Doris Lessing
ON SALMAN RUSHDIE: A
COMMUNICATION
Dear William,
You say you assume I am "stirred" by the Rushdie af–
fair. I hope I am not. Far too many people are "stirred" and van–
ish into quicksands of hysteria. People I have respected for years
as monuments of common sense start emoting in print and on
television: there is something in this affair that brings out the
worst.. ..
I am an admire r of Salman Rushdie . But when I was sent
The Satanic Verses
I could hardly read it, finding it turgid. I there–
fore set myself down and reread
Midnight 's Children
and
Shame
and
found them everything I did before. I decided I would look for–
ward to his next book and forget about
The Satanic Verses.
Then
this storm broke.
I have thought Appeals from various bodies emotive and
ill–
considered, though I signed one of them. The alternative was to
frame one of my own, but we who were unhappy with the offi–
cial Appeals could not do that. One has to support what I suppose
we can describe as our trade unions, the Society of Authors ,
P.E.N.,
other representative bodies. The main point was, however,
made: we support freedom of speech and thought.
This is one of those situations where it is impossible to do
right. People who refused to go on television have been accused of
cowardice, but they were afraid of the oversimplifications of tele–
vision . The thousand or so people who signed the big Appeal
were described by a distraught Moslem as being "rent-a-signa–
ture. " If you say you do not admire the book but admire the au–
thor, then you are accused of being unsympathetic to his situa–
tion. If you say perhaps he should not have written it, then you
Editor's Note: This statement is in respon se to a letter from William Phillips to Doris
Lessing about the Rushdie affair.
