Bookplanet: feud between Rushdie and Germaine Greer starts up again

'You sanctimonious philistine' - Rushdie vs. Greer, the sequel
Guardian letter in support of Monica Ali reopens old feud
By Paul Lewis (from the good old Guardian)

It began as a territorial dispute between a low-budget film production company and a group of Bengali traders determined, they said, to protect the reputation of the community living in Britain's best-known Asian street.

But the battle of Brick Lane, which this week saw the producers of a film based on a novel by one of Britain's most promising young writers take police advice and abandon filming in the street, has spiralled into a war of words between two literary giants.

As the debate over a screen version of Monica Ali's book Brick Lane continues, Salman Rushdie, the author who in 1989 received a fatwa from the late Ayatollah Khomeinei in the wake of the publication of his book The Satanic Verses, has entered the fray with an attack on a longstanding rival, Germaine Greer.

In a letter published in the Guardian today, which is expected to reignite a row which has simmered since the early 1990s, Rushdie denounces Greer's support for the Brick Lane activists who are attempting to block the film as: "philistine, sanctimonious, and disgraceful, but it is not unexpected".

"As I well remember, she has done this before," he continues. "At the height of the assault against my novel The Satanic Verses, Germaine Greer stated 'I refuse to sign petitions for that book of his, which was about his own troubles'. She went on to describe me as 'a megalomaniac, an Englishman with dark skin'. Now it's Monica Ali's turn to be deracinated by Germaine."

Interviews

Rushdie's complaints about Greer point to an interview published in the American women's magazine Mirabella in 1992 in which she allegedly said she would not support Rushdie in the face of protests against his book. She is also reported to have said: "Jail is a good place for writers - they write. I told Salman that. Now he won't see me. He wouldn't accept my Christmas Eve invitation."

Greer, who attended Cambridge University in the late 60s with Rushdie, later denied the report, stating: "It is clearly not what I think of Salman." Rushdie, however, was unconvinced saying after the affair: "[Greer] keeps saying rude things about me ... and about other people - then claiming she has been misquoted."

Last night Greer declined to comment on the latest round of her spat with Rushdie, but sources close to her suggested she is considering a written response to the escalating debate.

The Campaign Against Monica Ali's Film Brick Lane, which Greer is accused of backing, says that Ali's portrayal of London's Bangladeshi community and, in particular, her depiction of people from the Sylhet region, is insulting.

The campaign has been opposed by many in Brick Lane who support the film, as well as free speech groups.

In an article in this newspaper on Mondaym Greer defended attempts by Brick Lane locals to prevent filming of the movie on their streets.

"Ali did not concern herself with the possibility that her plot might seem outlandish to the people who created the particular culture of Brick Lane," she wrote.

"As British people know little and care less about the Bangladeshi people in their midst, their first appearance as characters in an English novel had the force of a defining caricature."

Self-esteem

She said Brick Lane was a real place and there was no need for Monica Ali to invent it, but in giving her novel such a familiar and specific name, Ali was able to build a marvellously creative elaboration on a pre-existing stereotype.

"English readers were charmed by her Bengali characters," she continued, "But some of the Sylhetis of Brick Lane did not recognise themselves. Bengali Muslims smart under an Islamic prejudice that they are irreligious and disorderly, the impure among the pure, and here was a proto-Bengali writer with a Muslim name, portraying them as all of that and more. For people who don't have much else, self-esteem is crucial.

"For the novel Brick Lane , Ali didn't need to spend any time at all in the real Brick Lane . Movies are different. Permission is now being sought to film the cinematic Brick Lane in the real Brick Lane . The community has the moral right to keep the film-makers out but they cannot then complain if somewhere else is used and presented to the world as Brick Lane." Last night community activists in Brick Lane confirmed a rally would go ahead tomorrow and, in an echo of the burnings of The Satanic Verses nearly 20 years ago, they would burn Ali's book.

More than 100 activists are expected to attend the rally, with small delegations travelling from Cardiff, Manchester and Birmingham.

But support for the protest among the British Bangladeshi community is thought to have dwindled since Thursday, when the Guardian revealed the production company behind the film-adaptation of Ali's book, Ruby Films, decided to film the few remaining scenes at alternative locations.

Enthusiasm for tomorrow's protest has been stoked by rumour. In one scare-story gaining unfounded credence in Brick Lane's restaurants and clothes factories, the movie is said to feature a scene in which a leech falls from the hair of a Bangladeshi woman into a pot of curry. The film company strongly denies any such scene exists.

Even though a large number of Brick Lane's Bangladeshi community is expected to boycott tomorrow's protest, in private community leaders express concerns that Rushdie's intervention may provoke radical elements to join the rally.

War of words ... some famous literary spats

·One classic literary spat began in 1996, when the 30-year friendship between VS Naipaul and Paul Theroux was ended abruptly by a "new and hostile" wife, (Naipaul's). The feud provoked Theroux to write Sir Vidia's Shadow, showing his mentor, now a Nobel laureate, as snobbish, miserly, unforgiving, and blunt. He rubbished Naipaul's novel, Half a Life, as "clumsy, unbelievable, badly written, wilful and weird".

·In 1999 Norman Mailer began a row with Tom Wolfe by commenting that reading the man who invented New Journalism was like "making love to a 300-pound woman. Fall in love or be asphyxiated". John Irving also dismissed Wolfe's A Man in Full: "If I were teaching fucking freshman English," he said on TV, "I couldn't read that and not just carve it up."

·Verbal vitriol is not new. Ben Jonson supposedly said of fellow playwright William Shakespeare: "The players often mentioned it as an honour to Shakespeare, that in his writing, whatsoever he penned, he never blotted out a line. My answer hath been, 'Would he had blotted a thousand'."