Knife by Salman Rushdie: My Need To Read It

It is difficult to write about 'Knife', the latest book by Salman Rushdie, in which he recounts his tryst with death when a man stabbed him on a public platform and its aftermaths. Though he recovered from the wounds inflicted on him, he lost sight in one of his eyes. We cannot write about this book like any other memoir or autobiography by refusing to attach ourselves to it or by being impartial and objective. I had a similar feeling after reading 'When Breath Becomes Air' by Paul Kalanithi. These books are not objective retellings of past events or trains of thought. These are genuine spurts of life force that someone desperately throws out to make a point for themselves. 

To write about this book, I have to re-examine my entire history with Rushdie, from how I first heard about him and how I evolved with him to what I think about him and his works now. It is because 'Knife' is as subjective as it can get. As Rushdie himself confesses, it is written as therapy for himself, and it's evident that his primary target is not the outside world. So, the reader's disposition towards the author is naturally bound to impact the reading of the book. 

I was seven years old when I read the newspaper headline about 'The Satanic Verses' for the first time. I still remember the chill that my mind felt and my parents explaining that someone wrote this book that was banned in our country, and people are out to kill the writer. It felt like it came right out of the pages of a ghost story. I still remember cartoons of Rushdie portrayed as a demon. The reverberation of his name was felt even years later, when I was just in my teens and started reading Malayalam literary journals. The critics were careful enough to portray him as a notoriety-hungry party animal and his novels as intellectual trash. Years later, I came to possess a copy of 'Testaments Betrayed' by Milan Kundera, in which he wrote a brilliant defensive essay on Rushdie and his right to write novels. It changed my attitude towards Rushdie and novels in general. 

I picked up 'Midnight's Children' and began treading through his brilliant oeuvre. Rushdie is a mischievous writer, according to me, who hides several Easter eggs in his novels. Reading his novels becomes a game between the reader and writer, in which he incessantly throws difficult puzzles at us on every magical journey he evokes. My favourite part of reading him is the continuous back-and-forth conversations that one needs to have in order to engage with the book. His last novel, 'Victory City', was such a deceptively simple read that I had to stop in the middle and restart again to fully comprehend several hidden subtexts.

 When I claim 'Knife' is his weakest work that I read, it doesn't mean that I'm dissuading someone from picking it up. There are reasons for it, and as a devout reader of his books, I can understand them. While many parts of the book that strike you with perfect clarity, especially his initial description of his stabbing, juxtaposing that event with his first meeting with Eliza, his present wife, and several personal insights about his thinking and writing styles, are nothing short of magical wordsmithery, many other parts may seem trivial for a general reader. The relationship with the writer makes you read through his bladder issues and the schedule of his bowel movements because we personally care for him. 

We excuse him for the totally unimaginative manner in which he wrote an imaginary conversation with his assailant, which alone had the potential to elevate this book to another of his masterpieces. We recognise that he's not writing about Salim Sinai or Saladin Chamcha, but his would-be murderer, a man in flesh and bones, a man who made his signature in the world by a shameful act. We appreciate that Rushdie had the courage to write it down, even though his real aspiration was to meet him in person. We feel happy for him when he finally feels whole again and, with the typical Rushdie mischief, wears a new Ralph Lauren suit and again visits the spot where he was about to get killed one year ago.