Rushdie essay reinstated by new Granta editor

[Dave Monroe]

Rushdie essay reinstated by new Granta editor
13.11.09


An essay by Salman Rushdie, rejected by former Granta editor Alex
Clark for inclusion in the magazine shortly before her departure, has
been reinstated by new editor John Freeman and will run in the next
issue, Granta 109: Work, available from January.

Granta owner Sigrid Rausing has denied suggestions that a row over the
rejection of the Rushdie piece was a contributory factor in the twin
departures of Clark, and later Granta Publications m.d. David Graham,
during last summer.

Clark, Granta’s first woman editor, left in May after nine months in
the chair, with Graham leaving in June. Reasons for their departures
have not been made public.

Rushdie’s lecture, on the subject of sloth, was given at Capri’s Le
Conversazioni literary festival in June and published in pamphlet form
for attendees. Clark, and Granta senior editor Rosalind Porter, had
decided against printing it in the magazine, as Granta’s editorial
policy is only to accept unpublished work. A judgement on
appropriateness and quality was also thought to have been a factor in
the decision.

However a brief rejection email from Porter, intended only for an
agent at Rushdie’s literary agency, Andrew Wylie, was forwarded to the
author. The email’s tone apparently caused the Booker Prize-winner
offence and Rushdie asked that his name be removed from the list of
Granta’s regular contributors in consequence.

After Clark and Graham left, Freeman, Granta’s US editor, took over as
acting editor, and then editor. Porter has now also left Granta in a
redundancy made following a restructure.

Rausing said: “I am very happy to say that Salman Rushdie’s piece
‘Notes on Sloth: from Saligia to Oblomov’ is indeed appearing in the
next issue of Granta. It’s an extraordinary essay ranging over
Fellini, boarding school, Pynchon, Shakespeare, literary games with
Christopher Hitchens, Dante, Montaigne, Conrad, Newton, De Quincey,
Proust, and, an imaginary feat, Oblomov and Linda Evangelista, in bed
together:

‘Oblomov is content, and drowsy. Linda is unhappy, tense, wide-eyed.
But character is destiny, as Heraclitus said, and they are both in the
grip of the terrible fate of having to be themselves. The day drifts
on. Here we lie, they say silently, almost echoing Martin Luther at
the Diet of Worms. We can do no other. They do not move.’

“Alex felt that the piece wasn’t quite right, and John Freeman, our
new editor, has re-instated it. I liked it too, but it wasn’t my
decision—editors’ tastes differ, obviously. It had nothing to do with
Alex or David leaving seven months ago, or Ros leaving now.”

Rushdie said: “I’ve spoken to Sigrid Rausing a couple of times and she
told me that the restructurings in Granta were completely unconnected
to anything I’ve written. It is true that I offered this piece to
Granta and that there was a rude email that went to the agency that
was forwarded to me. Like anyone who receives a rude email, I wasn’t
particularly happy about it. But I spoke to Alex after that, and said:
‘Look, I have no interest in forcing people to publish things they
don’t want to publish,’ so I withdrew it from consideration.

“And later John Freeman, when he took over, contacted me and asked me
if I’d be prepared to allow them to revisit it, so I said: ‘If you
want to do it, do it,’ and that’s the extent to which I know anything
about this.”

Clark, Porter and Graham all declined to comment.

http://www.thebookseller.com/news/102874-page.html