Rushdie has a new book out, a memoir of his life during the world's reaction, particularly the Ayatollah's, to The Satanic Verses.  His timing isn't bad, as the US, and the West, discover anew the unpopularity of its influences in the world of the Middle East.

Kundera, writing in Testaments Betrayed, 1993:  "That is why, in this sad story, the saddest thing is not Khomeini's verdict (which proceeds from a logic that is atrocious but consistent);  rather, it is Europe's incapacity to defend and explain (explain patiently to itself and to others) that most European of arts, the art of the novel;  in other words, to explain and defend its own culture."

Is it a difference of taste in the end, a difference of habit, of 'genes'?  Is the novel a frivolity, something 'satanic' in its calling into question in the scope of its view and sensitivity?  Are complexity and the cultural criticism inherent in a novel not a habit some societies can undertake?

Is it that the West simply caught flat footed in trying to, as the work of the novel asks of us, to understand the complexities on the ground?  Has the West lost its own art, its own sensitivity, and become a victim of its crave for fashion and its own certainties?

Would we want to, could we even imagine to, live in a society that did not allow the novel, that did not allow the play of poetry, poetry in play, in a world so determined by religious law that we were not allowed the luxury of thinking of ourselves, of imagining ourselves, as individuals.  Such imagination does, after all, allow entire industries to flourish, though someone somewhere might regard such as completely 'unholy,' comedy, fine dining, the internet of information's freedom to name a few.

Does it not make for interesting literature when such worlds of different tastes collide?  Perhaps that is a subtle background point in a Tolstoy story, in particular "Prisoner of the Mountains," or in Lermontov, poetry set against repression and imprisonment.

Who knows, maybe some of the finest works were conceived by 'complete degenerates,' people like Shakespeare, far moreso than prudish finger-waggers and 'holy types of impeccable self control.'  Yes, give me the world of Chekhov flawed 'sinful' people in order to find the song of redemption so necessary to life.

Kundera bears rereading, 'The Day Panurge No Longer Makes People Laugh."