In so many words.  Or not.  Can I use a picture here?  It’s not from the AP, I swear.

Here’s your man of the hour, accepting via video while his children look genuinely terrified that someone who

1. didn’t hear, or
2. doesn’t care

about the fatwa being lifted is about to direct one of those little laser-pointer rifle targeting scope-things right at their innocent hearts.

Irrelevant, because should he choose, the man could conceivably conceive 97 children every night:

Four-times married, Rushdie has written a 10th novel that teems with raunchy scenes, much of it based on exhaustive research of Indian manuals. The book’s eponymous heroine is a woman variously known as Qara Köz and Lady Black Eyes. She is expert in seven types of unguiculation which is - as Rushdie puts it - “the use of the nails to enhance the act of love”. “I spent a lot of time doing the research, not just on Florentine history, Mughal history and not just into the Kama Sutra, but studying other texts about the erotic arts. It’s not all about gymnastic positions. There’s stuff in the novel based on research about brews and potions formulated to help one have 97 successive ejaculations.”…

…”Last year was a terrible year for me, and I really thought that I might not finish the book. There were difficult moments but I think that, like many writers, I have very strong habits of discipline. I mean, a carpenter doesn’t not make a table just because his marriage is falling apart. He gets on with his job. That’s what I did. It was a force of will.”

So - did he win Booker of the Booker, or whatever, because of his novel-writing willpower in the nearly overwhelming strife of watching his marriage slip away, and simultaneously researching Old Magic Potion #97?  Does this qualify Sting for next year’s Best of the Booker’s Best Bookers?  I’m going to leave some of the heavy lifting to you, readers: make jokes of the following:

1.  ”discipline”
2. “make a table”
3. “marriage is falling apart”
4. “gets on” (alt: “gets on with his job”)
5. “It was a force of will”
6. “unguiculation”

Oh, and the bit about the fatwa:

“I wasn’t in favour of the fatwa, you see,” he says, with mordant understatement. “In general, writers shouldn’t be killed for what they write, though I can think of exceptions.”

Rushdie, you card, you.  I can’t name your last three books off the top of my head, but wasn’t there a Bono one?  This “Booker Bestest Booker” nonsense should be rejected by Rushdie, not embraced via Skype.  It’s hype, it demeans past and future winners, it’s arbitrary, and they chose the wrong book.

Posted Fri, 11 Jul 2008 10:47:48 and filed under Literature. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.