Rushdie Haunted by his unholy Ghosts — Page 146
146 Mohamed Arshad Ahmedi Rushdie keeps stressing that he is fighting for the right of free- dom of speech of all writers but his struggle has been purely for selfish reasons. He certainly falls short of standards applied to heroic behaviour. So says his former wife, Marianne Wiggins, who “proved as much when she attacked him for failing to lend the weight of his case to the cause of less well known threatened writers and anti- racism, saying, ‘All of us wish that the man had been as great as the event. That’s the secret everyone is trying to keep hidden. He is not. ’” ( Anne McElvoy, The Times, 26 August 1995 ). She is certainly right in saying that the secret is well-hidden because the praise and the glory seem to be coming from all direc- tions. In the same way that his previous works have been overly praised, so as a sense of obligation the unified band of literary crit- ics overstress the quality of this novel. For example, in the review at the beginning of this novel there are numerous quotations glorifying the talent of Rushdie : ‘a work of literary genius’, (Stephen King); ‘Rushdie’s most eloquent and compelling gesture as writer, father and citizen’, (Edward Said, Independent on Sunday); ‘a great trib- ute to the resilience of Mr Rushdie’s beleaguered spirit’, (Anthony Burgess, Observer); ‘a children’s classic; keep your first edition care- fully to bequeath to your grandchildren’, (Victoria Glendinning, The Times). But I suppose the critic from India Today exposes the author’s real motive for writing this book when it is regarded as a ‘lyrical defence of his artist’s license, so rudely and terminally impounded by the Islamic gendarmes. ’ This point is re-iterated by A. N. Wilson of The Sunday Telegraph claiming that the book ‘shines like a bright light in a world increas- ingly fearful of freedom or ideas. ’ Rushdie continued the ‘lyrical defence of his artist’s license’ in his next novel called East, West which was published in 1994.