-tra-chure, no one realizes the super-duper ultra-important role of the writer. (If occupations could be granted a Pass on douchiness I'd just as soon give it to brain surgeons or pastry chefs, but that's just me.) It's exhausting but fascinating to read, like would be a novel about a Dalai Lama who in private life is an insufferable diva.

But I want to say more. I want to get at why the book was so exhausting-fascinating, Readable-excruciating. I'm against censorship. I'm certainly against death threats. What should it matter if the victim wasn't a sterling character? Why wasn't I sympathetic?

I think I disliked the author for making me ashamed to be a bookworm. For enjoying writing myself.

For him, the world of books isn't just a nice place to visit; it seems a righteous, sacred perch from which to sling stones (a drunken father, not unlike his own, appears in an early novel) and look down upon people. Every time he declares himself to be a Writer he makes the occupation seem less noble, not more. Being a writer seems to be a "license to ill", and not in a good way.

Sometimes he refers to him as a "scribbler", implying a degree of humility that doesn't line up with the pettiness exhibited elsewhere. When his protection team tells him what to do (and really, do they have any choice but to err on the side of caution?) he howls at being spoken to that way. Being under protection meant he didn't have an official, public address in London and therefore couldn't vote. But he read that "even homeless people had been given a special dispensation that allowed them to cast their ballots; but there was no special dispensation for him." (Lovely, that "even".)

But what really makes the smoke come out of his ears is when he asks for and is denied permission for his girlfriend to attend a friend's funeral. Other principals have been allowed such, he countered. The officer told him yes, "but every other principal is performing or has performed a service to the nation. You, in my opinion, have not." Bam! And this from a lowly, unlettered officer who probably doesn't even know about Falalalajin and the the 12th century Hindu poet-mystic tradition or some such!

The treating of women as Kleenex; grumbling when one ex - the mother of his first-born son - asks for money for a house; the index finger circling his ear motion while speaking of the second ex-wife (who has some of the best lines in the book); the summer-long mooch-fests in the States; the la-di-dah dinners with writers one would normally be happy to read about but in the memoir turn into guests you can't wait to leave; the going anywhere to accept every literary prize he's offered (one suspects some awards still have a smear of peanut butter from the kindergarten class that offered them); the name-dropping and schmoozing; no awareness that the notoriety of the book is getting him all of this attention, not nececessarily the book's merits; the leaving wife and two-year old for a greedy model.... No, no, no. That awful whiff of entitlement comes through often in this memoir, and it's no more appealing in a self-proclaimed Serious Writer than it is in a derivatives zillionaire in NYC.

I'm still a bookworm and I still have ideas for writing but I don't want to be a raging, megalomaniacal ass about it. If I ever start to look down on people because I've read a book and they haven't I hope I have enough sense to jump on my bike and let myself be humbled by a few tough inclines.

Actually, a good ride might be a cure for having no sympathy for someone who was in a helluva jam for over ten years.