so good.
I finished Rushdie’s Satanic Verses earlier this week. It is, of course, a story about religion…and the immigrant experience… and love… and the devil, terrorism, india, sex, movies, fantasy, poetry, and food. The point being, the world of Rushdie’s novel–not unlike our own–laughs in the face of categorization. But perhaps more importantly, this is not our world: it is, like the dreams, or something like the negation of dreams, of Gibreel and Saladin, respectively, a fiction. Rushdie creates a novel without completely knowable, typified characters–a novel that seems to defy the imaginary borders we place around “the self” and “the other.” When everything is illusion, when “you throw everything up in the air,” the two become confused, transformed. Maybe, Rushdie suggests, human connection becomes easier, if not more transient, in this world of imaginary borders. And its eventual dissolution that much more painful, haunting.
