… by the same American company willing to publish O.J Simpson’s ridiculous “If I did It” manuscript. Either Beaufort Books has balls, or they just like being in the middle of a shit storm. At any rate, Paul Sims of New Humanist provided a link to the LA Times article which applauds the publishing of Jewel of Medina, but gives it a fairly poor review as a mediocre romance story written with a lot of “purple prose”.
A’isha’s tragedy is that she has the mind of a top-notch general stuffed into the body of an emotionally immature child. When Medina is attacked, it is her idea to dig a trench around the city, and she foils an attempt on her husband’s life like a pint-sized mastermind. Jones makes Muhammad into a character who wants women to have equality but who can’t quite get over his culture’s attitude toward them. Adding to his confusion, he’s often outmaneuvered by this skinny, red-haired teenager who runs a campaign like Patton.
I suspect Jones wanted to write a feminist text, sort of Islam 101 for the post-”Buffy the Vampire Slayer” generation. I can’t say whether, from a religious point of view, “The Jewel of Medina” is worth the anguish it’s caused, but as literature, it’s a misstep-ridden, pleasant-enough mediocrity.
It doesn’t sound like Jones’ writing is anywhere near the level Rushdie’s is so it’ll be interesting over the next few weeks to see how the book is received by general audiences. Controversy is always a ticket to good sales, whether the thing being bought is worth the price or not.
Like a ticket to Exit to Eden. I think that movie remains the only title ever to be banned by the province of Saskatchewan. The hype over that movie and why it might have been worth a ban was ridiculously insane. They backed off after a week or so (says IMDB and Wiki) and everyone with $8.00 to waste went to see it.
That was the worst movie I’ve ever paid to see, not including Baby Geniuses (we never even finished watching that one. We drove out of the drive-in 20 minutes into it, it was that hideous). The scene which caused the ban was not, as fellow Canadian Aykroyd joked, related to the sex. It had to do with a scene early in, where a teenage boy gets put over the lap of his babysitter or nanny for a spanking and the boy smiles because he enjoys it.
