In the middle of November 1997 a slanging match between John le Carré and Salman Rushdie raged across the letters pages of the Guardian. This row followed an article printed in the newspaper where le Carré complained that he had been accused of anti-Semitism. Rushdie was not amused. He reminded readers that le Carré had failed to support him when he was sentenced to death by the Iranians and hence would not receive his sympathy. The argument that ensued became increasingly vituperative and it set the literary world abuzz. Below I copy an extract from Rushdie’s magnificent final volley.
If he wants to win an argument, John le Carré could begin by learning to read…. It’s true I did call him a pompous ass, which I thought pretty mild in the circumstances. “Ignorant” and “semi-literate” are dunces’ caps he has skillfully fitted on his own head. I wouldn’t dream of removing them.
Le Carré’s habit of giving himself good reviews (“my thoughtful and well-received speech”) was no doubt developed because, well, somebody has to write them. He accuses me of not having done the same for myself. “Rushdie,” says the dunce, “does not deny he insulted a’ great world religion.” I have no intention of repeating yet again my many explications of The Satanic Verses, a novel of which I remain extremely proud. A novel, Mr. le Carré, not a gibe.You know what a novel is, don’t you, John?
Salman Rushdie
Source:
“Letters to the editor,” Guardian, November 22, 1997, p22.
Yes, what a stark comparison to say novelist, Stephen King, who according to Rushdie, threaten book store chains that he would have his publishers, pull his own novels from their shelves if they did not allow Rushdie’s book to be sold in their bookstore.
Thanks Andrew. That is a matter of freedom of speech etc. I did not put up the blog post specifically for that reason, it was more due to the nature of the attack than the reason behind it.
Good on Stephen King. Thanks Michael – it was interesting to refresh my memories of all this in Nick Cohen’s book too.
Thank you Sarah. You are also correct that Nick Cohen mentions this dispute between John le Carré and Salman Rushdie in You Can’t Read This Book. As I believe you are aware, I would normally hat tip a source if someone else brought something to my attention. In this instance I did not despite the fact I had recently read Cohen’s book. This was not an omission on my part because I did not look up the debate as a result of what Cohen had written.
Completely independently, I had been looking through the archive of Harper’s Magazine searching for articles by Christopher Hitchens. My previous blog post is evidence that I carried out this exercise. It just so happens that Hitchens was a contributor to the Le Carré / Rushdie debate in the Guardian and this was picked up by an article in Harper’s in February 1998 where they extracted from some of the letters in the debate. In fact, my extract of the final Rushdie letter is virtually identical to the Harper’s extract as that was the source I was going to use for this blog post before I thought it incredibly lazy on my behalf: if I were going to quote from the debate, I should do so from the original. I therefore went to the Guardian archive and hence this blog post without a hat tip to Nick Cohen!
Oh – I didn’t even think about whether you should have hat tipped NC! But it’s definitely a good idea to go back to the originals – I find (also in an academic context) that mistakes get made and then replicated when people copy from copies.
Sarah,
Thank you for your response. I know you were not making such an accusation of me – I was just elaborating more for the record!
And I concur with you about going back to the originals. Harper’s Magazine had not done anything to alter the meaning of what Rushdie had said or changed his words in any way, but they had omitted some words in a sentence and not used ellipsis. The words omitted were not crucial and they easily could have been omitted, but, still, in my opinion ellipsis should be used. By going back to the original I spotted this.