Rushdie On Simplicity

In a detailed and interesting profile of the polymathic David Foster Wallace (whose new, eclectic collection of essays, Consider The Lobster, is getting raves), one came across this paragraph:

Salman Rushdie recently commented in the Paris Review on his growing ambition to tell a story simply and clearly: “I’ve gotten more interested in clarity as a virtue, less interested in the virtues of difficulty.… I don’t like books that play to the gallery, but I’ve become more concerned with telling a story as clearly and engagingly as I can.…A story doesn’t have to be simple, it doesn’t have to be one-dimensional but, especially if it’s multidimensional, you need to find the clearest, most engaging way of telling it.”

(The interview with Rushdie appeared in the Summer 2005 issue; some extracts are online here.)