- Midnight's Diaspora: Critical Encounters with Salman Rushdie
Midnight's Diaspora: Critical Encounters with Salman Rushdie is a unique scholarly work in the scope of materials it offers. The editors begin by offering short segments taken from interviews with Salman Rushdie when he visited the University of Michigan campus in 2003 before serving the expected selection of articles from distinguished scholars. Also delightfully surprising, the editors in turn completed the work with a direct response from Rushdie on this book they have put together. This response of his may perhaps rule my review as redundant, so in the interests of transparency, don't take my word on this book; go see what Rushdie has to say about it himself!
The initial value of this collection undeniably lies in the comments by Salman Rushdie himself. Between the opening excerpts from interviews with him to his closing remarks on Midnight's Diaspora, the voice of the author offers an indispensible insight into his art and the world from which it sprang. These firsthand encounters with Rushdie about his life, art, and politics take advantage of the fact that this author can directly respond to an audience who is actively questioning and responding to his work.
What is most intriguing about this collection is the way all of the selected essays seem to dance around Salman Rushdie and his work even though they are expressively included in a work on him and his art. All of the essayists address topics that directly relate to Salman Rushdie and his novels—from freedom of speech to the nationhood of Pakistan, the intrigue of Bombay versus Mumbai to the clutter that is India as a whole—and yet none of them delve deeply into the works or life of Salman Rushdie. These scholars tend to mention Rushdie in their introductions and conclusions as an anecdote for their essays, not the subject; he plays a supporting role in the essays that are purportedly about him.
Towards the end of the collection are Thomas Blom Hansen's "Reflections" and Sara Suleri Goodyear's "Rushdie Beyond the Veil" which are the only two essays that reach into any depth of literary or biographical meaning; only including two essays of such substance seems at first like a deception on the part of the editors of this volume. In a book titled Midnight's Diaspora: Critical Encounters with Salman Rushdie, it seems intuitive to expect a volume of critical work delving into the inner sanctum of Rushdie's work and imagination, his very life and soul—as if such an endeavor is feasible.
Instead, the reader encounters essays concerning the world in which Rushdie writes. A great deal of attention is granted to seemingly periphery concerns when [End Page 111] discussing Rushdie, such as secularism in India and freedom of speech; yet, it is this macro examination of the work of Rushdie and the world in which his work exists which make this collection a necessary read for anyone who studies Rushdie's work. In trying to capture a holistic view of an author who is political as well as artistic, the editors—Daniel Herwitz and Ashutosh Varshney—chose an excellent selection of pieces to include and even ordered them in accordance with what a neophyte approaching scholarship on Rushdie may initially be concerned.
The editors begin the essay portion of the book with the obvious topics of the fatwa against Rushdie and freedom of speech with the work of Akeel Bilgrami, then move onto Pakistan in the essays by Ashutosh Varshney and Husain Haqqani before travelling back to India and more specifically Bombay in the essays by Thomas Blom Hansen, Sara Suleri Goodyear and Shashi Tharoor. This order of essays seems backwards from the chronology of Rushdie's writing—if we ignore Grimus, Rushdie began his career concerned with India as a whole in Midnight's Children and specifically focused on Bombay/Mumbai (his chosen hometown from childhood); he then drew direct attention to the issues of Pakistan and freedom of speech. Yet, the...