Hating Salman Rushdie

Geoffrey Wheatcroft observes that Salman Rushdie "man can unite Muslims, conservative nationalists, and the fashionable academic-intellectual left in hatred of him." Robert Farley counterobserves that Wheatcroft doesn't cite any examples of the fashionable academic-intellectual left hating Rushdie. I thought I might take a look at the Amazon page for Shalimar the Clown, which I believe is his most recent book. Rushdie fans turn out to also be heavy purchasers of Zadie Smith's On Beauty, Gabriel Garcia Marquez's Memories of My Melancholy Whores, and E.L. Doctorow's The March. What's more, about two percent of the people who visit Shalimar's Amazon page actually wind up purchasing Kiran Desai's The Inheritance of Loss. Arundhati Roy shows up on the "similar items" page.

Not to say anything against Roy or Smith or Marquez, but this is hardly salt-of-the-earth fare. Indeed, some might say that Rushdie seems to fall in with a circle of well-known literary fiction writers who are primarily admired by fashionable intellectuals.

Photo by Flickr user Whistling in the Dark used under a Creative Commons license

Comments

reporter : blogger :: picking up the phone : looking at an Amazon page

Posted by Petey | June 21, 2007 4:00 PM

Since when are intellectuals not the "salt of the earth"?

Posted by Mr. Noah | June 21, 2007 4:05 PM

Yeah, but Petey, he's right. Who are these phantom "intellectuals"? It's just another dig at the David Horowitz evil-socialist-relativist-fag-America hating professor stereotype.

There is also, of course, considerable distance between hating Rushdie for producing heresy and thinking that he is an overrated novelist, or that he's too concerned with celebrity, etc.

Personally, I think Midnight's Children may be the best book of the past 25 years. Other than that, he's mediocre.

Posted by Freddie | June 21, 2007 4:08 PM

His fourth wife is smokin'

Posted by write novels=score hot chicks | June 21, 2007 4:13 PM

Yes, Rushdie pretty clearly falls in the accurately rated category. Everyone agrees that Midnight's Children is a great book and the rest of his output ranges from mediocre to unreadable.

Posted by lemuel pitkin | June 21, 2007 4:18 PM

Why is he dressed as a man of the cloth? He looks like the Campus Ministry hip pastor.

Posted by John Emerson | June 21, 2007 4:20 PM

Midnight's Children was pretty great. I also read Satanic Verses, which was pretty eh, and The Ground Beneath Her Feet, which was awful. Some of his short stories are quite good too, though.

Posted by Christmas | June 21, 2007 4:25 PM

Ditto Midnight's Children; The Moor's Last Sigh and Haroun and the Sea of Stories are pretty good too.

Posted by emmanuelgoldstein | June 21, 2007 4:33 PM

What the others have said. I am not aware of any expression of hatred against Rushdie by academics, leftist or otherwise. Midnight's Children seems to get taught a lot, especially in the context of postmodern and postcolonial literature. The rest of his output appears to be largely ignored, mostly because it is not judged to be particularly good.

What is weird about the assertion is that, from all evidence, Rushdie is pretty much your standard liberal who fits right in with the "fashionable academic-intellectual left." The assertion appears to be just part of the bizarre slur that leftists always defend Muslims no matter what and must therefore hate Rushdie.

The guy that acadmeic leftists really don't care for is Naipul, but even his stuff still gets taught.

Posted by blah | June 21, 2007 4:47 PM

Matt -

The typos and all are fun, but you really oughta know better than to refer to Gabriel Garcia Marquez as "Marquez". If, as seems likely, the Yglesiases haven't done the Spanish naming system for a few generations, I think Kos had a thing somewhere on his site explaining how he was either Mr. Moulitsas Zuniga or Mr. Moulitsas, but not Mr. Zuniga.

Posted by Quarterican | June 21, 2007 4:59 PM

maybe by "fashionable academic-intellectual left" he meant lefists academics with an interest in fashion. That sneakers suit thing....

Posted by yoyo | June 21, 2007 5:01 PM

BTW, Rushdie's wife is HOT.

http://3quarksdaily.blogs.com/3quarksdaily/images/padma_lakshmi102.jpg

You gotta admire the guy at least for that.

Posted by blah | June 21, 2007 5:05 PM

Whoa. Salman Rushdie is a pimp. Who would have thought?

Posted by JP | June 21, 2007 5:29 PM

Yes, Rushdie gives Kucinich a run for his money in the "nebishy old guy scores a young wife way too hot for him" sweepstakes.

Posted by Chuchundra | June 21, 2007 6:36 PM

Whether lefty academics hate Rushdie or not, they certainly didn't leap to his defense when he was threatened with murder for writing a novel. I think that's more important than whether they like his books.

Posted by too many steves | June 21, 2007 7:06 PM

Rushdie is playing the same game as Sartre did.

Posted by yoyo | June 21, 2007 7:10 PM

You know, this whole game where american bloggers pretend they've never even heard of the angry, rancorous dispute between the "Enlightenment" liberal intellectuals and the Multiculturals/ Postmodernists/ Whatever the hell they're calling themselves these days types, well, its getting kind of old.

Yes, Rushdie's admirers are mostly liberals. His detractors in the west are mostly liberals as well. Shockingly, western conservatives aren't really up on the latest issues of the literary world.

Posted by Patrick | June 21, 2007 7:30 PM

Whether lefty academics hate Rushdie or not, they certainly didn't leap to his defense when he was threatened with murder for writing a novel.

Evidence?

Posted by blah | June 21, 2007 7:35 PM

Are lefty academics really in the business of leaping to anyone's defense? What would that even look like?

"Warm up the Smartcar and put on your war turtleneck, Terence! Some benighted victims of colonial oppression seem to be engaging in a discourse of violence against Salmon Rushdie. The battle is joined!"

Posted by southpaw | June 21, 2007 7:55 PM

academics hate rushdie but they love top chef.

Posted by berger | June 21, 2007 8:14 PM

We never read Rushdie in college. I guess he wasn't fashionable yet. Still, highbrow literature is the province of the left, and the other guys don't get to claim Rushdie just cause it allows them to hate on some Muslims.

Posted by Steve | June 21, 2007 8:19 PM

Peretz Hilton does not approve of the outdated gossip on MY...anyone who's anyone knows Lak-di (or is it Rush-chmi?) is sooo not an item anymore.

Posted by EpicureanQuaker | June 21, 2007 8:51 PM

This is the type of argument (the one MY is arguing against) that seems to pop up against the broad group "liberal academics" without any evidence or explanation just because it seems like it would be true. When they have to give evidence, they have to do a Google search that brings back random no-name academics at lower-level public universities (think the most obscure Cal State department when a relevant crazy quote can't be found made by a prof at Berkeley, Columbia, Harvard or Wellesley). This is how that Ward Churchill controversy started two years after he wrote his only famous work. Pomo, multicultural lefties often give Rushdie a pass on the most extreme things he says considering what he went through, which was bound to cause some rather extreme beliefs. He is also the type of guy who talks about oppression, such as India's oppression against Kashmiris.

Posted by Reality Man | June 21, 2007 10:11 PM

I suggest all those right-wingers waxing on about Rushdie should try reading some of his non-fiction, such as the essays collected in "Imaginary Homelands", particularly "A New Empire within Britain", "An Unimportant Fire", "Outside the Whale" "Charter 88" "On Palestinian Identity: A Conversation with Edward Said" (that alone will burst a few wing-nut blood vessels).

Also very good essay on Attenborough's sanctimonious "Ghandi".

Posted by MikeN | June 22, 2007 12:51 AM

"Academic left hates Rushdie" == "Academic left is unwilling to consider the fatwa against Rushdie as a sufficient casus belli against Iran."

Posted by Tom Scudder | June 22, 2007 3:59 AM