Rushdie

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Discuss , esp. the new media persona .

― anthony, Monday, 20 August 2001 00:00 (twenty-four years ago)

He digs U2 = he is a monkey.

― Nick, Monday, 20 August 2001 00:00 (twenty-four years ago)

Midnight's Children = grate, The Ground Beneath Her Feet = dud of monstrous proportions.

― Richard Tunnicliffe, Monday, 20 August 2001 00:00 (twenty-four years ago)

He wrote a song for U2, he's a pretentious arrogant drawling untalented prick, oh no thats Bono. I go along with Nick. Monkey.

― Ronan, Monday, 20 August 2001 00:00 (twenty-four years ago)

i like the monkey - ground beneath was lushious, satanic verses was hilarious, as was midnight's children - wild riffs that under inspection are carefully constructed, plus he was onstage with mephisto - bah, you guys don't like couepland either.

― Geoff, Monday, 20 August 2001 00:00 (twenty-four years ago)

Spent years assuming that he was terrible: not sure why - maybe because I'm generally suspicious of long sentences and the fantastical. Read Satanic Verses because there weren't a lot of novels to borrow in my first year university flat, and then decided he was pretty good. Midnight's Children is his best by a distance.

― Mark Morris, Monday, 20 August 2001 00:00 (twenty-four years ago)

Still only read SV, and you can guess why I bought and read it in the first place. Khomeini, supreme marketer of our times! I did enjoy it, but I haven't really given much thought to exploring further.

― Ned Raggett, Monday, 20 August 2001 00:00 (twenty-four years ago)

rushdie is great. (ask zadie smith!) he likes u2, he's even BETTER.

― fred solinger, Monday, 20 August 2001 00:00 (twenty-four years ago)

He digs U2 = he is a monkey.
So do you think Bubbles likes U2?

― nathalie, Monday, 20 August 2001 00:00 (twenty-four years ago)

You are subscribing to the pinefox school of logic. Not all monkeys dig U2, but all U2 diggers are monkeys.

― Nick, Monday, 20 August 2001 00:00 (twenty-four years ago)

Rushdie is suffering from Dancing Uncle syndrome. Went to his launch for The Ground Beneath Her Feet. Not a rock star in sight and all the Special Branch looking after him were doing the Flaming Accountant to really bad blues rock. Not worth the RSVP for security clearance shenanigans I had to put up with, and shame, too, because I did so much work for that man at PEN before I came here.

― suzy, Monday, 20 August 2001 00:00 (twenty-four years ago)

then what are non-u2 diggers? besides KNAVES and FOOLS.

― fred solinger, Monday, 20 August 2001 00:00 (twenty-four years ago)

Well Nick, I'm a U2 loving monkey, logic is a strange entity to me. It comes to me in the shape of a pink fluffy cloud.

― nathalie, Monday, 20 August 2001 00:00 (twenty-four years ago)

The Ground was bizzare, in a sort of "he doeesn't get it. he lives in a parallel universe." sort of way. Quite poss. the most comprehensively argued utter misreading of popular music that I've ever encountered. That said, when he sticks to other topics, he's quite enjoyable. The Moor's Last Sigh, Satanic Verses, and the East/West short story collection are all quite good. Rushdie, to me, feels like another one of those authors who read to many reviews of their work and thus mutated into writing the simplistic flashy stuff that some critics had praised them for writing all along. Cf. Delillo.

― Sterling Clover, Monday, 20 August 2001 00:00 (twenty-four years ago)

I remember a story told by I think Paul Theroux that when Rushdie was an up n' comer he desperately wanted to be famous. Well, he got it, in a highly ironic way- famous more for having to live in hiding w/ a fatwah on his head than for the merit of his books (at least among the larger public). I know there's a name for this kind of ironic fulfillment but I can't think of it right now.

― tha chzza, Monday, 20 August 2001 00:00 (twenty-four years ago)

What is his New Media persona? I think he missed out on IPO riches already. The most recent thing I have read of his was "Summer of Solanka" in a recent New Yorker, and it was awful stuff-- dirty old man writing a first-person story narrated by a young woman, slightly less off-target than, say, Alan Warner, but only because of its desperately conventional tone.

Regarding his new public face: I thought I saw Rushdie waiting for a D train in Brooklyn a couple months ago, and yelled "Salman!" down the platform at a grubby, bearded geezer, who looked at me. Despite the fatwa, I feel comfortable revealing this detail because the D train no longer exists.

― Benjamin, Tuesday, 21 August 2001 00:00 (twenty-four years ago)

Oh yes, I forgot his lovely childeren's work: Haroun and the Sea of Stories where he reduces his theme to infantile wonder, which is all he tends to have going for him anyway, and it works out quite nicely and I had it as a book on tape for some reason when I was 13-odd and it felt young for me, but in a sort of "I can view it as an adult or child and it means different things" sort of way except the adults are rilly kidding themselves with Salmon.

Damn. I started this post intending to praise him. I hate it when that happens.

― Sterling Clover, Tuesday, 21 August 2001 00:00 (twenty-four years ago)

I don't know much 'bout his work, but I heard that he's dating a model.

― Phil-Two, Tuesday, 21 August 2001 00:00 (twenty-four years ago)

I loved ground beneath her feet . I liked satanic verses .

― anthony, Tuesday, 21 August 2001 00:00 (twenty-four years ago)

If anyone is still interested in the Fatwa, he still lives in Crouch End. He probably nicks bags in the Manhatten Coffee Company shop.

― Pete, Tuesday, 21 August 2001 00:00 (twenty-four years ago)

Only if he has turned into a crack whore with dreads or braids. Which I doubt.

― Emma, Tuesday, 21 August 2001 00:00 (twenty-four years ago)

Pinefox School of Logic? What the hell is that supposed to mean?

My feeling is that Rushdie is talented, but has gone downhill and become irritatingly self-indulgent. The problem with this feeling is that I'm not sure this is really different from where he started out. So maybe 'gone downhill' is a misnomer.

― the pinefox, Tuesday, 21 August 2001 00:00 (twenty-four years ago)

I was referring to you making a similar error on the Drew Barrymore thread.

― Nick, Tuesday, 21 August 2001 00:00 (twenty-four years ago)

That was a deliberate error, silly.

― the pinefox, Tuesday, 21 August 2001 00:00 (twenty-four years ago)

Q: "Did you hear Salman Rushdie is writing a new book?" A: "It's called 'Buddha the Fat Fuck'."

― Joe, Tuesday, 21 August 2001 00:00 (twenty-four years ago)

three years pass...

Does Rushdie rearrange the Quran in Satanic Verses like he said he would in Midnight's Children?

― Leeeter van den Hoogenband (Leee), Monday, 23 August 2004 05:35 (twenty-one years ago)

thirteen years pass...

salman rushdie (quoting bill maher (what?) on lefty politics): "we have to learn to distinguish an imperfect friend from a deadly enemy"

― reggie (qualmsley), Sunday, 17 September 2017 17:29 (eight years ago)

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