Joseph Anton

by Salman Rushdie

Here's the thing: Salman Rushdie is my favorite living writer. And all of the things I love about his writing are present in this book: namely his astounding command of the English language and his sense of humor. His writing is simply beautiful and I have learned a number of new words by keeping a dictionary on hand while reading his books. I particularly loved a passage where he discussed a press conference for which he was advised to keep it simple. To dumb it down for the rest of us. Of course this led to a full paragraph of wondering how he was supposed to change who he was since, as a writer, he considered himself to be defined by his words. I loved that paragraph because I could see why he was being given that advice, but I also understood his dilemma, especially considering how distinctive his writing is.

I also loved learning about the fatwa. I was not even two years old when the fatwa was first announced and I knew nothing about it (or Salman Rushdie for that matter) until I got to college. Even then, as I grew more familiar with Rushdie's works, I still only had a vague sense of his having had a death threat against him after he published The Satanic Verses (which, of course, was most of my reason for wanting to read The Satanic Verses, which I loved, by the way).

Having finished Joseph Anton, I'm really glad that I read it. Not just for the historical reference but because Rushdie describes how and why he continued to fight for his book and for the right to freedom of speech. I really loved that discussion and I 100% think it's a discussion worth having and a fight worth fighting.

Which is why I found it all the more appalling to discover that much of the British public at the time was against him, having labeled him a "troublemaker". It sounded to me like a classic case of blaming the victim. While I understand why people do that, it still makes me sad when that happens.

As far as his personal life, Rushdie doesn't come off too well, at least not in the realm of marriage. But it comes off as sounding like a very honest and fair portrayal. While he never takes on all of them blame, nor does he ever claim to be blameless. He owns up to his faults without shrinking from them and that must have taken an incredible amount of bravery to be able to do that so openly and publicly.

Then there's always the fact that hindsight is 20/20. One relationship in particular he wonders how he could have ever been so blind, and haven't we all felt that after the end of a particularly bad relationship?

My only real problem with the book was his insistence on writing it in the third person without using proper nouns. While Rushdie was always referred to as "he" throughout the book, he was never referred to as "Salman" or "Rushdie" or "Joseph Anton". This made it quite confusing when he went from talking about one person, to talking about the writer, all the while using "he" to discuss both people. This was aggravated by the fact that Rushdie doesn't feel the need to use paragraph breaks when a different person starts speaking.  There were several times I had to re-read a section to determine who said what.

While I appreciate that writing this in the third person allowed him to maintain some distance on a deeply personal work, I wonder why he refused to use names when referring to "him". Given the book's title, I would have expected him to refer to himself as "Joseph Anton" or some derivative thereof  to refer to himself.