The history of literature is strewn with vain and irascible men who could have used a great comeuppance. Remarkably, no one stabbed D. H. Lawrence, Dylan Thomas, Malcolm Lowry, Norman Mailer (who himself punctured his second wife), or Gore Vidal. In our cold and crooked universe, the dagger came out instead for mild, humane, ironic Salman Rushdie.
It is a rare type who can turn to even modest advantage the trauma of being hacked nearly to death by an Islamist madman. Rushdie has done so with grace and humor in his nonetheless flawed new book, Knife: Meditations After an Attempted Murder.
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