Quote:
Originally Posted by caleb72
There's a truck load of cultural and religious references that I think you probably need to have at least a basic understanding of to really "get" where he's going. I actually don't, which I think is going to hamper my ability to comprehend and discuss his message.
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I actually don't either. But here is my subjective opinion of this book:
Apparently The Satanic Verses is built upon the work and thought of Lucretius (The Nature of Things), Ovid (Metamorphoses), James Joyce (everything), as well as upon Islamic texts, history, and culture, Indian history and culture, and God knows what else.
Inexplicably, while reading this book that I hated at the outset, the idea struck me that I really wanted to understand what Rushdie wanted to relate. It was a daunting thought for a high school drop-out who is generally the slowest person in the room to get the joke. But I almost grasped something in this book that felt important to me.
The grandeur of fiction (stories, parables, myths, fables) is that it is where the great ideas, which do not fit themselves to a literal synopsis, can be inferred. They grow in us as knowledge that is beyond the words by which they are imparted.
Rushdie isn't just telling us a story for our entertainment, which is disappointing if that is what we want from him. He is trying to transmit ideas, even if maybe they are mostly questions, in a series of parables with an erudite ancestry. He isn't easy, and whether he is worth the effort probably depends upon how much we, individually, need to make sense of the questions he poses.