I read about the attempt on the author’s life and his wounding in the attack. I’ve read only one of his books – Shalimar the Clown, and a couple of short stories, which I enjoyed. Satanic Verses I once tried to read, but it didn’t hold my interest. I find something irritatingly affected about the man that keeps me at a distance. Maybe more than other authors, his personality seems to infuse itself into the writing. But my judgment is only cursory – I can’t really claim to understand Rushdie from reading one novel and listening to a few interviews. And it’s just a personal bias. Still, I obviously know him better than his would-be assassin – I suppose religion was the motivating factor and Rushdie was just a symbolic target. What an idiot, what a presumption, by an ignorant 24-year old, to harm one of the great writers of our era.
I think the irony at the heart of all religions is that real religion is not something that one can “follow”. Every religious tradition has its geniuses, but the greatness of most of them stems from the fact that they themselves weren’t followers. They were people who put their lives on the line, searched for truth, tried to go to the heart of existence and made a direct connection with the divine. In their boldness, uniqueness, and willingness to escape convention, they had more in common with Rushdie than with those who revile him and want him dead.
A good guide to religion and ideology is that wherever there are attempts to trap us in prescribed practices and ritual, such as prayer or meditation at regular intervals, we need to reject them. Whenever they take away our power to think for ourselves, require us to differentiate ourselves from others, wear identifying clothing or symbols, we should reject them. True religion is about freedom of mind and vision: we can’t understand any of the secrets at the heart of existence as long as we subscribe to set rules of behaviour or thinking.
It’s a funny thing; the religious geniuses were themselves, by the standards of ordinary 21st century society, crazy fanatics – they had to be – it’s just that they weren’t followers.
George R. R. Martin
Having finished reading all five volumes of A Song of Ice and Fire now, I began to read a bit about the author. Apparently he composed all his books – at least up to 2011 and maybe till today – on a DOS computer and in WordStar. There’s something inspiring about that simple fact: One of the most successful and prolific writers of our time requires nothing more than what most people regard as antequated software. He evidently rejected all the bells and whistles of modern word processors in favor of an old and trusted tool. As to technique, he says that he writes in a sort of daydream, though obviously he needs to be extremely systematic in order to keep all the threads of his epic together. I wonder how he compiles and catalogues the enormous amount data that he is working with? Software also as simple as WordStar? OrgMode could naturally handle both the writing and the data collection, and would be a perfect tool. When I write my epic, that’s what I’ll use.