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Joseph Anton
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Joseph Anton - October '12 Group Read
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I am moving at a leisurely pace since I want to savour every page. Read the prologue and I'm hooked already!
The book is unputdownable. I badly need a holiday since my schoolwork is hindering my reading :(
“The lessons one learns at school are not always the ones the school thinks it's teaching.” :)
I am really surprised too.
60 pages completed and it's very, very interesting.
Sahasranaman, how far have you reached?
A wonderful excerpt from the book - When a book leaves its author's desk it changes. Even before anyone has read it, before eyes other than its creator's have looked upon a single phrase, it is irretrievably altered. It has become a book that can be read, that no longer belongs to its maker. It has acquired, in a sense, free will. It will make its journey through the world and there is no longer anything the author can do about it. Even he, as he looks at its sentences, reads them differently now that they can be read by others. They look like different sentences. The book has gone out into the world and the world has remade it.
Sorry for the late reply. I have finished the first four chapters and the book's proving to be worth my 6 month wait.
I finished it today. My review:Salman Rushdie in Joseph Anton says that that there’s no such thing as ‘ordinary life’. He tells us that he had always liked the idea of the surrealists that the miraculous nature of life on earth was dulled by habituation. The humdrum of daily life prevented people from experiencing the wonders of the world by forming a layer of dust obscuring their vision. It’s the artists who should wipe this layer and make the people aware of the amazement and beauty of the world. This was before he borrowed the first names of Joseph Conrad and Anton Chekhov and became Joseph Anton. Little he did know about the exterminating angel waiting impatiently, above the thick darkening clouds, to pluck him from his reality and hurl him to another life overwhelmed with fear, vehemence, and death threats.It was the quotidian he yearned for during those darker times and not the days of glory. The mundane life suddenly became something precious; something worth fighting for; something to die for.
My six month wait was over and it was with great intrigue and delight that I read the exemplary first chapter. With writing so masterful, Salman Rushdie describes his younger self, his family, his childhood home, and what it is like to live in a secular family. He talks about the story of satanic verses and Anis Rushdie, his father, without whom The Satanic Verses would not have been born. The first chapter definitely ups the ante and ends with a moving account of the death of his father and with this brilliant thought-
“When a book leaves its author's desk it changes. Even before anyone has read it, before eyes other than its creator's have looked upon a single phrase, it is irretrievably altered. It has become a book that can be read, that no longer belongs to its maker. It has acquired, in a sense, free will. It will make its journey through the world and there is no longer anything the author can do about it. Even he, as he looks at its sentences, reads them differently now that they can be read by others. They look like different sentences. The book has gone out into the world and the world has remade it.”
The momentum wavers a little with the advent of the fatwa. Every detail is dished out richly and even the monotonous days make for a gripping read under Salman’s pen and the memoir never gets tiring at any point. It’s indeed a page turner. There are instances too at which I was quite moved - his father’s death, his transient delusion that he almost lost his wife and child, the death of his first wife et al. He employs simple words and yet I was deeply touched.
The third person narrative works and fits with absolute perfection. Joseph Anton tells the tale of a man robbed of freedom; a man succumbed to the harsh reality enforced by a contingent of religious fanatics, a man who’s flawed, a man who’s made some grave mistakes, a man whose greatest joy lies in art and in telling stories, a man who fought bravely for the freedom of speech. And to tell that tale, ‘I’ wasn’t apt, ‘he’ was.
One would expect Salman, in this 630 page long memoir, to tell us about his writing process and since I am an ardent Rushdie devotee I was waiting impatiently to read those parts. But it seems we aren’t invited to see his creative self fully; all we get is a peek at it. That is my only complaint. But it’s his memoir; maybe he did not want us to get more than a peek.
Joseph Anton celebrates the joy of the thing that most of us take for granted – freedom. To go for a walk, he had to request permission from his security guards and to at least play outdoors with his young son, he found it difficult. He couldn't even get his newspaper in the morning. Even that freedom was curtailed.
Most of the reviewers called the book ‘a bit too long’. But I closed it insatiably. I wanted more.
What a debacle! :|
Ananthu wrote: "What a debacle! :|"Sorry Ananthu.. It happens that sometimes people wait for feedbacks before take up a book for reading..
hi guys ..i am fan of Salman Rushdie writing myself..How was his new book Joseph Anton ...
Do watch this recently released BBC documentary. Fatwa - Salman's story - http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bXJiab....
I hope for a lively discussion. Happy reading! :)