Cold war: The Le Carré and Rushdie feud

By Amit Roy

WARM tributes were paid to the British espionage writer John le Carré, author of such Cold War spy classics as The Spy Who Came in from the Cold and Tinker Tailor Soldier Spy, who died last Saturday (12), aged 89.

What was slightly overlooked was the feud between le Carré and the Indian-origin Booker Prize winner Sir Salman Rushdie which lasted for 15 years. It was on the subject of freedom of speech.

Rushdie, who had received a fatwa from the Iranian leader Ayatollah Khomeini after his book The Satanic Verses was pub­lished in 1988, complained of a speech le Carré had delivered about freedom of speech. Rush­die accused him of sympathising with Islamic fundamentalists who had threatened to murder him.

In November 1997, le Carré complained that he had been called an anti-Semite in a New York Times book review.

The battle ground between the two was to be the letters’ columns of the Guardian newspaper.

Rushdie shot off a letter on November 18, 1997: “John le Car­ré complains that he has been branded an anti-Semite as a re­sult of a politically correct witch-hunt and declares himself inno­cent of the charge. It would be easier to sympathise with him had he not been so ready to join in an earlier campaign of vilifica­tion against a fellow writer.

“In 1989, during the worst days of the Islamic attack on The Sa­tanic Verses, le Carré wrote an ar­ticle in which he eagerly, and rather pompously, joined forces with my assailants. It would be gracious if he were to admit that he understands the nature of the thought police a little better now that, at least in his own opinion, he’s the one in the line of fire.”

Le Carré responded the next day: “Rushdie’s way with the truth is as self-serving as ever. I never joined his assailants. Nor did I take the easy path of proclaiming him to be a shining innocent. My position was there is no law in life or nature that says great religions may be insulted with impunity.

“I wrote that there is no abso­lute standard of free speech in any society. I wrote that tolerance does not come at the same time, and in the same form, to all reli­gions and cultures, and that Christian society too, until very recently, defined the limits of freedom by what was sacred.

“I wrote, and would write again today, that when it came to the further exploitation of Rushdie’s work in paperback form, I was more concerned about the girl at Penguin Books who might get her hands blown off in the mailroom than I was about Rushdie’s royal­ties. My purpose was not to justify the persecution of Rushdie, which, like any decent person, I deplore, but to sound a less arro­gant, less colonialist, and less self-righteous note than we were hearing from the safety of his ad­mirers’ camp.”

A day later, Rushdie wrote: “I’m grateful to John le Carré for refreshing our memories about exactly how pompous an ass he can be. He claims not to have joined in the attack against me but also states ‘there is no law in life or nature that says great religions may be insulted with impunity’.

“A cursory examination of this lofty formulation reveals that (1) it takes the philistine, reduction­ist, radical Islamist line that The Satanic Verses was no more than an ‘insult’, and (2) it suggests that anyone who displeases philistine, reductionist, radical Islamist folk loses his right to live in safety.

“So, if John le Carré upsets Jews, all he needs to do is fill a page of the Guardian with his muddled bombast, but if I am ac­cused of thought crimes, John le Carré will demand that I suppress my paperback edition. He says he is more interested in safeguard­ing publishing staff than in my royalties. But it is precisely these people, my novel’s publishers in some 30 countries, together with the staff of bookshops, who have most passionately supported and defended my right to publish.

“John le Carré is right to say that free speech isn’t absolute. We have the freedoms we fight for, and we lose those we don’t defend.

Le Carré sent another letter on November 22, 1997: “Anyone reading yesterday’s letters from Sal­man Rushdie and Christopher Hitchens [who had written in support of Rushdie] might well ask himself into whose hands the great cause of free speech has fallen. Whether from Rushdie’s throne or Hitchens’s gutter, the message is the same: ‘Our cause is abso­lute, it brooks no dissent or quali­fication; whoever questions it is by definition an ignorant, pompous, semi-literate unperson.’

“Rushdie sneers at my lan­guage and trashes a thoughtful and well-received speech I made to the Anglo-Israel Association, and which the Guardian saw fit to reprint. Hitchens portrays me as a buffoon who pours his own urine on his head. Two rabid aya­tollahs could not have done a better job. …Rushdie, so far as I can make out, does not deny the fact that he insulted a great reli­gion. Instead, he accuses me – note his preposterous language for a change – of taking the philis­tine reductionist radical Islamist line. I didn’t know I was so clever.

“What I do know is, Rushdie took on a known enemy and screamed ‘foul’ when it acted in character. The pain he has had to endure is appalling, but it doesn’t make a martyr of him, nor – much as he would like it to – does it sweep away all argument about the ambiguities of his participa­tion in his own downfall.”

In response, Rushdie wrote: “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…. 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?”

In 2012, the two giants of litera­ture sort of made up.

Rushdie told the Cheltenham literature festival that he “really” admired Le Carré as a writer. “I wish we hadn’t done it,” he said of their feud. “I think of Tinker Tai­lor Soldier Spy as one of the great novels of postwar Britain.”

Meanwhile, Le Carré told the Times: “I too regret the dispute”.

He went on: “I admire Salman for his work and his courage, and I respect his stand. Does that an­swer the larger debate which con­tinues to this day?

“Should we be free to burn Ko­rans, mock the passionately held religions of others? Maybe we should – but should we also be surprised when the believers we have offended respond in fury? I couldn’t answer that question at the time and, with all good will, I still can’t. But I am a little proud, in retrospect, that I spoke against the easy trend, reckoning with the wrath of outraged western intellectuals, and suffering it in all its righteous glory.

“And if I met Salman tomor­row? I would warmly shake the hand of a brilliant fellow writer.”