I finished Elizabeth Strout’s Booker longlisted Oh William! this week and set aside my Friday evening to write a blog post about it, but the vicious attack on Salman Rushdie has sapped my energy. I’m too mentally exhausted to face the prospect of dissecting another underwhelming read.

Raise your hand if you’re tired of shit things happening, if you’re also digging out from under PTSD. The vast outpouring of grief and rage today has been the only saving grace, it’s proven people care very deeply about both Rushdie and intellectual freedom. This hits hard. I guess it’s good I was working while it unfolded. I saw the headline and read the breaking news, but I can’t afford to break my concentration, as a fraud investigator. All I wanted to do was keep refreshing my feed, which I should know by now is the opposite of what’s good for me mentally. By the time I flopped down on the sofa after work, mentally exhausted, Rushdie’s agent had just come out with the grim news: he’s on a ventilator, likely to lose an eye, and there’s damage to his liver.

Frankly, I’m afraid to hit refresh any more.

My first exposure to Salman Rushdie was probably when most people became aware of him, upon publication of The Satanic Verses. An undergrad working toward my B.A. in English literature, I wasn’t well-versed in a lot of contemporary writing. My specialty was Victorian literature, but when the news broke that a writer’s life was being threatened by religious extremists who found his work offensive, it set me off as much as you’d think it would any idealistic 22-year old. I bought the book immediately on general principle, but put it aside. I was busy taking exams, which morphed into graduation, then finding a job, and planning a wedding when I was far too young, but that’s a cautionary tale for another time.

I still haven’t read The Satanic Verses. I don’t own that copy of the book anymore, so I ordered it this evening, along with a reading copy of Midnight’s Children (I’ve put aside the edition Rushdie signed for me), and a collection of his essays called Languages of Truth: Essays 2003-2020. Over the winter, I’d planned to read something long and engrossing. My original though was Bleak House, or maybe the essays of Montaigne.

After today, I’ll be reading The Satanic Verses.

I don’t want this to be an in memorium read. In the reality I’m choosing to create, Salman Rushdie will recover in safety while I finally make time for a long, luxurious celebration of the book he’s refused to apologize for, in recognition of his defiance and refusal to be silent. I’m not 22 anymore; I’ve spent the intervening years between then and now earning my MLIS, writing about books, and becoming outspoken about my belief in freedom of expression. It’s not in my power to heal Salman Rushdie, but what I can do is read his work and talk about it to anyone who’ll listen.

If I were religious, I’d pray. My church is St. Liber: I read, and hope for better days.