Poem on Salman Rushdie

               RUSHDIE

I am the rich child, lonely

In the chauffeur-driven limousine

A scion of Rugby and Cambridge

One of those exotic creatures who manage

To both hate their host culture and remain

More British than the British; who succeed

By ruthless opportunism, in playing all ends 

Against the middle. Somehow, I contrive to be

Radical in outward stance, theatrically iconoclastic

Yet inwardly conservative, snobbish, swift to take offence;

A profound self-dramatist, jealous of my independence

Yet avid for honours -- sufficient contradictions at least

To make a certain type of novelist. 

The twin poles of my motivation

Are not the desire to write, or love of literature, but

Vanity and hatred, generating

Enough ambition to power a factory.

My ego is both gigantic and frail

A huge balloon moving on a sparking fuse of neurosis

Across the literary landscape. So I prefer to be

A caricature of a great writer. That aside

With a few exotic trimmings, I am

A consummate politician, with a deep understanding

Of the power structures of the literary world.

Embedded within its cosmopolitan brickwork

I live like a toad under a favourite stone

Charming where necessary, loving gossip

Close to the underbelly, always willing to exploit

My literary connections.

After my first book, Grimus, sank without trace

My second, Midnight's Children, proved

Highly marketable, a lightweight confection

Of magical realism with some peripatetic history --

The perfect novel for the London literary establishment

Searching for something exotic and fashionable

Flattering its hunger for "new writers".

Sensing weakness against my mounting ambition

I demonstrated my merciless nature

Sacrificing my faithful literary agent,

That doyenne of the publishing world

For being too sympathetic to publishers. While 

Simultaneously criticism her for "cronyism"

And demanding a huge advance

I showed, at an early stage, my deepest motives.

In a literary world which admires ambition

More than sincerity, ruthlessness more than talent

I cut an impressive figure. The editors fawned.

I enjoyed my first victory. The rest, as they say, 

Is history. A Booker prize followed.

I was launched into the beau monde.

To my credit, my next work Shame was  a fine novel

Deeper, more heartfelt, than Midnight's Children

Powered by genuine hatred of tyranny

Leaving its readers scorched, not tickled, by history.

But each of us reaches a pivotal point

Where our deepest character emerges.

Shame reached the Booker short-list

But did not win the prize. I was naturally outraged

Angry beyond restraint. Like a dark cloud

I rose in revolt at the insult done to me

Storming out of the ceremony, displaying, as though

By accident, my truest and deepest orientation.

I was a child of the media, the slave of celebrity

Addicted to the baubles of prizes.

Over-sensitive to criticism, praise was my due --

Eternal praise, like a dictator

Standing in a stadium, reviewing the troops

In an endless march of raised salutes.

So I rushed from the Booker ceremony

Slamming the table with my fist, overturning teacups.

My writing never returned to the power of Shame

But like someone who has been bitten

By events -- who learns, perhaps subconsciously

That his bread is buttered on the other side of virtue --

I turned instead to other literary divertissements

In the style of Midnight's Children. Next came

The incessant punning and shallow profundity

Of The Satanic Verses, whose garrulous prolixity

Would have benefited from ruthless editing.

In another world, the novel

Might have sunk below the public surface

Except for an odd incident of a book-burning

And the sudden conflagration of rage

In a distant country.

The novel itself, a pretentious disquisition

Had made an oblique insult to the Prophet

(Hardly noticeable amongst the jumbled narrative)

Suggesting his mother was a whore.

A pious mullah, perhaps mistaking its colossal length

For a sacred text, had found that on a certain page

An apparent reference to Mohammed's mother

Caused his eyes to water.

Suddenly, fundamentalist Muslims across the world

Were scrabbling for their matches

Buying copies from the bookshops to burn

Threatening to incinerate the Satanic author.

So I was invested with vast importance

A literary dramatic personage on whom

A personal fatwa was declared by Iran.

I was a public figure at last, a position I greatly prefer

To the studious calm of a dedicated writer. My story was

As absurd and far-fetched as a Hollywood melodrama.

By some ironic process of fate granting to each

What he most desires, I had become, through my 

Worst work, the most famous literary figure of the age.

This was the final nail in the coffin

Of my private conscience. I had been confirmed

In all my worst expectations. The world was false.

So, like a morality play of Dickensian proportions

I achieved the distinction (the novel being unreadable)

Of being read for blasphemy by fanatical illiterates

In the very religion I had supposedly insulted.

While I continued to proselytise aggressively

Against the work of better writers.

My feud with Mario Vargas Llosa

Over Nicaragua can now be seen

For what it was -- the Sandinistas

Those "natural representatives" of the people

Having disappeared from power

By popular vote --

It seemed Vargas Llosa was right. In literary London

I dabbled in fashionable causes with Pinter et al.

Casually betraying my sincerest supporters

By flirting with conversion to Islam.

Like many self-obsessed artists, my greatest hate

Was directed towards liberalism and democracy.

Only when the hammer fell

On my own head, did it occur

That my own right to cause offence

Was paramount above all others. Until then

I could always be relied upon to oppose the West

Not least since I despised the common public taste

Which ignores my works. Like Graham Greene

At heart I prefer my own brand of authoritarianism 

To a settled world of bourgeois prosperity.

So I played shamelessly to bien pensant opinion

After celebrating 25 years of the Booker Prize

Midnight's Children was named the Booker of Bookers

Demonstrating yet again the almost exquisite

Recidivism of the London literary classes.

My celebrity proceeded apace. I even began --

Ensuring my image elided with that of Hollywood --

To engage in that sine qua non of celebrity

A course of plastic surgery on my studious eyelids.

Before then I had seemed a heavy lidded Hamadryad

Snake-like and powerful, not unhandsome.

Now the surgeon's knife removed that surplus

Of inherited owlishness, allowing me

To open my gaze

To the more important diversions of the age. 

I believed, like Henry Kissinger, that fame

Is the greatest aphrodisiac.

So I left my second wife and took up 

With a beautiful model in New York

Attending parties of the beau monde

Reflecting my elevated status

Savouring the shallowest regions of that capitalist hell

Which I had spent my earliest years despising

Demonstrating to all that beneath my false left-wing

Carapace, there beats the heart of a pure materialist.

My literary career reflected my progress through life.

Haroun and the Sea of Stories was a minor work

But The Moor's Last Sigh illustrated once again

My creative emptiness. Built on the proviso

That the hero aged twice as fast as the average person

The plot ground out the yawning consequences -- 

Seducing nanny at seven, senescence at thirty-five --

I once more reached the Booker shortlist

But not the prize. Another writer, Howard Jacobson

(A far more talented and cogent novelist)

Commenting on its formulaic shallowness

Said, "Enough magical realism!"

But alas, the tide of my career was not halted.

Given my share of bad books, my next novel

The Ground Beneath Her Feet really took the candle.

A "sumptuous" love story which would make

A Mills & Boon romance seem deep

It reflected above all my love of celebrity

My puppy-dog worship of pop music, and

Demonstrated the degree to which I had sunk

To new levels of banality. Yet why should I weep?

I am the king of London's literary culture

Even though I live in New York. Meanwhile 

In further fiction, I continued to declaim --

In works like Fury -- my cartoonish attitudes

Describing a protean figure like Mayor Giuliani

As a "glove puppet" for the rich. Against that

My own subsequent acceptance of a knighthood

Demonstrated, as if further proof were necessary

How to kiss the arse of the establishment

When it suits my own purposes. At the

Same time, I continue to proclaim

In fatuous essay after fatuous essay --

In film criticism which demonstrates 

Not merely y shallow grasp of the medium

But my glibness and faux-profundity --

How the world is deeply corrupt

That my work merely reflects reality.

Like my doppelganger and fellow conspirator

Martin Amis, I continue ad nauseam to proclaim how

The shadows of the moronic inferno

Set the terms of our existence.

Its feverish outlines, or so I argue,

Are plain enough to see. Apres moi le deluge.

Do they? Are they? Will the world fragment?

Or are the fissiparous subjects of my works

Perhaps the puerile projections

Of a narcissistic mind?

Time will tell. Meanwhile

I shall proceed with majestic momentum

To fulfil my lurid fantasy

Of being the world's most famous writer.

              POSTSCRIPT

If I have a single redeeming feature

I am a proven survivor

Of literary warfare.

My ego is such that

When this poem is printed, my reputation 

Will recoil only briefly, and then spring back

Growing by what it feeds on.

The rich effluvia of publicity

Will nourish my notoriety.

Like a weed which cannot be expunged

I'll spring out from the rubble

Branding my verbal Kalashnikov

Uttering dark threats of vengeance.

Impressed by my resilience

My acolytes will gather once more

Like crows on a carcass.

So the grand media circus that is Rushdie

The inflated balloon of hype and expectation

Will once more cast its shadow over the landscape

Moving towards who knows what terminus.

Those who observed a major writer emerge

Saw him show his hand of power briefly in Shame

Might hope that like some great sinner

Who scrapes the deepest barrel of voluptuousness

And materialist frivolity, one day

I will return to the humble, silent work of composition

Construct at last some true work of genius

Not with the venal motive of screwing my critics

Or shafting the literary world, but for the pure

Beauty of prose, the generous contemplation

Of human complexity, the honouring of mankind.

The fuck I will. I know a facile story when I see one;

After all, I've made my reputation living off them.

Instead I shall proceed through life

Exchanging present beauties for ever-younger chicks

Becoming increasingly corrupt and cynical

And then I shall make some major renunciation

Not by writing a great work, but

On the contrary, through some showbiz gesture

Like becoming a Buddhist, entering a monastery

Stopping only to pick up the final bauble 

Of a Nobel prize, bestowed on me by a cabal

Of over-serious Swedes and Norwegians

Moral compasses thrown awry

By my mixture of exotic lineage and erzatz greatness;

And finally to rest

In a huge coffin, carried through the streets of London

By the same literati I outmanoeuvred

Bullied and bamboozled when I was younger

In the absolute certainty

That those who raised me to literary greatness

Will far sooner confirm their stupidity

Than admit any error. On this tide of shame

I will be buried in honour, in the final confirmation

Of a last resting place in Westminster Abbey

And a public statue in Trafalgar Square.