The New York Times' Sunday Book Review casts a condescending eye on Sherry Jones' 'The Jewel of Medina,' the novel that Random House bought, then dropped in the face of possible Islamic retaliation, and that got its European publisher firebombed.
Reviewer Lorraine Adams' conclusion:
[Another critic's] characterization of "The Jewel of Medina" as soft porn doesn't hold
up, since the language describing A'isha and Muhammad's conjugal
relations is always euphemistic and most often juvenile. The novel is,
in fact, an example of that subspecies of genre fiction, "historical
romance." Yet even judged by that standard, Jones's prose is
lamentable. Here's A'isha as a girl, peeping at a couple in the throes
of passion: "I stared at his behind, as big as my goat's-bladder ball
and covered with hair." The Prophet isn't spared either: "Desire?
Muhammad was having so many of them at that moment, they clashed like
lightning bolts on his face."
An inexperienced, untalented
author has naïvely stepped into an intense and deeply sensitive
intellectual argument. She has conducted enough research to reimagine
the accepted versions of Muhammad’s marriage to A'isha, thus offending
the religious audience, but not nearly enough to enlighten the ordinary
Western reader. Should free-speech advocates champion "The Jewel of
Medina"? In the American context, the answer is unclear. The
Constitution protects pornography and neo-Nazi T-shirts, but great
writers don't generally applaud them. If Jones's work doesn't reach
those repugnant extremes, neither does it qualify as art. It is telling
that PEN, the international association of writers that works to
advance literature and defend free expression, has remained silent on
the subject of this novel. Their stance seems just about right.
Holy Ka'aba! Where to begin?
In fairness, the distaste Adams expresses
in the first paragraph might be more or less warranted. Jones, by the
looks of it, is hardly the literary world's greatest stylist. On the other
hand, you can bet your bottom dollar that if the goat's-bladder
metaphor had been employed by a Times-approved novelist like
Annie Proulx (much of whose prose deserves a special award for being
laughably contrived and overwrought), a Times reviewer would have either charitably ignored it, or praised it to the skies.
It's Adams' final graf, of course, that really gets my dander up.
1.
There's nothing "intellectual" about the argument concerning A'isha and
the so-called prophet who married her (when she was nine years old),
any more than there's anything intellectual about debating whether
Jonah really spent three days and nights in the belly of a whale and
lived to preach about it. "Intellectual" implies the determined application of painstaking
mental rigor. Squabbling about fairy-tale books, even fairy-tale books
for purported grown-ups, is the opposite of intellectual.
2.
Adams asks if free-speech advocates ought to champion Jones's book, and sullenly votes no. It's
obviously the wrong question (and I suspect she knows it). The
free-speech advocates I know haven't the slightest desire to be arbiters of taste —
quite the contrary. They're not out to convince anyone that a
particular book, play, or pamphlet must be read. They're out to
convince people that, in a free society, said book, play, or pamphlet must be available.
3. Porn is "repugnant," Adams says
(I have to assume that it isn't to the billion or so men and women who produce and
consume it, but fine). What I find repugnant is the country's
top newspaper gratuitously slamming consensual pornography in a
throwaway line, without writing one word — one word — against the Islam-inspired threats, and the actual violence, that have dogged Jones's novel from the start.
4.
Like PEN, Adams finds 'The Jewel of Medina' unworthy of even the most
cursory free-speech defense because "it doesn't qualify as art." Well,
fuck: 'The Diary of Anne Frank' arguably isn't art either, but PEN and
Adams would almost certainly speak out against attempts to suppress
that book, and rightly so. A double standard, maybe?
Setting aside the perennial eye-of-the-beholder obstacle, one problem with the art/non-art distinction is that it's the
favorite refuge of despots and censors everywhere — see
also degenerate art.
Another is that "high" art (itself a malleable term that covers an
ever-changing lineup of works) is rarely in need of free-speech
protection. Standing tall for the Nightwatch and the Mona Lisa, or for
'Hamlet' and 'The Great Gatsby,' is meaningless and disingenuous unless
you're also prepared, when necessary, to stick your neck out for 'The Book of Bunny Suicides' and, yes, for 'The Jewel of Medina.'
There can be little doubt that if Adams's own tender-hearted novel were to come under fire (ha!) from religious radicals, she'd invoke the free-speech defense in about a nano-second. Denying others the rights and protections you demand for yourself is the zenith of arrogance. Jones's book may be imperfect, even "lamentable"; but its treatment in a newspaper claiming to be committed to freedom of expression is miles beyond that. 'Ugly' and 'hypocritical' come to mind.
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