Read Books

I'm not a Salman Rushdie fan but you don't see me running off and stabbing him. I am in Tokyo right now so it'd be kind of hard but, then again, the Japanese translator of The Satanic Verses, Hitoshi Igarashi, was killed for his work. Still, I'm not the kind of dim-witted blackguard who needs to kill someone I dislike.

I wouldn't say I dislike Rushdie, though, I don't know him. I've just never enjoyed anything of his that I've read. Maybe I'd appreciate The Satanic Verses more if I came from a Muslim background. I've never appreciated Bill Hicks, either. Whenever I'm exposed to the works of either man, I tend to think, “Yes, he's right, but so what?” The work lacks some essential value I can connect with. Maybe if I were forced to confront, on a daily basis, slobbering religious fundamentalists, I'd get a kick out of a book that really fucks with them. As it is, when I read the part of The Satanic Verses that really got the Ayatollah's panties in a twist, I didn't even notice it. I think I was probably thinking something like, “How many pages are left in this thing?”

But people who may never have noticed or thought about Salman Rushdie are noticing him and thinking about him now. I bet The Satanic Verses is seeing a big spike in sales. It's not even a complicated or new process of logic. Killing prominent figures makes them martyrs or, at the least, makes them more popular. I don't hear anyone complaining about Shinzo Abe lately. If the victim has books published, those books are likely to be get more readers. So if the fatwa was meant to discourage people from reading The Satanic Verses, it's sure been a pretty colossal failure. Which seems like it would be obvious. It goes to show how wrapped up in their own little worlds Rushdie's would-be assassins are. Naturally, most of them haven't read the book. Douglas Murray has written the best article I've seen on this so far. “The illiterate cannot be allowed to dictate the rules of literature.” Makes sense to me.

Twitter Sonnet #1611

A train across the speeding cloud was slow.
Impatient kids avoid electric gas.
The hearts of stars but late began to glow.
With heaven's cloud the suns began to mass.
A shred of fish ennobled all the seas.
But bowls were cut below the useful curve.
Surprising dreams await in city trees.
The carried earth insists the masses serve.
A field of suns was growing over men.
A busy train could yet afford a ghost.
The mighty storm was weak below the chin.
The shrieking tracks can now accept a host.
The flying book has crowned the marble arch.
The spinning band's been circ'ling nails since March.