Not so bad
In a wide-ranging interview with David Remnick [in the New Yorker], the novelist said: “I’ve been better. But, considering what happened, I’m not so bad.
“The big injuries are healed, essentially. I have feeling in my thumb and index finger and in the bottom half of the palm. I’m doing a lot of hand therapy, and I’m told that I’m doing very well.”
But he said it was difficult to type and to write due to a lack of feeling in some of his fingertips.
“I’m able to get up and walk around. When I say I’m fine, I mean, there are bits of my body that need constant check ups. It was a colossal attack.” He said he also has mental scars from the attack and that he is having to rethink his approach to security, having lived without it for more than two decades.
“There is such a thing as PTSD, you know,” he said. “I’ve found it very, very difficult to write. I sit down to write, and nothing happens. I write, but it’s a combination of blankness and junk, stuff that I write and that I delete the next day. I’m not out of that forest yet, really.”
If anything would give a person PTSD it’s being stabbed multiple times by a fanatic with a knife.
Remnick asked Sir Salman if he thinks he should have been more on guard after moving to New York in 2000, having previously lived underground for several years?
“Well, I’m asking myself that question, and I don’t know the answer to it,” he said. “I did have more than 20 years of life. So, is that a mistake? Also, I wrote a lot of books.”
I’m not the one who got stabbed, so I don’t know either, but from here I’d say hell no it wasn’t a mistake.
I’m glad he’s doing better, and I hope he does think about security again. It’s awful that someone should get stabbed for something they wrote…and it isn’t even hateful. I read the Satanic Verses; I am not a Muslim, but I find it hard to imagine it could be that upsetting. I know, I know, the verses we aren’t supposed to talk about. Yeah.
I have written lots of stuff that mocks Christianity; some Christian friends read it, and have not seen it necessary to attack me. Some of them won’t read my work anymore…but that’s the more logical approach if you don’t like something somebody wrote, even if you like their writing in general.
I tried the Satanic Verses, but it wasn’t for me. It turned me off reading anything else he wrote, except for shorter articles.
Is it me? Is it him? I don’t know, but attacks on Rushdie are attacks on all civilised, educated, free thinkers. As iknklast says, I just moved on and picked up another book.
I’ve never read any of his books; my brain wants to tell me that perhaps I’ve read something shorter than a whole book, but I read so much and I don’t remember everything.
But that’s not relevant. I don’t think it would matter if he were the worst novelist on the planet, or only wrote truly vile things on Twitter (like the incels who hate JKR so much); no-one deserves to be put through what he went through, not even the man who did it to him.
I salute Sir Salman’s bravery and tenacity, and hope that he does manage to write again, because that’s his comfort and life.