Mr Rushdie & I
Salman Rushdie came to Vassar College earlier this week to deliver a lecture to the Class of 2010–but he made it clear to the organizers that he would cancel if I was involved in his visit. I had earlier been asked to introduce him, and then, well, I was disinvited. Mr Rushdie and I have never met, although I have heard him speak several times. I presume his dislike of me has to do with essays like this that I have written about him in the past. I cannot say whether he has read my Passport Photos but it’d be fair to say that the book takes its cues from Rushdie. It was from him that we really learned to show some attitude. When I say “we” I’m talking of many contemporary Indian writers in English. But we have also sought our own paths, and in doing so we’ve also sometimes sought to renounce our past, the past in which Mr Rushdie looms so monumentally. I don’t know whether I could’ve usefully involved the freshmen at Vassar in a public discussion of any writer’s troubled relationship with his or her forbears; nor am I certain how much they (or, for that matter, our honored guest) would’ve valued a dissection of the ways in which criticism must survive in the world. But despite those uncertainties, I very much feel that an opportunity has been lost. In any case, here’s a part of what I had intended to say in my introduction:
In Bombay, the city of Salman Rushdie’s birth, more than six hundred films get made each year. In the theatres in the Indian small towns (like the one in which I grew up), the arrival of the film’s hero—a cigarette flung on the floor and rolling out of sight or the dark boots in the frame announcing his dramatic advance—is usually greeted by loud cheers and whistles. I’m speaking here of the vast majority of films, the ones that attract a substantial part of the 12 million daily viewers, viewers who recognize that melodrama is our real national birthright. Everyone in the audience knows that the villain, who till a moment ago might have been molesting the timid heroine or pushing around a retired old man, or, because there isn’t a whole lot of premium on subtlety, even slapping a handicapped beggar, his crutches lying beside him on the street—this monstrous villain is about to be very quickly brought to his knees. People who in their actual lives might have very little power or wealth go wild with excitement. Men in the audience have been known to tear off their shirts as they welcome the hero in that dark space of the theater, which we all know is also a space of fantasy and imagination.
About twenty-five years ago, with the publication of Midnight’s Children, Salman Rushdie met with the reception usually accorded to Hindi film heroes. His book won the Booker Prize and some years later the Booker of Bookers.
Now, you might know this, but in the first hour or so of the three-hour Hindi film, our hero often vanquishes a bad character who then becomes a staunch ally in bigger, more dramatic battles that are sure to follow. I guess I would be speaking for a lot of readers, particularly in those parts of the planet that used to be called the Third World, who saw Mr Rushdie as having fought and won against, and made an ally of, the English language, the alien language that had come to us with our colonial rulers. Mr Rushdie has had to fight many other battles since; he has made many friends and enemies; and we (I’m speaking as an Indian here) we, as his readers and as writers, have followed his actions, his songs, his mannerisms, and even when we have chosen not to follow him into the sunset, we’ve always had to define ourselves, and our rebellions, against this image we have had of him, looking down at us from giant billboards at each street-corner of our past.
One of Mr Rushdie’s most heroic struggles has been the one with a cleric who put a price on this writer’s head. Well—as our honored guest has himself remarked, of the two adversaries, only one has lived to tell the tale.
200-odd Hindi movies get made in Bombay every year — the 600 figure actually includes non-Hindi films as well.
Comment by nandini — September 23, 2006 @ 2:18 am
kam se kam, aapko rushdie dislike to karta hai! Your note above is missing attitude.
Comment by arun — September 23, 2006 @ 2:25 am
damn the vassar bureaucrats, folding like chairs. it’s a shame you couldn’t introduce him. what did he say? i’m sure everyone on campus was very excited.
Comment by Freddy — September 23, 2006 @ 5:48 am
A Non-Encounter With Salman Rushdie
Amitava Kumar is currently at Vassar College, and Salman Rushdie was recently scheduled to be a guest speaker. (My own university had him come speak about four years ago.) Amitava, as an accomplished critic and essayist, was suggested by the college to…
Trackback by Sepia Mutiny — September 23, 2006 @ 10:17 am
Parts of what he said–http://misc.vassar.edu/archives/2006/09/rushdie_emphasi.html
a movie career alongside colin firth?
Comment by Anita Varma — September 23, 2006 @ 10:23 am
Dear Mr Kumar,
My attention has been drawn to your website, where you claim that I threatened to cancel my visit to Vassar if you were involved with it. This is inaccurate. At no time did I threaten anything of the sort. I did indeed tell the organizer, Joanne Long, that I was unwilling to share a stage with you, and, after she had read what you have written about me in the past, she understood why I would have that view, and asked you to stand down. It might have been more dignified of you to leave this matter private, but as you have chosen not to do so, you ought at least to strive for accuracy in your reporting of it.
It is not for me to comment on your many disparaging remarks about my work, but allow me to make one other correction of fact. You write:
>
If you had done the most minimal amount of homework, you would have known that my “concern for Indian democracy,” far from being “entirely absent,” had led me to make a feature-length tv documentary film, The Riddle of Midnight, whose long climactic sequence, centered around a moving testimony by a Sikh widow of the massacres, resulted in the Indian government pressurising Channel 4 in Britain not to run the programme — pressure which, I’m happy to say, they resisted. It is odd, to put it mildly, to be accused of indifference to a cause which one has, in fact, passionately taken up.
Yours sincerely,
Salman Rushdie.
Comment by Salman Rushdie — September 23, 2006 @ 11:25 am
Perhaps some expect you to “play nice.” Not I. Salman’s recent work is glib. If your pointing it out hurts his brittle pride, so be it. If your intelligent critique of his writing (and it is intelligent) offends his sense of propriety, that’s as it is.
He cut you out of his Vassar appearance, not for libel, not for slander, but because you made a reasoned critique of his work. For him to show up here now and accuse you of taking this public, well, that’s a bit rich.
Comment by Teju — September 23, 2006 @ 12:22 pm
“Unwilling to share a stage with you” sums it all up, in its pettiness and misguided narcissism. Perhaps you saved yourself from being attacked with a baseball bat.
Comment by siddhartha — September 23, 2006 @ 1:04 pm
He couldn’t deal with you critiquing him because he can’t fathom the thought of anyone thinking of him as anything less than brilliant. And I must say that it is COMPLETELY laughable that the guy is so miffed that you’ve made this public when he himself made a big show of announcing at the dinner that he “has an enemy on this campus” and went out of his way to go off on a huge rant about you…in public. In front of your colleagues. Oh, hypocrisy…
Comment by Reeya — September 23, 2006 @ 1:30 pm
Dear Mr Rushdie,
Surely “I threatened to cancel my visit to Vassar if you were involved with it” and “I was unwilling to share a stage with you” are not that far apart. If your reasons for one are convincing, they hold for the other as well, no? Your second clarification is fair enough, but your first is trivial.
And as this might be the only chance I get to address you, let me take the liberty of going off-topic to ask: Did it hurt when you saw “Boom”?
Ouch, no?
Comment by Amit Varma — September 23, 2006 @ 1:58 pm
mr.rushdie,
why are you unwilling to share a ramp with mr.kumar?
Comment by kuffir — September 23, 2006 @ 2:29 pm
mr.kumar,
i don’t think mr.khomeini would’ve shared a stage with you if you had written about him either.
Comment by kuffir — September 23, 2006 @ 2:33 pm
Mr. Rushdie,
I am an admirer of your work. I agree with you that, technically speaking, a threat (such a threat to “cancel a visit to Vassar”) is different from a statement of preference (”I was unwilling to share a stage with you”). I think you are right to insist that it not be interpreted as a threat, since such a threat was never made, and since it is an important procedural difference. Any lawyer would agree with you.
I can almost picture you saying this, and I think it might come off as a little petty, although in this case, I don’t think this is about pettiness. I think this is as much about public perception as anything else. You have a certain image in the public, and people are going with that. The British accent of yours doesn’t help. In the “court” of public opinion, people are not likely to be as careful, or interested, in drawing careful distinctions. May I suggest with all due respect that this be taken offline?
Comment by Shankar - another desi dude in Austin — September 23, 2006 @ 3:47 pm
I fail to see what the fuss is about. Rushdie is well within his rights to refuse to share a stage with you, and for that to be viewed or in any way construed as shallowness on his part, is unfair. Your critique of him was less than flattering, and he responded by refusing to share a stage with you. Were you expecting him to turn the other cheek? What would you have considered an ‘appropriate’ response?
Comment by Raindrop — September 23, 2006 @ 3:53 pm
‘I was unwilling to share a stage with you’,
..of the two adversaries, only one has lived to tell the tale’
These words are not of humility, they are words of a very proud man. If Mr.Kumars account had left any doubt, Mr. Rushidi reply certainly erased them completely.
Mr. Rushdie can certainly be proud of his work and contribution to english literature, but a bit of humility wouldn’t have done him any harm. To belittle a writer for writing a critique on his work does not go well with the stature of Mr. Rushdie.
“Before destruction the heart of man is haughty, and before honor is humility.”—Proverbs 18:12.
Comment by Chandan — September 23, 2006 @ 4:56 pm
I don’t think any great outrage has been committed here. Rushdie is certainly within his rights to ask not to be introduced by someone who has criticized him. This happens all the time.
But I also don’t outrage is Amitava’s point here exactly. In The Satanic Verses, Zeeny Vakil has a great line when she says, “Battle lines are being drawn in India today, religious versus secular. Better you choose which side you are on.” (Inexact quote)
While this isn’t “battle lines” exactly, the incident does seem to me to be evidence of lines being drawn — and here it is Salman Rushdie who is drawing them.
Comment by Amardeep — September 23, 2006 @ 6:54 pm
The better strategy for Mr. Rushdie would have been just to keep silent and not respond to anything that was said on this blog. To respond to critics whose ideas you wish not to gain attention is shortsighted at best. Thank you Reeya, for clarifying some of what went on campus for those of us who are getting a sense of this amusing interaction only thirdhand.
Comment by arun — September 23, 2006 @ 7:38 pm
Amitava, your critique of Rushdie entitled ‘Is Salman Rushdie God?’ is at best a long winded, verbose attempt at quibbling. You half-heartedly acknowledge Rushdie’s extraordinary contribution to world literature, in a manner which is quite presumptous. It is quite a common thing these days to do ‘celebrity post-mortems’ in the manner you have.
No, we do not care much about your planned introduction to Mr.Rushdie at Vassar, and may I add, the bit about Indian films at the beginning tells us that the impressions you carry about India are probably from the late 80s to the mid 90s, post which we didn’t really have too many of those hero vanquishing villain type of movies to justify your stereotyping.
It is perfectly acceptable that Mr. Rushdie refused to share a stage with you. I don’t see why you are throwing a tantrum on your blog about it. I wonder if the old adage about failed writers becoming critics holds true in your case.
I do not believe that Rushdie’s shadow looms large over Indian writing. Writers like Seth have comfortably found other unique voices to tell their stories in, and have equally well managed to carve rich literary identities for themselves.
~mohit.kishore@gmail
Comment by mohit — September 24, 2006 @ 1:38 am
There is a not so subtle difference between threatening to cancel and unwilling to share a stage. It is the ability to discern that difference that keeps Rushdie where he is and the rest where they are.
Internet II allows us to communicate past the earlier walls, but when I see such needless controversies (or a storm in a tea cup - in old English), I wonder if all that Internet II has brought has been an unmixed blessing. To use an Indian English expression, The “blitz-i-zation’ of the literary is complete.
Comment by Pataniya Babu — September 24, 2006 @ 5:07 am
I have only read your essay about whether Salman Rushdie is God, Mr. Kumar.
But I must say that often young Indian writers who discuss, debate, extend on and try to ‘defy’ the Salman’s Shadow Myth (and here comes that annoying postcolonial bit) often serve to reinforce it.
Many people see Rushdie as belonging to ‘world’ literature rather than Indian literature. The fact that he is a yardstick for other writers reflects less on his celebrity status and more on the quality of his writing. I used to think the way you do and I haven’t always loved all of his work that I’ve read (Fury, for example)…but I do feel that your essay was more disrespectful than you think.
Likening a magic realist style of writing to an Amul butter ad takes Rushdie’s expressive, exuberant style of writing and makes it appear like a commercial ’safe’ product which doesn’t take any risks. I think there are enough commercial literary works out there - chick lit, fantasy - without implying that Rushdie belongs there.
I do understand your point about academic writing, but some of the best writers work with a wider perspective. Margaret Atwood might seem presumptious in rewriting fairy tales and Greek mythology. Toni Morrison’s later works are more abstract than her earlier novels.
I like quieter, more subtle writing too but I don’t see this as better than Rushdie’s style, just different. Reading your comments on him remind me of the state of ‘Rushdie-itis’ that the writer himself described in an anthology of Indian writing that he edited.
We need people to tell small stories, but we also need some to tell the big ones too.
Comment by tash — September 24, 2006 @ 6:43 am
Dear Mr.Rushdie,
You are NOT God. If you’re famous, please learn to accept these things with either or both of these:
1. Humour
2. Humility
I understand #2 is difficult for you–evidence, your comment–but #1 isn’t too hard a task.
Comment by Sandeep — September 24, 2006 @ 1:04 pm
Dear Tash,
It’s great that you read so widely and study post colonial theory. I recommend Kumar’s HUSBAND OF A FANATIC. Because you value “big stories,” it’s good to get a few more under your belt before making further claims about young Indian writers engaged in subtle dialogue with important writers like Rushdie.
Comment by Nita — September 24, 2006 @ 3:41 pm
I don’t see the problem here, either. Yes, Rushdie refused to share the stage with you. So what? Take it on the chin and move on. If you’re sore that you had been uninvited instead of Rushdie, well take a hint. As Rushdie says in his response, it would have been more dignified if this had been kept private.
Comment by Beeline — September 24, 2006 @ 5:13 pm
Beeline, I think you buzzed past the point.
Isn’t the whole reason for bringing a writer like Rushdie to a college campus to invigorate discussion and push ourselves to think about what powerful things we can do with our imaginations through discourse and endeavor?
Comment by Nita — September 24, 2006 @ 9:52 pm
Nita, I meant I’d only read that work of Kumar’s. It doesn’t mean that I haven’t read or don’t study postcolonial lit theory (which I do).
I seriously doubt that Mr Kumar would find Rushdie likening his work to an Amul butter ad or a Bollywood movie to be subtle criticism. Get over yourself.
And honestly, someone called Maya posted a few lines from a poem - ‘They will not come back….etc.’ and the self-conscious angst-ing was too painful to read.
I used to agree with views like the one Kumar expresses, and I do agree that Rushdie’s ‘celebrity’ may overshadow other lesser known Indian writers, but is that really Rushdie’s fault? And people who truly know and love Indian lit value other writers along with him, so really the only people who experience the whole ‘Rushdie is God’ syndrome are people who don’t know South Asian literature very well.
Comment by tash — September 25, 2006 @ 4:19 am
Dear Mr. Rushdie and Mr. Kumar,
I have read both your interventions with great interest. As a critic I can only be glad that both of you have equally expressed your views on the matter through this blog. I believe, this is the most significant point to be made.
Folowing the same argumentative esprit, you could have accepted that Mr. Kumar be present to your lecture so that a discussion might have been heard. In your unwillingness to share the stage with him, and I have to say, in his agreeing to accept this, you have both refused critical engagement. What a pity.
Comment by Letizia Alterno — September 25, 2006 @ 4:36 am
Letizia, I like your attempts to make peace and your point about the importance of spaces like this blog to engage in critical discourse, even after it seems as though the opportunity has flown past. I wonder if an artist like Rushdie, who sees conflict with such nuance and imaginative power, can truely be dismissive of a writer like Kumar. My guess is he’s only dismissive of the person. I also believe that he would not have come to Vassar College if admisitrative voices who arrange these kinds of visits told him that he would be asked to sit and speak with Amitava Kumar. There are questions of power here that are not being addressed.
Comment by Nita — September 25, 2006 @ 11:01 am
A student like “tosh” puts a premium on subtlety and he/she reads Kumar’s un-used introduction of Rushdie as evidence of non-subtlety (and ingraciousness or disengenuousness). What a young student like Tosh and others (who see themselves as somehow full of civilty) miss is that within the best introduction are critiques which point toward affirmation and shared experience. Rushdie would know this. I’ll bet that outside the moment Rushdie is more open to seeing the play and affirmation in what Kumar wrote. Clearly both Rushdie and Kumar are consumed with trying to find some truth through narrative in a world and time when hatrid and international division make the kind of writing a writer like Kumar does is close to heroic. From seeing the young writers Rushdie tends to pick for prizes, Rushdie often has insight about who the important voices are– and I would bet he knows Kumar is among them.
Comment by L.J. — September 25, 2006 @ 12:21 pm
I think super sized egos prevents celebrities on sharing any space with someone who may take away attention from them, they look down from their self created throne and think I am best. I used to be apart of the ‘fan’ group whose initiator was the author himself. He ‘retells’ indian tales and on the group - God forbid anyone puts in a word against his retelling/ views - that person is expelled.I remember some poor guy wrote a controversial review on Amazon on this author’s book and he was asked to leave the group. This Author wants freedom of speech but no one else should have this. This is their birthright only.
Comment by OM — September 25, 2006 @ 3:13 pm
If that postcolonial lit theory student that someone rightly called TOSH were not so lacking in writing skills, it would be fun to speculate that it was Rushdie in disguise. As it is, someone tell TOSH that he needs to get over himself.
Comment by laika — September 25, 2006 @ 7:12 pm
And excuse me, OM
But WTF are you trying to say?
Comment by laika — September 25, 2006 @ 9:06 pm
Er, excuse me..is this the Man Booker Fantasy League Room?
Comment by DJ Fadereu — September 26, 2006 @ 7:30 am
No, this is Calisthenics for Expectant Mothers. Booker Fantasy League is two doors down on your right, just past the water cooler.
Comment by Teju — September 26, 2006 @ 4:31 pm
Dear Salman Bhai,
I have great respect for you as an outstanding author of author. But your refusal to share a dias with Amitava Kumar
was not appreciated by any of your fans. You may agree or not but it is true that some authoors or artistes really become larger than life and no body cares to find fault with their writings or creative efforts . And if some dares to do so , he finds himself standing alone . Once While I was doing a review of your book FURY , the editor reject it because I had criticised your descriptions of Neela Mahindra as exeggeration for which a lesser mortal would have been killed by the critics.
Comment by ABDULLAH kHAN — September 30, 2006 @ 11:31 am
Salman Rushdie in today’s Guardian.
“I don’t subscribe to the very predominantly English admiration of Updike. If you take away Rabbit is Rich and Rabbit at Rest, and some of the short stories, there’s a lot of … slightly … garbage…The new one [Terrorist] is beyond awful. He should stay in his parochial neighbourhood and write about wife-swapping, because it’s what he can do.”
Pot, kettle, etc.
http://books.guardian.co.uk/reviews/generalfiction/0,,1884027,00.html
Comment by Teju — October 1, 2006 @ 12:47 pm
These comments have been invaluable to me as is this whole site. I thank you for your comment.
Comment by Annerose — June 3, 2007 @ 9:16 am
The act of giving award to one for his work has compulsion of agreement and appriciation with work in its meaning.Giving award to rushdi clears western thoughts against Islam that they intend to insult Islam and appriciate one’s who do so.No doubt it is bigger level of insult than of rushdi’s stanic thoughts.
Comment by irfan dilawer — June 19, 2007 @ 4:04 am
Dear Mr.Kumar,
I think Rushdie is misunderstood because nobody has as yet made the attempt to write down in simple terms the defining conflict in his conflict and what this has meant for the trajectory of his ouevre.
I believe Rushdie, from childhood, stood out in three respects- language/logic (left hand brain) activity making him a good scholar marked for success in our ‘enlightenment’ day-time culture. Secondly, Rushdie had a powerful anima, in other words a strong right hand brain, and ability to process information in this non-linear visual symbol dominated hemisphere. This meant that his transition from childhood heteronomy to autonomy happened at both the level of submission/internalisation of the law (Kantian autonomy)- thus qualifying him to be a spokesman of the ‘Enlightenment’- as well as the level of the anima, the unconscious. My guess is that Phantasms of early infancy were what the mapped the powerful beings and forces around him onto. Thus following the non-linear, ‘magical’, adventures of these phantasms enabled Rushdie to achieve autonomy- not in the complete sense of having a fully predictive model of his milieu inside his own head- but a feeling of familiarity, a sufficient sense of security to be able to follow the adventures of those phantasms in the knowledge that ultimately wisdom would be gained, everything explained. In other words by putting himself in the hand of his anima Rushdie would gain a mystic type of wisdom.
If it is the case that left brain logic operates in a binary manner- good/bad, boy/girl/ etc- whereas the spandrels of the anima permit a more complex, multi dimensional ranking of judgements then it follows that Rushdie’s strong anima would give him superior tolerance, by making him less judgemental and further boost his powers of observation. In other words,he Rushdie gets a comparative advantage as actor or novelist.
However there is a price to being anima ridden. The anima rebels strongly changes in its milieu which cause the left hand side to impose a new ‘Universal Law’ to regulate cognition and therefore behaviour. The anima’s night time rebellion forces the individual into a manic protestation of ego-unassailability, a manic protest against the abrupt and abject reversion to infantile heteronomy,which takes the shape of attitudinising, posturing, in other words turning into a prancing ninny. Now elite coteries have a soft spot for the prancing ninnies- they consider it a hallmark of authenticity,a ticket to the inner circle . Indeed the Cambridge Apostles cult of Nous rapidly degenerated (or, if you went to Cambridge) achieved apotheosis as the cult of the prancing ninny.
Now the psychology of migration is actually (for most people) about a strenghtening of left brain autonomy- i.e. the emergence from the thymotic to the legalistic and contractual. Thus, though elite sub-cultures may encourage their ethnic college chums to represent the migrant as prancing ninny and ludicrously celebrate this as a reclaiming of authenticity, no actual migrant (i.e. a guy who moved for a better life) does this. Rather you see migrants focusing on legal and institutional matters. Nostalgia is another thing. Now/ clearly,not of such stuff are prancing ninnies made.
If Rushdie was to achieve ego-integration he would have needed to compartmentalise his life- the enlightenment part of himself working with others in a rational Weberian organisation, the prancing ninny- who at any moment (by the clemency of the anima) might turn into a real mime- like that Memphis who could communicate the whole of the Pythagorean philosophy with a twitch of his butt cheeks- the prancing ninny part of Rushdie could have been employed in experimental theatre or giving talks for Amnesty and so on- while the anima ridden part of Rushdie could have had a career as a fantasy novelist. In other words Rushdie could have followed his phantasms wherever they led and thus furnished the world with a topography of a lost continent of our own uncounsciousness.
Rushdie, who I believe had a Jungian theory of himself coz that was the zeitgeist of the time, refused however to compartmentalise himself. That was the way the pre-independence provincials had played things, greatly to the benefit of their vernaculars, but Rushdie was different. He owed it to the spirit of the times to use all three parts of himself in his next book- his big gamble. He almost pulled it of. He actually had all three qualities needed. All the information was available to him. Yet he failed. Why? His anima rebelled. It wouldn’t work to order. So powerful were the villains he conjured up his power to make balanced judgements deserted him. He reverted to prancing ninny. & Thus made his name, sealed his fate. Ultimately he was the prancing ninny chased of the stage by the pantomime horrors he had himself cut out of garish coloured cardboard. Rushdie’s life became more fantastic than his books.
But was this inevitable? Not at all. Let us look at the concept for his Midnight’s children. It is based on Attar’s parliament of the birds. Now Attar shows how Spirituality and Social Reconstruction on the basis of equality of outcome are mirror images, tow sides to the same coin. Thus, the book Rushdie is really writing is exactly paralles to the Gandhian novels of Social Reconstruction of the ’30’s or the Marxist novels of the succeeding generation. Rushdie could be doing something similar except in a New Age idiom which would provide a template for individual metanoia going hand in hand with mutuality and Social Reconstruction. Rushdie’s left brain was on the side of the angels. Yet his anima subverted the project, brought the roof down on him and condemned a whole generation to prancing ninnydom. Why? He had tried to force her and she will not be forced.Rushdie, as prancing ninny has to depict authority figures as Pantomime villains. That strain of vulgarity in Rushdie we would like to mistake for the joi de vivre of Mumbaikar untraumatised, unashamed of his ‘post-colonial’status is actually nothing of the sort is the uttering of obscenities by a priggish child who is so terrified of the bogey man under his bed he is trying to prove to the grown ups that he is actually a tough little street-urchin.
Now Rushdie as prancing ninny becoming the Solzhenitsyn of Islam is exactly what the doctor ordered as far as his Cambridge is concerned. How does it help us Indians? Prancing ninnies from Cambridge fucked up the economy, the polity, the legal system- and were richly rewarded for their pains. Even where their own Frankensteins rose up to strike them down- think Bhutto, Bandarnaike, Indira- it was only so they could become immortal and fuck us up for all eternity. In this context, why people like you call Rushdie a great author is totally beyond me. In every book he attempts something intersting and then totally fucks it up for the apotheosis of the prancing ninny. If Rushdie were serving himself (his real self, the object of his literary metanoia) fine. Praise him. A guy who is doing well for himsef should be celebrated so that there is a template for others to follow. But if he’s fucking himself up- what’s the point? The only answer is in terms of the crudest sort of Girardian mimetic desire. But we’re better than that. Well we want to be better than that. At least we’ve got to pretend to want to be better than that. Or was there like a memo that I missed?
Comment by vivek iyer — December 3, 2007 @ 11:19 am