Rushdie Haunted by his unholy Ghosts — Page 171
Rushdie: Haunted By His Unholy Ghosts 171 who argued that in a democratic society the quality of freedom, like mercy, is not strained; a writer must be free to write whatever he chooses, from whatever his standpoint, regardless of whether it will cause offence. ” (Ginny Dougary, The incredible lightness of Salman, The Times 09/2005) Another very interesting point emerges in view of his objection to critics of his work, and it will be worth noting his comments. When asked about this early period of his writing he recalls that his anger was fuelled by the reaction to his first novel Grimus, people were saying ‘Find a different form of employment’. …”I remember that. And I guess, with hindsight, you shouldn’t ever try to get even because you always lose. ” Perhaps, he realises after all this time that he had not succeeded in making his case in front of so many of the writing fraternity. But as destiny would have it, this sort of fearlessness that he projected, managed to attract those powers that ultimately became responsible for selecting him as a scapegoat (and a most willing one at that). As Rushdie himself says: “Some of the fearlessness just deciding to take it on. After the failure of the first book and after one or two false starts or things that never made it to print, I remember thinking, well, you’d better either give up or do something much more conservative and mid- dle-of-the-road and non-risky. Something, you know, littler. Or take the biggest risk you can. So that if you’re going to go down, at least go down in flames. And, actually, I remember very clearly thinking, well, OK, then, I’ll do this because I can’t think of anything more artistically dangerous. And, yes, it took me for ever. ” (Ginny Dougary, The incredible lightness of Salman, The Times 09/2005). The desperate state that he found himself in after writing his first novel moved him to taking equally desperate measures to find fame at any cost even if it meant “going down in flames”. And this proved to be one of his motives in writing The Satanic Verses. The rest, as we all know, is history.