From Patrick French’s new bio:
In a piece now redolent with irony, Marvin Mudrick wrote in the Hudson Review [circa 1980] that V.S. Naipaul was being "monotonously alarmist" about the dangers of political Islam. What did he fear, seriously — Bedouins "sweeping like the simoom out of the desert descending on Bloomingdale’s with fire and sword and no-limit credit cards?" His counsel amounted to "Grand Guignol with Dracula make-up and howls from the wind-machines in the wings as Islamic fanatacism threatens the very foundations of civilization: the sky is falling! the sky is falling!"
