Rushdie Haunted by his unholy Ghosts — Page 72
72 Mohamed Arshad Ahmedi GR I M US Grimus was Rushdie’s first novel which he wrote back in 1975. Who would have known that his very first words published to kick-start his literary career would, in fact, reflect directly on him in a bizarre and eerie manner in a few years time. Note the opening words of the very first chapter of his first ever novel : ‘Mr Virgil Jones, a man devoid of friends and with a tongue rather too large for his mouth!’ Mr. Virgil Jones might just as well have been Salman Rushdie himself (in a few years to come). Grimus was an attempt by Rushdie to create a work of fiction ê la Arabian Nights, using the mysticism of the Sufis to try to make his novel a ‘stimulating and imaginative one, full of strangely echo- ing mysteries. ’ This mysticism has always fascinated Western readers, and so Rushdie was able to capture their attention at the very beginning and was thus able to make his mark, albeit in a very small way. Nevertheless, Grimus went relatively unnoticed - it was an extreme- ly disjointed novel, with no cohesion or congruity; it lacked any real literary style, but what emerged quite clearly was Rushdie’s obses- sion with sex and his crude and coarse style which he employed to win over the Western reader. An example of this : ‘I ran around town once with my sex hanging out. . . . I farted into women’s faces with my trousers down. ’ (p. 239). On deeper reflection, The Satanic Verses seems a glorified re- vised version of Grimus. The similarity is uncanny. The author has gone on a similar mystical voyage crossing the time barriers from present into past, and vice versa in both books. Whereas in Grimus it is defined as two distinct parts of the book, inter alia Times Present and Times Past, in The Satanic Verses however, he crosses the time barrier more frequently to add to the confusion.