The Secret Society: Descendants of Crypto-Jews in the San Antonio ...

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given simply the leisure-time necessary for reading one, the novel has been an elitist and
minority form in developing countries when compared to poem, song, television and film”
(Brennan, 17-8). In that sense, Rushdie’s audience of elites can process the message of his
novel with more grains of salt, so to speak, than can the average person who follows his press
statements in the Western news media. Furthermore, given the strongly secular slant of
Rushdie’s statements, Rushdie appeals more strongly to a Western, cosmopolitan audience
that views itself as “secular”—and therefore “rational” and “modern”—than to Eastern
audiences in whose cultures veiling remains prevalent and not necessarily inconsistent with
progress or rationality. The novel has become a more truly cosmopolitan form than the
sometimes reactionary and sensationalist print media.
Conclusion
I believe Brennan correctly discerns that “[the] disparity between Rushdie’s
journalism and his fiction rests in the molding of his politics to the demands of form”
(Brennan, 99). Because the novel, unlike other forms of print media, does not and cannot
seek to establish its sole authority at the expense of other points of view, the religious and
cultural politics of Midnight’s Children do not take on the quality of secular absolutism that
tinges Rushdie’s press statements and his larger role as Third-World spokesperson. Again, in
his representations of Islam, Rushdie resembles no other character so much as Cyrus-
Dubash-turned-Lord-Khusro-Khusrovand. 21
Lord Khusro’s manipulation of media, although
preposterous to Rushdie’s reading audience, mirrors Rushdie’s representations of Islam in the
Western media: exaggerated, sensationalist, and fraudulent. The extension of Rushdie’s role
as author into that of media celebrity, however, suggests the willingness of the Western
media to appoint as spokespersons those whose views justify the political status quo.