rushdie v greer over monica ali's brick lane
It seems ironic that Germaine Greer is supporting a group of Bengali traders, who probably have never read Monica Ali's Brick Lane. They claim the book misrepresents the Bangladesh community in Brick Lane. The book i felt was sympathetic to the community weaving the diaspora with the communities and ties back home. The politics of the community were also well represented with the second generation son who was more politically conservative than the women in the novel. The juxtaposition of the sweat shops in Dacca and London and the women as workers was well described. Rushdie seeems to have stepped into the debate, since Greer criticized him at the time of Satanic Verses, his comparisons are interesting.
To read a summary of the whole debate, see here
'You sanctimonious philistine' - Rushdie v Greer, the sequel
Guardian letter in support of Monica Ali reopens old feud
Paul Lewis
Saturday July 29, 2006
The 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.Here are their letters
Rushdie's letter to the Guardian
Germaine Greer's article (G2, July 24) about the
proposed filming of Monica Ali's novel Brick Lane is a
strange mixture of ignorance (she actually believes
that this is the first novel to portray London's
Bangladeshi community, and doesn't know that many
Brick Lane Asians are in favour of the filming);
pro-censorship twaddle (no, people do not have the
"moral right" to prevent the making of a film simply
because they have decided in advance that they will
not like it); and ad-feminam sneers about Monica Ali.
Her support of the attack on this film project is
philistine, sanctimonious and disgraceful, but it is
not unexpected. As I well remember, she has done this
before.
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: "She writes in
English and her point of view is, whether she allows
herself to impersonate a village Bangladeshi woman or
not, British." There is a kind of double racism in
this argument. To suit Greer, the British-Bangladeshi
Ali is denied her heritage and belittled for her
Britishness, while her British-Bangladeshi critics are
denied that same Britishness, which most of them would
certainly insist was theirs by right. "Writers are
treacherous," Greer says, and she should know.
Salman Rushdie
London
The Greer article to which Rushdie is responding.
Germaine Greer
Monday July 24, 2006
The Guardian
Writers are treacherous; they will sneak up on you and
write about you in terms that you don't recognise.
They will take your reality, pull strands from it and
weave them with their own impressions into a tissue
that is more real than your reality because it is
text. Text is made of characters. A character is, as
it were, graven in stone; when you are charactered you
will last for ever, or pretty nearly, but what lasts
will not be you. Every individual, every community
ever to be written about suffers the same shock of
non-recognition, and feels the same sense of invasion
and betrayal.
When Monica Ali set out to write Brick Lane, she was -
according to Harriet Lane, who interviewed her for the
Observer on the eve of the novel's publication in June
2003 - "already very conscious that she was on the far
side of two cultures". In fact, Ali is on the near
side of British culture, not far from the middle. She
writes in English and her point of view is, whether
she allows herself to impersonate a village
Bangladeshi woman or not, British. She has forgotten
her Bengali, which she would not have done if she had
wanted to remember it. When it comes to writing a
novel, however, she becomes the pledge of our
multi-ethnicity.
Ali's mother, born in Bolton, met a Bangladeshi man at
a dance, followed him when he returned to his job at
Dhaka University and married him there. When the
Pakistani crackdown came in March 1971, Monica was
three years old. The family eventually escaped and
ended up living in Bolton, in a poky flat in a
run-down area. The truest part of Ali's writing is
about the experience of exile, the pain of
unbelonging. In mid-2003 the Bangladeshi High
Commission refused her a visa to visit her birthplace.
This must have been bitter enough, but returning would
have hurt even more.
In interviews, Ali says her family always intended to
return to Bangladesh, but in the event they stayed
here. Monica won a scholarship to Bolton Girls'
School, read PPE at Oxford and later settled down in
Dulwich, a smart corner of south London that is a far
cry from Bolton or Brick Lane. She was the mother of
two children before she began to work on her
"cross-cultural" novel, for which she received
enormous advances from British and US publishers.
Brick Lane was on the bestseller list for 46 weeks and
sold 150,000 copies in hardback. Ali was shortlisted
for every prize there was.
None of this would have happened if Ali had not
created her own version of Bengali-ness. As a British
writer, she is very aware of what will appear odd but
plausible to a British audience. Her approach to her
Bengali characters is not all that different from Paul
Scott's treatment of his Indian characters in The Raj
Quartet. An author may say she loves and respects the
characters she has created. But what hurts is
precisely that: she has dared to create them.
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. 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. The fact that Ali's
father is Bangladeshi was enough to give her authority
in the eyes of the non-Asian British, but not in the
eyes of British Bangladeshis.
Brick Lane is a real place; there was no need for
Monica Ali to invent it. 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, 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. There
is only one remedy available if your reality is being
recycled through a writer or a movie-maker, and that
is to write your own novel or make your own film - and
accept ostracism as your just desert.
It hurts to be misrepresented, but there is no
representation without misrepresentation. London's
Eastenders don't watch EastEnders, because they don't
recognise its version of their demanding and rigorous
minority culture. They watch Coronation Street
instead. Farmers don't listen to the Archers. And
Bangladeshi Britons would be better off not reading -
or, when it comes out, seeing the film of - Brick Lane.
To read a summary of the whole debate, see here
'You sanctimonious philistine' - Rushdie v Greer, the sequel
Guardian letter in support of Monica Ali reopens old feud
Paul Lewis
Saturday July 29, 2006
The 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.Here are their letters
Rushdie's letter to the Guardian
Germaine Greer's article (G2, July 24) about the
proposed filming of Monica Ali's novel Brick Lane is a
strange mixture of ignorance (she actually believes
that this is the first novel to portray London's
Bangladeshi community, and doesn't know that many
Brick Lane Asians are in favour of the filming);
pro-censorship twaddle (no, people do not have the
"moral right" to prevent the making of a film simply
because they have decided in advance that they will
not like it); and ad-feminam sneers about Monica Ali.
Her support of the attack on this film project is
philistine, sanctimonious and disgraceful, but it is
not unexpected. As I well remember, she has done this
before.
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: "She writes in
English and her point of view is, whether she allows
herself to impersonate a village Bangladeshi woman or
not, British." There is a kind of double racism in
this argument. To suit Greer, the British-Bangladeshi
Ali is denied her heritage and belittled for her
Britishness, while her British-Bangladeshi critics are
denied that same Britishness, which most of them would
certainly insist was theirs by right. "Writers are
treacherous," Greer says, and she should know.
Salman Rushdie
London
The Greer article to which Rushdie is responding.
Germaine Greer
Monday July 24, 2006
The Guardian
Writers are treacherous; they will sneak up on you and
write about you in terms that you don't recognise.
They will take your reality, pull strands from it and
weave them with their own impressions into a tissue
that is more real than your reality because it is
text. Text is made of characters. A character is, as
it were, graven in stone; when you are charactered you
will last for ever, or pretty nearly, but what lasts
will not be you. Every individual, every community
ever to be written about suffers the same shock of
non-recognition, and feels the same sense of invasion
and betrayal.
When Monica Ali set out to write Brick Lane, she was -
according to Harriet Lane, who interviewed her for the
Observer on the eve of the novel's publication in June
2003 - "already very conscious that she was on the far
side of two cultures". In fact, Ali is on the near
side of British culture, not far from the middle. She
writes in English and her point of view is, whether
she allows herself to impersonate a village
Bangladeshi woman or not, British. She has forgotten
her Bengali, which she would not have done if she had
wanted to remember it. When it comes to writing a
novel, however, she becomes the pledge of our
multi-ethnicity.
Ali's mother, born in Bolton, met a Bangladeshi man at
a dance, followed him when he returned to his job at
Dhaka University and married him there. When the
Pakistani crackdown came in March 1971, Monica was
three years old. The family eventually escaped and
ended up living in Bolton, in a poky flat in a
run-down area. The truest part of Ali's writing is
about the experience of exile, the pain of
unbelonging. In mid-2003 the Bangladeshi High
Commission refused her a visa to visit her birthplace.
This must have been bitter enough, but returning would
have hurt even more.
In interviews, Ali says her family always intended to
return to Bangladesh, but in the event they stayed
here. Monica won a scholarship to Bolton Girls'
School, read PPE at Oxford and later settled down in
Dulwich, a smart corner of south London that is a far
cry from Bolton or Brick Lane. She was the mother of
two children before she began to work on her
"cross-cultural" novel, for which she received
enormous advances from British and US publishers.
Brick Lane was on the bestseller list for 46 weeks and
sold 150,000 copies in hardback. Ali was shortlisted
for every prize there was.
None of this would have happened if Ali had not
created her own version of Bengali-ness. As a British
writer, she is very aware of what will appear odd but
plausible to a British audience. Her approach to her
Bengali characters is not all that different from Paul
Scott's treatment of his Indian characters in The Raj
Quartet. An author may say she loves and respects the
characters she has created. But what hurts is
precisely that: she has dared to create them.
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. 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. The fact that Ali's
father is Bangladeshi was enough to give her authority
in the eyes of the non-Asian British, but not in the
eyes of British Bangladeshis.
Brick Lane is a real place; there was no need for
Monica Ali to invent it. 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, 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. There
is only one remedy available if your reality is being
recycled through a writer or a movie-maker, and that
is to write your own novel or make your own film - and
accept ostracism as your just desert.
It hurts to be misrepresented, but there is no
representation without misrepresentation. London's
Eastenders don't watch EastEnders, because they don't
recognise its version of their demanding and rigorous
minority culture. They watch Coronation Street
instead. Farmers don't listen to the Archers. And
Bangladeshi Britons would be better off not reading -
or, when it comes out, seeing the film of - Brick Lane.
Comments
On the one hand she trumpets women’s rights, whilst simultaneously supporting minority cultures, which oppress them, sometimes brutally.
She should read Ayaan Hirsi Ali’s The Caged Virgin to get a hold of what’s it’s like for millions of women living in Islamic societies including immigrant ones in the West. Yet Greer and her extreme left wing acolytes seem to support the rights of these minorities to perpetrate misogynistic practices in the name of multiculturalism! Surely don’t these women have the right to enjoy the same advantages that she does? Can one imagine Greer’s reaction if the Church of England decided to promote such practices against women!
On a deeper level this raises some serious questions about western society. Their seems to be a whole bunch of left wing third columnists who want to undermine western society despite its enormous achievements in terms of wealth, welfare and opportunity. Also, Islamic communities living in the West are very fortunate. Rather than wallowing in self pity, which is encouraged by the likes of Greer, they should spend more time trying to integrate and participate in the opportunities offered here. I have gone into more detail about this on my own blog: http://justinpugsley.blogspot.com/
Also, Greer is wrong about the soap Eastenders. Eastend people do watch it in masses. I lived there for 12 years, so I know the area well as well as the people there. I also have some familiarity with the Bangladeshi community. A lot of what the book Brick Lane says has a ring of truth to it.