What am I reading: Part 2: Salman Rushdie's Essays
insert pun on essay & assay
If the subtitle did not give it away, this post is going to be very half-assed.
I read three collections of essays this year - and they are all quite different. But I will be talking about Salman’s new collection of essays. But first….
Salman Rushdie might be coming to India to write his next novel. YES!!
Salman if you are reading this : 3BHK flat available in Juhu Prime Location - Sea Facing - non-veg allowed. rent negotiable.
He might actually be reading this because he just joined Substack!! Strange that he could not get ‘first name’.substack.com . Guess that’s reserved for rising stars ;)
He may not be a rising star like me, but his subscription page is hilarious. It seems he has not figured out the perks for the highest subscription level.
There is some talk of him serialising his upcoming novel on substack and that has resulted in a deluge of pontifications on the nature of the novel and how it is ripe for disruption, and contrarily several pontifications on the resilience of the novel.
PFB some of them:
Languages of Truth : 2003 - 2020
Salman Rushdie
I bought this book a couple of months ago from a physical book store. It had been a long time since I went to an actual store to buy books…or to buy anything that was not edible actually. I visited the same Crossword bookstore I used to visit as a kid, where I would have to trail behind my dad while he perused the business and management section (aka the boring section). The branding had changed to Latitude. The new logo and the wallpapers looked great, but I was disappointed with the free bookmarks. It just does not pop as much.
I don’t need to say this but I will - Rushdie is awesome and my opinion on his writing carries no weight.
This is Rushdie’s third collection of essays; the first two collections covering the previous two decades. I have read both these books … partly. I have read this last book fully and I am not sure what I feel about it.
His account of his experience with COVID was fantastic, and so were the texts he wrote as President of PEN America.
But I have one complaint. It is badly put together. There is no context and no publication history. It is clear that each sub-collection of essays fits into a theme; but some additional text would have been helpful.
There is the expected name-dropping and a little bit of ‘look-at-me’ - all excusable frankly - he is Salman Rushdie. He is allowed to brag a little. The booker of bookers should be given a little leeway.
Some of the insights seem repetitive but maybe these insights are more insightful for the ‘writer’ and not the ‘reader’.
But all-in-all, the erudition is impressive, and has a solid 3-4 hours of reading and thinking packed in.
Buy the book. Just buy it. Because…did I mention - it is Salman goddamn Rushdie!
Image:
Andrew Lih (User:Fuzheado), CC BY-SA 3.0 <https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/3.0>, via Wikimedia Commons
Check out Shalimar the Clown ny Rushdie, if you haven't yet. Such an underrated book. I found it vv impressive.