Hail Satan

An anecdote: one of my students dropped by my office last semester to chat. The subject of books came up and he asked me what I was reading. I told him I was reading The Satanic Verses and rhapsodized for awhile about the book.

“Oh,” he said quietly. He looked down at his notebook for a long moment and finally said, “I didn’t think you were into that.” By “that,” I learned after a few questions, he meant “Satanism.”

This student, born sometime around 1988, had never heard of Rushdie’s novel and therefore leapt to the most logical conclusion: that I was reading a medieval spellbook of the dark arts. I assured him I was not, and he at least pretended to believe me. I tell this story occasionally to friends and colleagues in order to prove one of two points: my students missed out on a lot of cool stuff OR my students truly believe I’m the spawn of the devil.

At any rate, I’d like to take this moment to heartily endorse Salman Rushdie’s 1988 novel The Satanic Verses. Everyone knows about how the book infuriated Muslims around the world, about how Iran put a bounty on his head, about how Rushdie went into hiding. But what got lost in the political intrigue and religious outrage is the fact that The Satanic Verses is an outstanding novel.

According to the back cover, it is a “wonderfully erudite study of the evil and good entwined within the hearts of women and men, an epic journey of tears and laughter, served up by a writer at the height of his powers.”

I wasn’t aware that writers have “powers,” but I generally agree with this summary. Although it’s not an easy read, this book has a wonderful, twisting logic that provides consistent surprises and delights. Whether it’s the plot itself, the language or the characters, there’s something deeply rewarding in the process of reading this novel. I’m going to stop myself here because I don’t want to give anything away. With this kind of novel, a lot of the pleasure in reading comes from discovering (and being constantly amazed by) what Rushdie will do next.

From the back cover:

“[A] torrent of endlessly inventive prose, by turns comic and enraged, embracing life in all its contradictions. In this spectacular novel, verbal pyrotechnics barely outshine its psychological truths.”
—Dan Cryer, Newsday

“Salman Rushdie is a storyteller of prodigious powers, able to conjure up whole geographies, casualties, climates, creatures, customs, out of thin air.”
—A.G. Mojtabai, The New York Times Book Review

—Robert