A graceful meditation on life and death that captures Rushdie at his most observant and lyrical.
The noted author recounts the vicious August 2022 assault that nearly ended his life.
“To be born again…first you have to die.” So speaks the protagonist at the opening of Rushdie’s infamous novel The Satanic Verses, which has brought him so much trouble over the years. The alleged perpetrator of the 2022 attack, whom the author calls “the A”—it stands for many things, including Assassin and Assailant—was unfamiliar with the contents of the book, so that “we can deduce that, whatever the attack was about, it wasn’t about The Satanic Verses.” Ironically, the knife assault, which cost Rushdie the use of an eye and a hand, came at a conference devoted to “the importance of keeping writers safe from harm.” Indeed, the audience saved him, restraining the attacker. For Rushdie, that moment speaks to the “worst and best of human nature,” the urge to harm and the urge to protect acted out at once. The author’s account is seldom harrowing. Instead, he writes with calm assurance about long weeks in the hospital—and, “because you have no alternative,” the poking and prodding that come with it. He affectingly evokes the accompanying emotions, including the psychic emptiness that comes in the presence of death, which did not shake him from his atheism: “My godlessness remains intact. That isn’t going to change in this second-chance life.” What sustained him in recovery, he writes, was a blend of willpower, good medical attention, and, especially, love found late in life after years of living alone. Addressing “the A” in absentia at several points, he comes close to taunting. Art survives the artist even as his alleged attacker, locked in prison, will soon be irrelevant to the world; in this instance, the artist survives, too: “After the angel of death, the angel of life.”
A graceful meditation on life and death that captures Rushdie at his most observant and lyrical.Pub Date: April 16, 2024
ISBN: 9781039009653
Page Count: 256
Publisher: Random House
Review Posted Online: April 16, 2024
Kirkus Reviews Issue: June 1, 2024
IN THE NEWS
SEEN & HEARD
Dogged original research and superb narrative skills come together in this gripping account of pitiless evil.
Greed, depravity, and serial murder in 1920s Oklahoma.
During that time, enrolled members of the Osage Indian nation were among the wealthiest people per capita in the world. The rich oil fields beneath their reservation brought millions of dollars into the tribe annually, distributed to tribal members holding "headrights" that could not be bought or sold but only inherited. This vast wealth attracted the attention of unscrupulous whites who found ways to divert it to themselves by marrying Osage women or by having Osage declared legally incompetent so the whites could fleece them through the administration of their estates. For some, however, these deceptive tactics were not enough, and a plague of violent death—by shooting, poison, orchestrated automobile accident, and bombing—began to decimate the Osage in what they came to call the "Reign of Terror." Corrupt and incompetent law enforcement and judicial systems ensured that the perpetrators were never found or punished until the young J. Edgar Hoover saw cracking these cases as a means of burnishing the reputation of the newly professionalized FBI. Bestselling New Yorker staff writer Grann (The Devil and Sherlock Holmes: Tales of Murder, Madness, and Obsession, 2010, etc.) follows Special Agent Tom White and his assistants as they track the killers of one extended Osage family through a closed local culture of greed, bigotry, and lies in pursuit of protection for the survivors and justice for the dead. But he doesn't stop there; relying almost entirely on primary and unpublished sources, the author goes on to expose a web of conspiracy and corruption that extended far wider than even the FBI ever suspected. This page-turner surges forward with the pacing of a true-crime thriller, elevated by Grann's crisp and evocative prose and enhanced by dozens of period photographs.
Dogged original research and superb narrative skills come together in this gripping account of pitiless evil.Pub Date: April 18, 2017
ISBN: 978-0-385-53424-6
Page Count: 352
Publisher: Doubleday
Review Posted Online: Feb. 1, 2017
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Feb. 15, 2017
BOOK TO SCREEN
BOOK TO SCREEN
BOOK TO SCREEN
A blissfully vicarious, heartfelt glimpse into the life of a Manhattan burlesque dancer.
A former New York City dancer reflects on her zesty heyday in the 1970s.
Discovered on a Manhattan street in 2020 and introduced on Stanton’s Humans of New York Instagram page, Johnson, then 76, shares her dynamic history as a “fiercely independent” Black burlesque dancer who used the stage name Tanqueray and became a celebrated fixture in midtown adult theaters. “I was the only black girl making white girl money,” she boasts, telling a vibrant story about sex and struggle in a bygone era. Frank and unapologetic, Johnson vividly captures aspects of her former life as a stage seductress shimmying to blues tracks during 18-minute sets or sewing lingerie for plus-sized dancers. Though her work was far from the Broadway shows she dreamed about, it eventually became all about the nightly hustle to simply survive. Her anecdotes are humorous, heartfelt, and supremely captivating, recounted with the passion of a true survivor and the acerbic wit of a weathered, street-wise New Yorker. She shares stories of growing up in an abusive household in Albany in the 1940s, a teenage pregnancy, and prison time for robbery as nonchalantly as she recalls selling rhinestone G-strings to prostitutes to make them sparkle in the headlights of passing cars. Complemented by an array of revealing personal photographs, the narrative alternates between heartfelt nostalgia about the seedier side of Manhattan’s go-go scene and funny quips about her unconventional stage performances. Encounters with a variety of hardworking dancers, drag queens, and pimps, plus an account of the complexities of a first love with a drug-addled hustler, fill out the memoir with personality and candor. With a narrative assist from Stanton, the result is a consistently titillating and often moving story of human struggle as well as an insider glimpse into the days when Times Square was considered the Big Apple’s gloriously unpolished underbelly. The book also includes Yee’s lush watercolor illustrations.
A blissfully vicarious, heartfelt glimpse into the life of a Manhattan burlesque dancer.Pub Date: July 12, 2022
ISBN: 978-1-250-27827-2
Page Count: 192
Publisher: St. Martin's
Review Posted Online: July 27, 2022
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