🌟WE TALK ABOUT SALMAN RUSHDIE 🌟

Salman Rushdie recounts his attack and recovery in ‘Knife’

In his new memoir, the celebrated novelist reflects on the 2022 stabbing that nearly took his life

Emerson once said, "Beauty is its own excuse for Being." On the other hand, an intriguing, uncommon, or unsettling event does not always qualify as a memoir.

The esteemed Salman Rushdie is a dynamic and forceful (albeit inconsistent) writer; however, his most recent autobiographical work, although prompted by immense hardship, is convoluted and often clichéd. Additionally, "Knife: Meditations After an Attempted Murder" is surprisingly dull despite discussing a dramatic attempt on Rushdie's life.

It should go without saying that the novelist had a terrifying experience. He arrived in the charming town of Chautauqua, New York, on August 12, 2022, where he was scheduled to give a speech on “the importance of keeping writers safe from harm.” He is far too knowledgeable about the topic: Rushdie has been in and out of hiding ever since Iran's Ayatollah Khomeini issued a fatwa in 1988, demanding his execution in response to the publication of his masterful novel "The Satanic Verses." He didn't make the decision to, in his words, "remake a life of freedom" in New York City until 2000. He was safe in the United States for twenty-two years.

However, a 24-year-old radical from New Jersey named Hadi Matar stormed onto the stage and repeatedly stabbed Rushdie before he could start his Chautauqua speech. He had sustained numerous physical and psychological wounds. In "Knife," he describes the deep knife wound that severed all of the tendons and most of the nerves in his left hand. "My neck sustained at least two more deep stabbing wounds." The damage to his eye was the worst of all. "There would be no chance of saving the vision because the blade penetrated all the way to the optic nerve."

The path to healing was a difficult one. Rushdie remembers, "Your body's privacy ceases to exist in the presence of serious injuries." One turns into an object that can be poked, prodded, and manipulated by others. He writes, "Saliva was oozing out of my cheek because one of the knife wounds in my face had damaged the channel by which saliva reached my mouth." A young physician arrived to handle this. Rushdie was assisted by additional medical professionals to use the loo, and some even removed fluid from his lung.

He was able to walk again fifteen days after his emergency surgery, which involved multiple organs being operated on simultaneously; over six weeks later, he was back at home in Manhattan. However, even so, he had to go through Even so, he needed physical therapy to regain the ability to move his hand, and one side of his lower lip was left permanently paralysed due to a severed nerve in his neck.

Rushdie states in the book's opening chapter that his attacker—whom he will not identify—had read very little of his writing. We can conclude from this that 'The Satanic Verses' was not the subject of the attack, whatever it may have been. I'll make an effort to comprehend the content of this book.

He delivers on this promise in a lengthy scene that explores the attacker's mental state and features a fictitious conversation between the novelist and the would-be assassin. However, this particular conversation is the only one (and a little startling) in a book that mostly consists of practiced reflections on the predicament of persecuted writers: "When religion becomes politicised, even weaponized, then it's everybody’s business, because of its capacity for harm" and "if you are afraid of the consequences of what you say, then you are not free."

What then is the "Knife" preponderance about? The book reads like an unembellished diary, dryly documenting most of the events. In the hospital, Rushdie passes out; he plans his trip back to New York and his transfer from the hospital to his flat; he relishes his first meaningful non-medical outing, a Valentine's Day date with his well-known poet wife Rachel Eliza Griffiths.

Although Rushdie frequently makes insightful allusions in "Knife," including references to John Berryman, Elias Canetti, and Henry James, his own writing occasionally borders on cliche. Following the attack, his friends' words of support were "comforting and strengthening"; he is now "making my peace with what had happened, making peace with my life" when he returns to the scene. "It felt like Ali Baba learning the magic words that opened a treasure cave — Open, Sesame — and there, its light dazzling the eye, was the treasure, and it was her," he said of the evening he met Griffiths. The most cloying of all his confessions is this one: "I have always felt that love is a force, that when it is at its strongest, it can move."mountains. The world could be altered by it.

When Rushdie ventures out on more experimental ventures, he falls short. His clumsy commentary on the concept and representation of the knife is not always successful, especially in the horrifying scene where the blade tells the story of its own transgressions: "Here I am, you bastard. You've been on my mind. Do you see me? I'm directly in front of you, severing your neck with my assassin's edge.

The most effective sections of "Knife" examine the psychological effects of the assault while also touching on more general issues of brutality. Rushdie states that "the targets of violence experience a crisis in their understanding of the real." An attack similar to the one he endured "smashes" the customary politeties. "Reality dissolves, and the incomprehensible takes its place." In fact, Rushdie felt that his attacker's motivations were so flimsy as to be completely unbelievable. Matar stated that he thought the victim of his crime was "disingenuous," which is why he committed the crime. Rushdie quips wryly that that would be a "unconvincing motive if one were to use it in crime fiction." Thus, the intriguing decision made by the author to picture a dialogue with a more fascinating foe.

But there aren't many ideas about violence, fact, or fiction. "Knife" mostly stays true to the facts: the stabbing, the pain, and the recovery. It's not that Rushdie doesn't have more important points to make; it's just that they are well known by now and have little bearing on the remainder of his story. Hectoring lectures about the foolishness of younger generations is one of his tendencies. He bemoans the fact that "something strange has happened to the idea of privacy in our surreal time."It seems to have evolved from being treasured to being viewed as a worthless trait that is actually undesirable by many individuals in the West, particularly young people. Something doesn't truly exist if it is not made public. Later on, he criticises the "bien-pensant left," pointing out that their focus on defending the rights of minorities has undermined "freedom of speech." He doesn't elaborate on the relationship, if any, between his blatantly reactionary attacker and the "bien-pensant left." These polemics are more like passivity than well-reasoned or relevant arguments.

Sadly, and maybe unfairly, the greatest suffering does not always translate into the most insightful prose. It is necessary to transform raw suffering into something greater than itself. The version of Rushdie's memories that is given here is as raw and confused as a casual talk. "Knife" is not deserving of his greatest work or the suffering that led to it, though it makes sense that he would want to memorialise his suffering.