“I HAVE BECOME DEATH”: SHALIMAR THE CLOWN AND THE POST-9/11 ANGLO-AMERICAN SENSIBILITIES
Salman Rushdie has almost always polarised his readers, and those praises and recriminations often illuminate some aspects of his works and its readers. Responses to Shalimar the Clown (2005) point to various desires, both old and new, among his readers that have helped shape our expectations from his works. Like his other novels, Shalimar the Clown presents a plethora of controversial topics in a serio-comic, gargantuan mode of writing. Predictably, this style has elicited criticism even from sympathetic reviewers (e.g., King 50; Updike, “Paradise Lost” 152). However, not only have there been many extremely critical voices, but they also criticise its lack of novelty or its failure to meet the readers’ expectations rather than its sensationalism or extravagant stylistic experimentations. One reviewer goes so far as to say that “Shalimar the Clown doesn’t only portray a disaster zone; it becomes one” (Kemp par. 9); and another calls it a mere collection of “the great sillinesses that are perpetrated under the name of quality fiction” (Tait 18). The fact that such vehement attacks have been made in quality papers surely warrants a critical attention.