by: Salman Rusdie Reviewed by: Tahira Gonsalves - (LEWIEG1@aol.com) As a member of the 'exclusive '"have-actually-read-Rushdie" club', I would like to say this: Magic realism grants the kind of beautiful creative licence, which, (while enjoyed in its context by the rest of the world), can only be deconstructed in this pedantic and rather irrelevant manner, by an academician, who one is forced to conclude, fails to understand the craft of writing, even if he has indulged in it himself. Salman Rushdie had already established himself as a writer of worth, when the fatwa for The Satanic Verses was issued. To imply (as Dr. Wallia did), that the world wide praise and acclaim that came to Rushdie after this controversy, was the result of a "global collective sigh of sympathy", is confusing two issues: one being that of freedom of speech and expression, and the other, of the writer's craft. Whether or not Rushdies's rhyming concoctions and supposedly exoticized Indian-English appeal to the reader, is purely a subjective matter of taste, not as Dr. Wallia points out, 'for the amusement of the Western reader'. On the contrary, Rushdie's language is rather esoteric; for a select audience, that must needs be familiar with a certain flavour of India. Another point that Dr Wallia makes, is that of criticizing the comments of one "well known American professor of creative writing", in the latter's having said that "the whole subcontinent has found it's voice" in Rushdie's work. This may indeed be too large and general a statement to make, however, Dr. Wallia's subsequent anachronistic analysis also misses the point. Why even begin a comparison between Rushdie and Vyasa's Mahabharata, or Rabindrnath Tagore? India is continuously evolving and producing prolific literature, which helps in the formulation and articulation of new voices, to compliment new times. Also, if it was historical accuracy that Rushdie was after, he might as well have proclaimed himself a historian (of sorts). The issue is not one of whether the Babri Masjid existed in the sixteenth or seventeenth century, but rather about the craft of the written FICTIONAL word. It is a certain indescribable essence of India that Rushdie seems to have articulated and very eloquently crafted into works of fiction. Some writers may choose reality and document non-fiction. However, as long as they claim only the genre of fiction, they have every right to mold and contort reality according to their creative perception of it. Dr. Wallia states this himself, at the beginning of his essay, but somewhere seems to lose his own 'secular-humanist persuasion'. |