By Shivaji Dasgupta
For those who love Rushdie’s literature, this may be a letdown. For the others who enjoy human comebacks, this can cause a meltdown. Knife is a use case in seesaw writing—moving effortlessly from incorrigible genius to agonising repetition in a matter of words. But since it’s Rushdie, it must be read.
Readers will surely be aware of the knife attack on Rushdie in Upstate New York (Chautauqua) in August 2022. After surviving the fatwa of the dreaded Ayatollah since 1989, this almost sounds anticlimactic, occurring well after the fat lady had sung. This book is the survivor’s account of the events of the day and the many days after, with an audacious array of free associations, lateral thinking in De Bono lingua. Brought to life with the charming technique of foreshadowing, a slice of the future available to the observer and not the protagonist, in pure Hitchcock style.
The night before the encounter with Mister A, an almost affectionate descriptor of the almost assassin, the moon becomes the unlikely hero. With much elan, he begins his journey of tactical disruption, designed to shamelessly deluge the reader with eclectic excess. Good luck, Mr Gorsky, ascribed to Neil Armstrong, the route map of the Greek Sun God, and the Italo Calvino story of when the moon and earth were handshaking neighbours. This is the tenor of the writing. Gorgeous flirtations with spirit and soul, no reason sought or given.
But then comes the act of ‘motiveless malignity’ (Shakespeare), the 27 seconds of infamy that would rattle his hard-earned equilibrium. Perhaps it is foreshadowed in Shalimar The Clown, possibly it is predicted in Kafka’s The Trial or Polanski’s Knife in the Water, but it does happen to him. A man racing from the audience, packing a boxer’s punch. Then, as if a protein supplement, unleashing the knife for maximum impact. The knife, scathing as metaphor but deadly as reality. At this point, the author’s creative decibels reach a crescendo.
Then, quite suddenly, it is time for Eliza. No, not Dolittle. Rachel Eliza Griffiths, the Black American poet, discovered unplanned during the PEN American World Voices Festival. The author dwells briefly on the curation of the event, his doing largely. Then the spellbinding encounter with her and the inadvertent ‘sliding door’ accident. Rushdie expends sufficient ink and heart in positioning Eliza, an almost otherworldly depiction of perfection, quoting liberally from other writings. This while delving on privacy, a ‘valueless quality’ in such social media times. The Rushdies vowed to live a life of intimacy, unknown to civilisation at large, at least as wishful thinking.
From here, the storytelling moves on to the nuances of family, ‘the source of our discontent’ as per Edmund Leach. Rushdie refers liberally to his alcoholic father and the impact of his shenanigans on love and liberty, in a private universe. This appears in multiple sections, usually unprovoked, thus suggesting a larger emotional carnage. Perhaps the counter narrative, his sensitivity for sons Milan and Zafar, is both camouflage and redemption. Not just his biological family, but even Eliza’s clan seems to latch on to him as a karmic adhesive.
From here on, the book is on the verge of freefall, no fault of sabotage quite certainly. The author’s detailed recovery from the calamity is genuinely valuable to his family members, but its literary significance is rather questionable. What is rather quirky is the constant connectivity to the knife and the brandisher, in multiple hues of pantone. He talks about the rehab of mind and body in happy collusion, referring to the first instance after leaving his parent’s home for London and the second occurrence post the fatwa. The latter is articulated with much regret, not for the act, but for the adverse reaction of folks like Jimmy Carter, Germaine Greer, Hugh Trevor-Roper and Richard Littlejohn. As well as the hurtful hostility closer home—from Iran, India, Pakistan and the south Asians in the UK.
The narrative never quite makes a due recovery, unlike the author, while there are several fascinating thought-provoking cameos. The fictional encounter with Mr A, a fertile canvas for Rushdie to unleash his most potent worldviews, for one. A frenetic attempt to discover why he felt Rushdie was ‘disingenuous’ and to unlock the terror codes sans history sheets. On religion, he flaunts his support for a mosque on the 9/11 site and empathy with the Kashmiri Muslim—black and white prompts for neutrality and objectivity. India comes up unpredictably in multiple episodes—quite clearly the current disposition does not suit his perturbed appetite. The reference to Americans killing Americans seeks to balance prevailing perspectives, while not acquitting the usual suspects.
He talks of death most honestly and how ideas can never be killed. The suppression of Poet Ovid versus the poetry of Ovid, Mandelstam and Lorca’s work outliving the torment of Stalin and Franco. Nagib Mahfouz’s (Children of Gebelawi) assassination attempt is an enchanting parallel. ‘Pure gravy’ (Raymond Carver), a delightful way to describe the second chance, and ‘Love of your fate’ (Nietzsche) clearly destined to be a larger context. Wherein he gives a positive spin to the debacles of destiny, as if a self-betterment masterclass. He aspires wishfully for the Samuel Beckett moment, when in 1938 the Nobel laureate was stabbed on a Parisian street and nearly died. Yet he could confront the criminal prudent in court, an epiphany that would certainly be denied to Rushdie.
The book ends just as it began, in the easy yet uneasy calm of Chautauqua. Eliza is with him as he does an encore of August 12, an act of liberation from the captivity of the trauma. Not just here, but elsewhere, the wife’s persona is dutifully captured, a gift from destiny to partner his soul. Perhaps overtly perfect, maybe that is the truth. For a maestro of fiction, edgy fact must be shaded by permissible romance, and there are many such instances. As he prepares for the launch of Victory City, a sense of peace finally prevails. The right eye is lost forever but the line of sight is firmly clear, quite like the reference to cricketer Pataudi.
Knife is a fine exposition of thought play and word drama, relishing the borderless access to the universe of creativity. But it is not a classic Test match knock, instead a T20 rain shower. Enjoyable, it certainly is. Inspiring, it can be. As long as nobody gets judgmental.
Book: Knife: Meditations After an Attempted Murder
Author: Salman Rushdie
Publisher: Penguin Random House
Pp 320, Rs 699
The author is an autonomous brand consultant and writer.
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