A Conversation with Salman Rushdie

think forward pink research channel today's special guests once lamented people are now more interested in writers than in their writing and I think this audience will prove that wrong Salman Rushdie is arguably one of the most brilliant famous and controversial writers of our time although he is best known for his fourth book The Satanic Verses he has written some two dozen books is the recipient of numerous literary awards and holds eight honorary doctorates including an honorary professorship in the humanities at MIT as I'm sure all of you know the 1988 release of The Satanic Verses caused an international uproar and sparked death threats and a fatwa calling for his assassination he spent nine years in hiding until the Iranian government rescinded the fatwa in 1998 and he has since working to put that chapter of his life behind him and would like others to do the same we are delighted to be able to talk with him today not only about his newest book Shalimar the clown which is published by Random House but also about his life as a writer so thank you so much for being with us good to be here wonderful place you once told director David Cronenberg its of no pleasure to me that I should be famous what I should be famous for is not my writing and that of course is changing with time and as your body of work grows and is recognized still The Satanic Verses made you something more than a novelist and I know this is the subject you've grown grown weary of talking about so I'll ask just as one question about it and that is how difficult has it been to get out from under the shadow of that book well very difficult you know I mean if you think about it it's I mean 1988 is a really long time ago you know it's a it's an 18 year old book and not only that but when I started writing it was more or less five years before that so it's a book that I started writing at about 1984 there's 22 years ago and and yet I'm still asked detailed questions about what I thought I was doing on Chaplin in page 174 the truthful answer is I have no idea because it's 20 years ago you know if you're being asked to examine and know about the day-to-day process of writing a book when you were 20 years younger I mean essentially anything I say is fiction really I mean I can remember the broad the broad process of writing the book but I can't remember any of them any of the real detail so it does feel like a much younger writers book you know I mean let's say when I when I started writing it I was 37 you know I mean now I'm about to be 59 no so that's a lot of water and I have to say on the other hand that I'm very proud of it you know and I think just put it like this that the kind of assault that that book was subjected to was I mean talk about destruction testing you know and if the if that book had been weak in my view it would it would have disintegrated you know because there was certainly enough attempt to poverty and the fact that it still seems to be worth reading you know and I think is a testament to its its literary strength not everything else I mean fortunately the scandal is kind of much less than it used to be and so now at long last it's able to have the literary moment that it was denied in a way when it first came out now suddenly people are talking about it as a book you know and as a result it has the whole spectrum of responses in perhaps reading it for the first time because lots of people often yes maybe even read - who were talking about us yeah that's right everybody had an opinion in those days which was you know gain unflattering because because it wasn't based on even opening the book let alone reading five hundred and fifty pages well anyone who was interested in knowing more about his years and hiding and about living under the fought wha all of that is isn't a book he penned step across the line which is a collection of nonfiction from 1992 to 2002 and it's at the bookstore at the back of the back of the room so we hope if you're interested you'll check that out I think I'll get the the Entertainment Tonight kinds of questions on your way right off the vent so I think the only thing that comes even remotely close to to eclipsing the fuss over over that particular book was your move in 2000 from London where you had lived for 30 years to New York and then your marriage to a young beautiful international model by the name of Padma latchkey black me and I'm wondering if before we talk about your writing if you'd care to comment on either of those well I'm glad we did it gotta get it down to the really serious stuff you know I always wanted to spend time I mean I've been coming to New York since I was very young when I first I first visited New York in my early 20s I suppose in fact one of the things I remember is arriving in New York and being told that they just finished the windows on the world bar at the top of the World Trade Center and being taken there my first night in Manhattan you know and so for me those towers represented really my moment of arrival in the city and that also they can add it a little twist you know to to the horror the horror of a few years ago so I mean I've known New York quite well you know since the early 70s but not as a place to live I mean as a place to visit there as a place where I had a lot of friends which I liked and had some had some real sense of attraction for it you know and I'd always thought that I would like to some point in my life just put myself there and see what happened you know and and then there was that period when really I couldn't make those choices and and then it became possible again and I thought well I'm not getting any younger so it and then yeah it helped for you love but it's always a nice way to arrive somewhere and yeah that's it yes and now I'm now I'm the guy standing next to her III arrive in rooms and people go oh she's not here I say no she's she's busy today oh well nevermind so now yeah it's I mean it's funny you know it does happen a lot because she's better-looking than me let's talk about your your most recent book Shalimar the clown which seems to draw on on all of your knowledge of culture and history and and family and memories in fact it's been described as a masterpiece and all-encompassing and I'd like to talk a little about where that book came from well it came from it came from very deep down is where it came from and it's a book in a way I mean I was almost afraid to write about Kashmir because it's a place that I love very much and it's a place in which a terrible thing has happened you know and and I knew that it was going to be difficult emotionally difficult you know to to write it and in fact when I first thought of the idea for fish island mother clone the idea of this murder in LA for which in fact the explanation is on the other side of the world I originally thought well maybe I don't actually have to the book doesn't have to really go to Kashmir you know they could in the book could actually be in America and yes that's the backstory and it can be alluded to and so on but maybe I don't really need to go there in the in the book and I sudden realize after a while that I was essentially chickening out you know that because I I because I had to go that you know and the book would it would have been much less you know if that had just remained offstage and so then it's a certain point I just took a deep breath and said okay I have to do this you know and then I mean there was a lot of it that was very pleasurable because one of the pleasures of memory and of writing about the past and about the way things used to be and are not you know anymore is that you can in a way bring them back you know you could bring them back for yourself you could bring them feeling that time back and you can offer it to other people it's at least for the for the period of time that people read the book it is possible to travel in time you know it's possible to go back into another reality in another way of thinking another way of being a happier time you know and and that became very you know very pleasurable that doing that and then and then there was very painful material which because of the tragedy of Kashmir so it began really that was a I'd always known that at some point in my life I would have to write about that but it's taken a long time to get there people always assume that so much of your writing is autobiographical and it's something you argue with me but you you're writing about things that you know and to the extent that it in this book I don't think there's a single thing that solves biographical except perhaps that the grandparents the main so Shalimar the client's grandparents in the book our kind of comic version of my grandparents I mean my grandparents were not like they weren't Village People they were multiple professional people and lived elsewhere and you know didn't work for a traveling theatre troupe and etc but you know my grandmother was very ferocious and I think one of the reasons why there's so many ferocious women in my books is is because of my grandmother you know she was I'll tell you what I remember when I left University I graduated from Cambridge I drove across the world with English friend of mine you could do that you know sign of how the world has changed in 1968 you could leave London in a mini and drive to India you know you could drive you could drive through Iraq you could drive through Iran you could drive across Afghanistan you could cross the Khyber Pass you could drive across Pakistan into India imagine trying that now how far do you think you'd get it's anyway so we did that and there it's a long dusty student journey when I arrived home as it happened my grandmother was visiting our house and you know I was I had long red hair I also I also had long hair and it was also I also had a beard because I'd meet on the road and you know and I was dusty and she refused to acknowledge me when she hadn't seen I just graduated from college she hadn't seen me for a year and a half she looked straight through me and she turned to my sister and she said to tell your brother to tell about I would have did it that's okay came back clean still no recognition and she said to my sister telling her brother to have a haircut I'm just driven 6,000 miles here but I had to drive across the street to have a haircut and I came back she beamed spread her arms she said my grandson has come back you know if you if that's your grandmother I mean really all the way bit of my family take after that so so I think the grandmother in the book is kind of a little bit a homage to my grandmother and the ground for my grandfather was the opposite to my grandfather very sweet-natured and my grandfather used to sometimes pretend to be gruff that fooled nobody you know and and I think the spirit of those two people the kind of gentleness of my grandfather and the ferociousness of my grandmother is in the it's throughout the book you know so you know in a way that's why I gotta came to this place you know because when I was thinking about cuz they were from Kashmir and and when I was thinking about Kashmir I really or the spirit of the place you know I thought about them and that became like a guiding line what to follow now you were born in in 1947 the same year that India declared its independence had that not happened do you think you'd be the writer you want today no I mean no that's clearly it was a I mean I was eight weeks old at the independence of India and it changed my life there's no question that first of all to have had a colonial life would have been very different you know we'd have grown up under the British Empire it would have been a very different experience and also now it's very different because now really the British Empire it's really a long time ago you know people people it's almost 60 years ago people don't really think about it that much and in fact even in your in my generation people were still in India was still very drawn towards or attached to England and things English and and and now it's much less the case I mean if there's if there's a foreign attachment it's much more to the United States you know in those days people wanted to send their children to Oxbridge now they'd much rather send them to Stanford or MIT or you know somewhere here so there's in a way the Empire is gone you know but that generation my generation was the transition generation you know it was the generation of the change and that made it I mean that obviously shaped me shaped me in all kinds of ways you know if it also makes a very interesting generation the most mixed-up generation you know the generation in which the future is beginning in the past is still there you know and I mean that's why I read nice children because it's about it's about that generation and I thought actually there's something very special about a transitional generation because it's because as I say it contains the future and the past you know and lives in the present so so now I would like there's no question that it would completely let me shake my family for a start because the creation of the state of Pakistan divided my family in half you know I mean some of my family oh it's a Muslim family and many of them including my parents decided they wanted to stay in India because my parents were really not religious and they didn't feel like living in a religious state you know but other members of my family did and so there was a sis you know this dividing line through the middle of my family or anything else so yeah it was very very profound importance in my life you mentioned Midnight's Children which was your second very acclaimed novel written back in 1981 it won the Booker Prize for fiction and in 1993 it was judged the Booker of Booker's the best novel to win the Booker Prize for fiction in the in the awards 25-year history you talk about that book because there's a funny story about that actually on the and the day of the prize-giving of that Booker of Booker's thing right the judges had been people who had been the chair people of the judges in previous years you know it was a a jury of chairmen if you like anyway one of them was very very keen that the prize should go to William Golding for his novel rites of passage which which also won the book and he was so and I knew nothing of this right I just arrived and said thank you nicely and then there's a reception and I'm introduced to this that the William Golding judge and I didn't know anything about that so and he was so angry that I'd won that he couldn't really even say hello so I'm coming up to say thank you very much and he a spot on his heel and walked away right for what I do some of the other judges explained to me that he'd been I mean he'd been in a minority of Warren I have to say but nevertheless he he thought what he thought well that was the book that you said that that readers loved and and shame which was written in 1983 was more admired Iran in the see a children's book you said was something that people felt deep emotional response to and I'm wondering over the years how much feedback have you gotten how important is that to you know it's great I mean it's it's you know one of the things that's nice about having these books stick around for a while you know is that people do form relationships to them you know and and and let you know what those relationships are it's that shame you know I always thought that with that shame got a little bit squeezed by the fact that the book before it was Midnight's Children in the book after it was the Satanic Verses and they these two sort of differently very noisy books but now I'm finding that that book is getting more and more attention it's as if it's more topical now than it was when I wrote it you know and it just does seem to be or and I picked it up the other day because somebody wrote me a letter about it and I told you this really is it's very contemporary this book except that it's 23 years old but sometimes you know the you know events catch up with you and I think what's happened is that the kind of material in that book is much more what everyone's thinking about now than it was then no so so that's a book who maybe whose time has come no but it's true by far by far the best mail comes from writing for children no question I mean the most enjoyable letters I've ever got were after I wrote a redundancy of stories in fact my all-time favorite fan mail letter was from a young girl who would have been I guess 12 then so that was 1990 so she'd be now 28 and she said that she was a in I can't believe in Massachusetts Connecticut somewhere she was at high school and and she said you must reply to this letter at once because when I grow up I intend to be a world leader I thought you know answer this girl right now and of course 10 years ago I should be President anyway it had an emotional punch I know lots of readers were in tears reading it on and I'm wondering before we open this up to the audience I talked to a writer who said if I don't cry writing it you won't cry reading at all do you sometimes I've only once in my life cried writing it so no I don't think some people cry more easily than other people I mean that I don't say that's a good thing or a bad thing either way fact I mean I don't cry very easily and I often wish that I cried more easily because it would be useful sometimes but there was a moment writing this writing Shalamar clan when I did find myself crying and you feel kind of stupid you think why am i crying I just made this stuff up write something down and start booing about it it feels kind of dumb but it's true that that's the only time that ever happened and now thinking back I mean I it's clear that that I was in a very emotional state you know writing some of those climactic passages of the book when when things go badly long wrong in this little village in Kashmir and I once you know I used to be I used to almost not want to go to my desk in the morning because of because of what I knew I had to write and I used to try I tried to find ways of changing the plot so that I didn't have to write some of the bad stuff you know and then of course had to smack myself down and get on with it but yeah that's the only time that I want to talk about your writing discipline and hundreds of other things but I want to allow people who have come to see and talk with you a chance to ask a question and there maybe is that maybe as they're thinking of that so whoever is a brave soul out there and would like to ask the first question I'll talk a little bit about you you talked about sitting down at your desk and you were unlike some writers who can write in a cafe or in a bus you need to be at your desk with your things tell us a little bit I know I do and there's a wonderful essay of David Mamet's called writing in restaurants and and he did that you know and and I know other people who who do that in fact my great friend Helen Fielding you know who wrote that great work Bridget Jones's Diary she does that she goes and sits in a corner of a restaurant with her laptop scribbles and I can't I mean I just can't do it i if i if i try to do it nothing i never use anything that I've done you know so it's it's and you know poets going to sit on the trees doesn't work you know it's covered it's almost contemptible really poets you know the lines don't go all the way across the page and the lines don't go all the way down the page then they've you know they've got 60 pages they call it a book typewriters being very very concerned about sending in a very very tidy manuscript and and so the computer is help so the computers helped a lot that I remember years and years ago when I was much younger doing a joint reading event in London with Fay Weldon and at the end of it the question from the audience that it was about that it was about you know when you when you write something you don't like do you cross it out you exit out and go on or do you take the bit of paper out of the computer a typewriter pretty new bit of paper in and everybody in the audience titted because they thought it was such a stupid question except for Fay and me because we both knew that you take the piece of paper the computer has saved being very good for the stationery bills in that regard yeah no I was late getting to computers actually oh because I was nervous that it would change something indefinable and I wouldn't like wouldn't what other people wouldn't like it well just something would be wrong about it um I think the first book I wrote on a computer was the moon's last side which came out in 95 so it's not that long ago you know but I'm completely converted and and actually the the portability of it is a great thing if you have the kind of life I have which involves bumming around a lot and the fact that you can have your entire office you know in this one thing you can have all your variant drafts and all your notes and everything in there so now I'm completely sold on it and I think it's sped up the process speeded up the process because it was taking you five years to produce it still you know I mean this one was for this one was for but it's not as long as those I mean the three really long books I've written Midnight's Children and The Satanic Verses and the ground beneath her feet I mean there's a upwards of two hundred and fifty thousand words each and this one isn't without their that they're like six hundred and fifty page books you know and Shannon malecon is 400 you know so it's a it's a it's shorter thank God I can't do that stuff anymore yes you're such an astute observer of human nature and of the turbulent times that we live in and I'm wondering if you would tell us if you're hopeful about anything yeah hopeful about some things but no I mean I think it's you know it's a bad time I mean III I don't remember a worse time you know including Vietnam because at least Vietnam was specific you know this is much more diffuse the only thing that I think is this I think that I think that the phenomenon of Islamic radicalism in my view may be a short term phenomenon and the evidence for this or APA piece of evidence for this is that wherever in the world it has become really powerful it has very rapidly become detested you know so in Iran its detested in Afghanistan the Taliban were detested you know in Algeria although there was initial appeal for groups like the FIS the GI a you know in a very short space of time they were loathed you know so it seems as if there is an appeal because you can't deny it there's an enormous appeal at the moment in across the Muslim world for this very firebrand version of Islam particularly amongst young men but when it becomes when it actually takes over the country you know people very quickly realize that it isn't at all what they want you know and so that suggests to me that it may not be forever you know and if you think about the Soviet Union was what 70 years you know it's it felt like forever until the day it vanished and when the day came we just blew away like dust you know and I think this may be a phenomenon of that kind now of course 70 years is a long time in a human life you know it's a long time it's too long for me you know but in kind of in the eye of history you know it's nothing and I mean that's as optimistic as I can get you you mentioned this Islam and you've made a distinction between Islamists and Muslims yeah have you know most most people even if they are religious are not particularly religious you know I mean whatever the religion is for most people religion is just one of the many things by which they define themselves you know the thing that the thing that we're all being faced with right now is a highly organized politicized movement which uses the language of religion you know and that's and that of course oppresses Muslim people around the world more than anyone else you know I mean who do you think is oppressed by the ayatollahs of Iran you know it's it's who was oppressed by the Taliban I mean one of the things that I tried to write about in this book shut him out of the clown was the way in which one version of Islam the very mystical Sufi inspired gentle version of Islam that existed in the Kashmir Valley is now being itself oppressed by Islamic radicalism coming across the border you know in Bosnia there were there were there were complaints about Bosnian Muslims from other more radical Muslim countries that the Bosnian Muslims weren't Muslim enough you know because they were too tolerant or something you know so it's not this the monolithic thing and that's why I've never really bought the Huntington clash of civilizations thesis because that suggests that there are these two blocks at war with each other there whereas actually the battles inside the blocks I mean after all there's a big argument inside the West right you know about how things should be so the West is not monolithic because nor is the other side you are on a university campus here with a lot of young people very bright young people getting ready to start out on their journey as you did with your 6,000 mile trip what advice could you give them because they're the ones were counting on to right the world from the course it's on today well I think I think these are not very argumentative times and I would recommend that people got became more argumentative really I mean I'm very surprised by how passive a time this is you know and I don't think that's good for a culture to be that passive and accepting and so I think you know more upper to behavior that would that would be that would be my suggestion we're gonna get the microphone to the next person who has a question so if you could you do go ahead I'm very interested in the role of literature and social change and along the lines of what you just recommended a more argumentative culture a book that I've used with my undergrads that they really dig is a zero feces reading Lolita and Tehran and I wondered I had two questions about that first of all what you think of the book and whether you esteem it and secondly what I find so interesting are the texts that she uses of course Lolita being one which is more controversial but then Jane Austen and more works of literature that perhaps two literary critics and professors here wouldn't seem to serve an explicit social purpose but in that setting with those women reading together he seemed to serve an important social purpose yeah I like it I like it a lot the book and I like it precisely because it works through it tells the story of Iran in this rather indirect way you know through these texts I mean I think you know anyone who has any knowledge of the condition of women in third-world countries will easily see that Jane Austen is a great third world writer you know I mean I growing up I've often said it about India you know if you if you look at the condition of these extremely educated very capable women who are often I mean as in Jane Austen you know trapped by the culture into husband hunting you know you can easily you can translate Jane Austen into contemporary Delhi or Bombay or Calcutta a very very easily you know so so that I thought was a from my point of view was quite a natural one you know I mean I thought sometimes I think she she strains for the symbol and I thought the Lalita thing I'm not sure she quite pulled that off really I mean her reading of Lolita in Tehran I'm not sure that it was the most interesting reading even though clearly it's the best title we'll get the microphone to the next person who has a question but it's hard to imagine being in danger for writing a book and yet there are writers all over the world who are in danger and oppressed I'm wondering before we get to that next questioner what do you see is the role or responsibility of today's writers you know very few writers go looking for trouble I mean very very few there are some but very very few do but it often comes looking for them you know and and that's and then you have to find what you do about it you know it's not even new you know the poet Ovid was exiled because of because the emperor didn't like you know what he said and spent the rest of his life in exercise it's a it's an ancient problem power an art you know and I think it's to do with the fact that that the great not even the great but the true artist is speaking from a completely independent point of view you know nobody owns him or her you know he doesn't he's not speaking on behalf of an ideology or or in the service of something he's just offering a vision he's saying I think it's like this you know and often if you are a person of power trying to impose another kind of vision on your society that independent vision of the artist can seem very irksome you know and I think that's why writers so often get in trouble and then they have to deal with it please my question refers to an outfit that you wrote in 2001 in New York Times this is about Islam in that article in that op-ed you criticize the apologetic discourses that try to dissociate the the implications of 9/11 from a discussion of the crisis within the Muslim world and the failure of Muslims to modernize my question is how are you how would you compare the recent controversy about the Danish cartoons and what it generated in light of your experiences and how the media did contribute well you know I think there's two different it's far as the cartoons are concerned I mean you can like or dislike the cartoons and you can believe it was right or wrong to publish them that's one conversation you know the other conversation is about violence and intimidation and I think the problem is that once violence and intimidation enters the subject it changes the subject you know after that the question is how do you response to violent how do you respond to violence and intimidation and I think a lot of the people unfortunately who claimed to be acting sensitively at out of respect were actually just acting out of fear you know and and I think that's a very dangerous path because to give in to intimidation guarantees that there will be more intimidation it doesn't guarantee that there will be less there will be more you know and so it's a you know it's a slippery slope and that's my view and and well it's a long subject but let's leave it at that I'm deeply struck by your sense of humor I I really enjoy your the way that you depict your characters and the and the conversational styles particularly those South Asian immigrants so my question was since your immigration to this country have you noticed a difference in the what the America if you can call it the American sense of humor and how does it differ from how you have depicted well there is there are those who say that America is an irony free zone I'm not entirely sure that I agree because I think in we live in a time in which people tend to miss irony you know and it's a problem beyond the shores of this country it was not it's not only an American problem but I think I remember at the time of the popularity of Monty Python's Flying Circus I remember somebody offering a very interesting description of the difference between British and American comedy in which they said that British comedy was based on the question wouldn't it be funny if right if people had silly walks or whatever it might be whereas American comedy was based on the question isn't it funny that and was therefore more naturalistic if you like so it's more Seinfeld than Monty Python and I thought that was a really interesting distinction that seemed to have a lot of truth no so so I don't think I don't think it's that there's no humor and I mean people always say about India you know people say people in India have no sense of humor it's the thing you people in India say about themselves and don't realize how funny there be but it's it's not it's just it it's different slightly different you know and I but I think the problem now is that because we're all watching each other's television programs and movies and so on is that there's a kind of homogenizing taking place you know I think everyone has American sense of humor now unfortunately because of the because of the power of the American you know visual media movies and television speaking of movies you said that in a formational way movies have had more of an impact on you than novels you say you're obsessed with movies yeah I mean I may be slightly exaggerating but oh but only slightly you know because first of all I grew up in a giant movie city you know if you grew up in Bombay it's a biggie bigger movie town than Hollywood you know the more movies are made a year in Bombay that I made in California or anywhere else actually and you know I had bits of my family that were involved with the movies and and so on so anyway you drive around the city he's happening you'd see the movies everywhere you know so that's one thing and then I mean I think when I was a college student in in England it was an extraordinary moment for world cinema and I mean in retrospect you can look back and say that it was really the last time that the Hollywood studio system lost control of the world market you know but but what actually happened was this explosion of great movies and and you know I'm talking about the early in middles in late 60s but really from the late 1950s until the early 1970s was probably the greatest period in the history of the silent cinema and to be watching those movies as the new movies of the week was amazing for this week the new God our next week the new Fellini the week after that the new Visconti then the Birdman then the Ray then the Vita then the Polanski then that you know that every single week new Kurosawa the new this and that it was an astonishing moment to go to the cinema you know and the excitement of seeing those films as new movies rather than as the classics you know was quite astonishing I mean and at that time I certainly felt when I was at Cambridge that I got a lot of my education in the movie theater you know and not in the library and I think now it's you know it has had a consequence in the way I write and one of the things you learn is that the things people like about your writing are exactly the things that other people don't like about your writing and so the people who like my writing tend to praised it for being visual and the people who don't like my writing tend to attack it for being too visual you know I'm not sure what's wrong exactly with being too visual but apparently there is something wrong with it we want to get a question over here but we want maybe we'll talk about the fact that you wanted to be an actor yourself at one time mr. Rushdie I'm very interested in your view of literature in politics now you've addressed the idea of the role of literature in politics in a number of different ways from it shouldn't be left to politicians and it's a way that we find a melange among us create a melange among us well what I think is this I think it's quite risky so for literature itself to directly take on political arguments because it can make the book of very transient value you know if it's if it's just a debt problem that when the subject changes you know as the subject always does change the book will lose its a lot of its value also of course particularly as we were saying me books are very slow to write and the world changes at unusually high speed these days so so a book is not necessarily the best way to address some hot subject so I've found that when I've been really worked up about something I tend to write some non-fictional piece of journalism and that's a faster and my way my view a more appropriate response to something in the news know what I think happened in my novels is that I've I felt come to feel that these days public issues public events shape private lives to a degree that they never used to and if you go back a couple of hundred years people could lead entire lives quite separate from the news you know and and the ability of historical events to impact on people's daily life was much less you know now it's much more and so now it seemed to me that a part of the explanation of the life of a fictional character must arise out of the times he lives it you know and and and what is that interaction between the individual and the larger the largest public sphere you know and I think that's become something I've become more and more interested in because I think in many ways I'd like to escape it you know it'd be very nice to write books in which you don't have to take on what's going on in the world you know but I've so far failed to do it I'm trying to do it right now by retreating 400 years I think this in the next book I'm writing takes place in the early 16th century and I'm already failing to exclude but I'm trying hard an unflattering movie was made in Pakistan International guerrillas and the villain in the movie who was literally killed by a falling Koran was named Salman Rushdie you said oh by actually by a thunderbolt emerging from was dreadful and appalling and when it came to England the government banned it but you very aggressively wrote to the government and said you disagreed with that yeah it was just an odd thing to be fighting a you know an anti censorship battle and to be defended by an act of censorship so I mean the film really was awful but I it wasn't exactly aggressive it said I was told that one of the reasons the film was was denied a certificate was the law the law because because the film was clearly defamatory and if it had been given a certificate by the board in question then the board would have been liable I mean I could have sued them too yeah because they would become party to the defamation and that's why they didn't give it the certificate and so I basically wrote to them giving up my right of legal recourse and I just said you know I will not I won't sue anyone the result was that the movie just yeah exactly and I think was you know had the film being banned it would have become you know hot video and and everybody its power would have been enormously magnified the fact that it was allowed out you know like vampires in the light of day it just shriveled and it was already it was I think a good demonstration of the of that of the free speech position which is you know it's better to have things out in the open then under the carpet your style has been characterized as as magic realism and and you've been called a storyteller of prodigious powers you're you've been recognized for your verbal inventiveness and I'm wondering where your interest in language came from because I think it's partly that you do go back and forth from different toys and languages yeah and I think the truth is that every every writer worth anything has some kind of very exceptional relationship with language but you know and and and the greater the writer the more recognizable that voice you know I mean only Hemingway sounds like anyway you know only Garcia Marquez sounds like Garcia Marquez it's a it's one of the one of the well what are the necessary aspects of the job is to try and find how to speak in your own voice to how to write the sentences that are your sentences to write and not someone elses you know and so I think that's a it's also a thing that it's very hard to teach you know I think I think writing it seems to me comes out of voice and ear and vision and none of that can be taught you know all you what you can teach is craft which helps you do it better no but if you don't have those things you don't have anything really so I think like many writers it was very important for me to find a way of of discovering my voice and and your writer and I think one of the things that helped was coming out of a multiple language environment you know and I mean in India you grow up you speak lots of languages you have to you know because otherwise you can't talk to enough people and so you know I grew up my mother time was Urdu the national language was Hindi I went to an English medium school and the local languages in Bombay were Marathi and Gujarati so that's five and and then there were others I'm not saying I spoke them all equally well but but if you have that kind of noise going on around you it I think it makes you playful with language I think it mean it means you can borrow from whichever language whatever word you need and so quite often when people speak in Bombay the a sentence will contain words from more than one language you know so and yes you use whatever is the best expression or the best word or whatever the dude that you have available from your little bunch of languages of course in a written form you can't you cannot do that because you know you have to write in a language oh thank you made-up words well yeah but that's that's very easier actually but what I'm talking about is creating a written down version in one language that feels like that polyglot atmosphere it's not really because it's written in English you know it may be the odd word dubbed it here and there but essentially you're writing in one language but you're trying to give it the rhythms of that that multiple environment and I think that helped a lot when I started to think like that I'm from South Africa and I feel this is one of the great reasons I got on a plane is to hear you talk today thank you you speak I think also as a reader of language and one of the consequences of the levels of noise that you're describing another context is that I think our our silence inside is increasingly invaded by very commercial forms and and reading particularly suffers particularly among young people and I know you're a member also the community of writers as the president of Penn or most recently and what what is it about the culture of reading that you participate in and that hopefully you you see some some improvements because it is possible to very be very pessimistic about the culture of reading well I mean that the reasons for pessimism can be expressed in two words which one is done and the other is Brown I mean that the enormous success of that book I think is the single most depressing fact about the current book scene because it's you know by any standards to say that it's not very good is to be to praise it highly you referring to the DaVinci - yeah yeah that that book type object it's also the same shape as a packet of cereal of course but I think there are you know there are grounds for optimism because you know publishers will whenever in the history of the world you've asked a publisher how things are they'll always tell you they've never been so bad you know I mean they they said that when I was first publishing books 30 years ago and they're still saying it now so publishers have always never had it so bad but actually I think there are substantial readerships for good books still you know I mean there really are and and some people are luckier than others and but i but the problem is and I mean the South African your South African origins will mean mean you know about this is that the problem is not so much whether there's readers as whether the books can be made available in languages that people can read and the translation issue is getting more and more and more difficult so that I mean this country above all you know I mean this is the country in the Western world that translates fewest books and as a result American readers denied the chance to experience a diversity of culture the diversity of expression you know just simply because the books are not available you know in in the language that they can read I think the number of books published translated in a year in this country is less than 3% of the total output and if you compare that to countries like I mean even in England it's it's more like 8 9 percent if once you go to places like France it's like 15 17 20 percent no so now of course you can say the English language has a kind of dominance which explains that in part but as I say even if you look inside the English language world the amount being translated here is as I say it's one-third what's being translated in England and I think that's narrowing the frame in all sorts of ways you know it just means that people can't they don't know the literature's of much of the world and one of the ways in which I learned the world was through literature you know I mean before I had ever been to Latin America I had read the literature of Latin America before I'd ever been to Russia I had read the literature of Russia and really I mean I still don't know Russia very well everything I know what Russia comes out of Russian literature essentially what I suspect it's right because because you know when I did go to Latin America I discovered that all those writers had told me the truth that it really was like that you know it wasn't a fiction about Latin America it was the truth and I thought that's what I discovered with the phrase magic realism I said when people use it they tend to hear the magic and not hear the realism you know whereas in fact one of the things about going to the world of Garcia Marquez as you discover he's telling the truth you know he's not exaggerating he's understating and that and that's really what what I've thought about India you can't tell the truth about India it's too weird nobody would believe it so you so these books which people call fantasies are actually mild understatements of the truth and anyone who's been to India will know that you know but but I think when you haven't been there they read like outrageous exaggerations of reality now when you were in hiding you reread Moby Dick you reread ulysses what's on your bed stained yeah well right now I mean because of the pen festival coming up at the end of the month which even though I'm now the ex-president of Penn so I've now busily you know arranging my presidential archive and and looking to you know build a new career in the future and so on I've been very involved with the festival so I'm still well I'm really trying to you know read some of the writers who are coming whose books I haven't yet read you know so I I have to have a conversation at the public library in New York with a Marty I said at the end of the festival and he's I think written they just written this extraordinary book called identity and violence which is about I think one of the big subjects right now which is identity politics and and how it contributes to discord you know and and so I'm just reading that and and then we're going to discuss that and ayaan Hirsi Ali you know that the the Dutch Somali writer who's who was the one working with Taylor van Gogh when he got killed I mean it was her script that he filmed that he got killed for she's now she's a dutch member of parliament but you know it has security guards and she's coming and she's written I think are extraordinary I mean it said it's a monograph rather than a big book it's called the Caged virgin and it's basically a study of well it's centrally a study of women in Islam at the moment and and uses that as the basis of a larger plan ik about Islam and it's 100 pages long but it I think really very important book many ways fiction not at this moment the problem is I'm trying to start a novel you know and when I'm trying to start a novel I very I don't really read fiction I'm reading around what I'm and since this book takes place in the 60 century I'm diving I'm reading these wonder this wonderful book called shopping in the Renaissance which I strongly recommend it's I mean it's a it's got a comic title but actually if you look go and look at the great paintings of the Renaissance and instead of looking at the Mona Lisa you know if you look at the corner of the picture there's somebody selling bread you know and and if you look in the corners of these works of art you actually see ordinary life you know and and what you need if you're going to write a novel you don't need the political history you need ordinary life you need to know how did people go shopping you know if your tooth hurt what did the dentist do to you that stuff you know and so I'm just trying to and in my novel there's a kind of it's novel is partly set in 16th century India and partly in 16th century Italy and there's a journey between the two and so I have to learn the ordinary life of two worlds but just one and I'm reading that that's what I'm reading I think we will wrap things up I have one final question and that is by any measure you've enjoyed tremendous success as a writer a significant body of work literary awards Fame but I'm wondering if you have become the writer you had always wanted to be that's a good question not exactly because I think life never goes where you think it's going you know and I think even in the course of a single novel you know you never quite finish the book that you start you know that somewhere in the act of writing the book things shift and change and and did you discover things and you you come to the conclusion that something you thought was a good idea wasn't that good or you know the book evolves and and by the time especially if you take four or five years to write it by the time you finish it it is not quite the book that you said hopefully it's a better book than the one that you started you know but it's certainly a slightly different than the one that you started and I think that happens to the Holda tree life as well you know I because also the world changes in ways that you can't foresee and affects you in ways that you can't foretell you know so no I mean if I if I add in my you know when I started out I mean it's not my first novel was published in 1975 so it's now 31 years ago since I started publishing books and more than that since I started writing them I couldn't have dreamed of sitting here you know I could never have never a thought I'd have got here I mean even you know when Midnight's Children was came out I mean I was very happy that he got good reviews you know and I I thought well maybe it'll be bought by a couple of thousand people who are not close friends or family members you know that would have been fine you know whoever did the idea of this kind of global thing going on with books selling hundreds of thousands of copies and been translated into 42 languages I would never in my wildest dreams have thought that that would happen so glad it did well thank you all for coming and thank you very much

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Id: 1XZwrqlHMb8

Length: 59min 14sec (3554 seconds)

Published: Mon Mar 10 2008