AGO Futures: Salman Rushdie

good evening everyone thank you so much for joining us I'm Heidi Wright Meyer deputy director and chief of education and public programs here at the AG oh and it's my great pleasure to welcome you all to our institution the AG o operates on land that is the territory of the Anna schnappi nation and was also the territory of the window and the Honan Shawnee the dish with one spoon one pot belt covenant is an agreement between the Honu Shawnee Confederacy and the ANA snobby three fires Confederacy to peacefully share and care for the resources around the Great Lakes Toronto is also governed by a treaty between the Federal Government of Canada and the Mississauga's of the credit Toronto has always been a trading center for First Nations as many of you know the new agey o Annual Pass gives us unlimited access to the AG o collection and all special exhibitions for only $35 in the past since May when we launched the past visitors the numbers are 28 per hour we are actually selling 28 per hour on a 24-hour cycle we're selling 680 per day and we have a total of 77,000 people who have joined us as of today as part of this initiative everyone who is 25 and under is free and of those 70,000 30 percent of them who have joined us are under 25 so I think it's an extraordinary initiative to bring new audiences to the AGL I want to thank our sponsors and partnerships tonight firstly thank you to the TD and the ready commitment our lead sponsor at the AG o4 fall talks screenings and performances their generous support on our programming makes it all possible I also want to thank penguin Random House Canada also for joining us in this series and thanks to another storybook shop or here tonight and just so you all know we have 250 pre signed books for you which our guest of honor actually pre signed them for us there'll be no book signings but those books are available for sale I also want to give a shout out to our great team here at the AG o my colleagues in Arms Debbie Jana Saltzman Kathleen McLean and Annie Roper who have made it all possible and also our media team so as many of you know I'm sure you've joined us before the HEI was setting its site on expanding its vision and its responsibility really to lead global conversations and represent a city we live in we continue to bring to the fore conversations and exhibitions that are demonstrating the breadth of artistic practice but also I think bringing the most relevant thinking and creative practices in the world to our stage into our building in two weeks we are opening a show of early work by the baroque artist Rubens and the show really holds some canonical works but what it also does is demonstrate how an influential artist shaped a city and a place at a particular moment in time something that I think is in great importance when we think about the relevancy of art and culture now and what a difference it can make we also on October 23rd are opening up a first major exhibition in of hito sterile who's the artist theorist and acute observer of the contemporary world she was recently listed as one of the most powerful people in the art world by art review but moreover she's somebody who's really making a difference in contemporary culture today she's also speaking on the 23rd of October so please join us tonight's talk is part of the work we're doing of how we're driving public conversations this evenings event is part of a series called futures which sole purpose is to really bring leading international voices here to examine current issues it's an ongoing series and last weekend we welcomed Ione Kline please check the a geo online for forthcoming for forthcoming talks tonight is going to be very difficult to top it is an opportunity we have to bring one of those seminal thinkers to our stage our guests here are part of that work to really expand dialogue and really expand thinking kandi Palmiter is a recovered lawyer turned feminist comic who was raised by bikers in the wilds of northern New Brunswick she's an activist actor writer international speaker and award-winning TV and radio personality and has executive produced three films on meg mock culture she also recently was named by Margaret Atwood one of the twelve international women who are shaping our future and she thankfully lives in our city she is hosting our guests too it is a cliche but needs no introduction he's the author of 12 novels one collection of short stories for works of nonfiction he's co-edited two anthologies he's a former president of pen America center and was knighted in 2007 for his services to literature and he's here tonight with his new book key short he is a seminal thinker and is truly changing the way we think about many many things writing history and the world around us so without further ado may I welcome kandi Palmerton and Salman Rushdie well I want your bio-data [Laughter] it really it really is fun and you know I get to interview a lot of people I've interviewed people from Margaret Atwood to Wayne Gretzky from Oliver Stone to Kurt Russell never have I had so much feedback after an interview has been announced then when the word got out that I'd be speaking with Sir Salman Rushdie I was inundated with letters and emails and I I was looking at them all and I was thinking it's really interesting cross-section of people and I picked my three favorite comments from all the social media obviously a lot of literary people were into it and I think my favorite of those was your interviewing the most important literary figure of the past 50 years you must be nervous no pressure at all and then of course there are those people who love watching you on Bill Maher and various other things and and I got a comment on that that said Rushdie is one of the most lucid observers of global politics on the planet today that's pretty nice but then my favorite from a young follower who maybe isn't a reader he said oMG so cool cool spelled ke WL it's that guy from the Bridget Jones movie yes no I'm glad you're highlighting the most important work so you clearly have a very wide and broad audience and I'm going to go from talking about Bridget Jones to talking about Taylor Swift which I can tell some people are already thinking what's happening where are we including me yeah now Taylor Swift is very famous for something called Easter eggs do you know what an Easter Egg is in that contest nope okay so what Taylor does is she will do an album cover or a picture or a video and within it there are tiny little hints of an album that might be coming or a song that might be coming and everyone thinks Taylor Swift is the originator of the Easter Egg the moment that I was asked to do this conversation and they told me the book is keyShot and it is a retelling of Don Quixote I said oh my goodness Taylor Swift did not invent the easter egg because I remember a very unknown writer named Salman Rushdie who in 1980 at 75 wrote a book called grimace which I read and at the very end of chapter 24 our two main characters were walking out of the scene and it read thus on their rickety bicycles dressed in their forlorn garments flapping eagle and Virgil Jones Don Quixote and Sancho road to their tryst I forgot that so was it was it a foreshadowing well you know by accident it is actually what are the one of the scariest things about having been doing this for quite a long time is is is unintentional repetition because you think remember I mean and the person who always reminds you of this is your translator because nobody ever reads you as carefully as your translator so I had this thing where my Danish translator gets in touching and he says so on page 75 of your new book such-and-such character says so-and-so and as of course you know 15 years ago in this other novel of yours on page 278 this completely different character says the same thing and I just want to know why you wanted to make this intertextual connection between the two books you have to pretend you did it on purpose like this I read that novel probably when I was 20 years old and I still at college and it was quite hard going because the standard available translation at that time in English the penguin classics edition was not the most lively translation it was a little kind of stodgy and you had to sort of smoke your way through it and I remember thinking I'm not sure that I get why everybody says all this stuff about this but afterwards I found him a better translation that actually the 18th century British novelist Tobias Smollett did a translation of don quixote that is it's much more kind of rambunctious and fun but now I went back to it everybody was in 1950 about 1915 that's you're looking fabulous yeah that's right said Mike by type in World War one look 2015 was the 400th double anniversary of Shakespeare and Cervantes and and I was asked to write something about it and the literary events one would be asked about it I thought I'd better go read this book again so and what has happened in the meanwhile is the publication of a brilliant translation which is the Edith Grossman translation and I had so much more fun reading it right this time and I had been thinking I'd been thinking about a road novel I'd been thinking about a book that because my previous novel actually my previous two novels had mostly not 100% but mostly taken place in in New York City and I remember when I finished the golden house I was already determined that the next thing would leave town and I actually initially thought I might write a nonfiction book I might rent a car I first thought this when I was turned 66 that I thought I should go for a drive down route 66 and I I never did it never happened and I always kind of regretted it so I thought maybe not necessarily route 66 but I can just get a car and drive across the middle of the country and look at it you know look at this place that you know the people in the people in New York and LA and call the flyover States because you fly over them so I wanted to do that and then I actually thought I asked my younger son who was then he's 22 now says four years ago he'll be 18 and I said did he want to go with me because I thought it might be interesting to have another generational perspective or whatever happened and he said yes and then he paused and he said but Dad are you gonna drive [Laughter] what I said I read driving since before you were born what are you talking about and he said no no no I I think I should drive so we made so half made this plan and then Cervantes got in the way because when I finished reading this his book I suddenly thought you know I don't want to do it I want to make it up I want to allow my imagination to take the journey so that I could make happen what I want to happen rather than just be at the mercy of whatever does have rain you know and so I fired him my son and and decided to decide to write write it as a novel so so he gave me the starting point will you still make the trip actually how both my son's now say we should do it mm-hmm so Scott I'll sit at the back seat they can fight over who drives we might do we might do it actually you might do I've heard you in many interviews refer to your main character and key shot as an old fool yeah and when I was breathing it oh I related to him in some ways I'm not ancient but I'm 50 yeah which means the menopausal and growing a goatee I wasn't expecting have the goatee part yes we're looking similar at this point but what it made me wonder is are you affected now as time marches on even as a reader for me I'm in a panic I feel like I'm 50 my mother lived a 90 that gives me 40 more reading years who can I fit in and who can't I yeah as a writer is it affecting you yes yeah because I mean I'm you know I just I'm 72 and it becomes quite clear that the amount of time I mean this is this is my 19th published book and it's quite clear that I'm not going to write another 19 so so what it does is it focuses the mind and tells you not to waste time and use the time you've got to do what you really want to do that that for sure then actually the novel in the novel both he shot himself and the second story line the the the ostensible author of the of the key shot storyline they're both very they're preoccupied with the question of mortality you know that so it's there in the book for sure and that's because it's there in my head too I mean I take the view of mortality I know that Woody Allen is unfashionable but but but there's a there was a interview with Woody Allen where some sycophantic journalist was asking him if he was happy with the fact that he would always live on in his movies and he said no I would prefer to live on in my apartment that's essentially by position are you trying though to work out what you think about your own mortality through this character and why do you always refer to him as a fool because he's crazy wonderfully crazy but he's a sort of holy fool you know very sweet I think and that I think he has in common with some of the Cervantes character that who you also who is also kind of an idiot mm-hmm but he's but you're very fond of him you know no I don't think I mean I think I know what happens in you at the at the end of life you die I don't have to work that part out I just want to postpone it know what I think about him is that one of the differences between Mikey shorts and Cervantes's tij is that the most prominent characteristic of Don Quixote is that he's melancholy you know he's known as the knight of the dollar s countenance so he has a sad face my character for the first moment that I began to sketch out passengers about him insisted on being absurdly cheerful and so optimistic yes hopeful that's what I love about endlessly hopeful I mean about everything I mean he falls in love with this TV talk show host who is super famous very rich immensely powerful beautiful young and way out of his league and he just decides you know that that he will prove his Worth and win her hand and nothing deters him because he's in the world of anything is possible yes he's lives in the age of anything can happen which is where we all live and I know a lot of people think the age of anything can happen is a negative but it has these posters as he says all these crazy things could happen you know countries can walk off the edge of a cliff you know the President of the United States could decide that the way to attack a hurricane is with a nuclear bomb well and just maybe this extraordinary superstar woman will fall for this crazy old coot it might seem far-fetched however we live in the age of the far-fetched my father was an indigenous alcoholic raised in a tarpaper lean-to found sobriety lived the last fifty-one years of his life sober in 46 had his seventh kid me I went on to graduate from law school and who knew at 50 while growing my goatee I'd just be hanging out chatting with Sir Salman Rushdie you see is the world yeah yeah I mean vice versa I get I get to hang out with you so so so yeah anyway so I do think he's he's kind of been made stupid by watching too much television mm-hmm as I almost was researching the book tell me it wasn't Bachelorette nah man no I you know I mean here's somebody who spends his life watching reality television and it's kind of softened his brain and I thought and wasn't what did you find it as horrible as I felt my brain softening as I watched no I had to do my due diligence to this so I watched not very wretched the Real Housewives are here and they're the other place and and you know - OH really went in I know that Kardashian I know he's kind of like a four-letter word but without even a safety harness now I don't have to do it anymore what about the fact that we're supposed to be in me - this is supposed to be a time when women are finding their place yet I still you know know so many people who can't wait to get home from work to watch The Bachelorette and I mean nothing makes women look stupider yeah why why is this happening at the same time well because television makes people stupid is it or is it that stupid people are being drawn to these what's maybe who knows it's a it's a vicious circle the TV makes you stupid and so you watch the TV so it makes you stupider so you watch the TV no I mean the serious point I'm making if there's a lot of fun in the book made of these shows right but I think underneath it I guess what I'm trying to say is that if we live in a moment in which the boundaries between truth and untruth deliberately blow mm-hmm on purpose you know because reality television is not reality you know it's a it's enormous ly manipulated and massaged and scripted and people are told when to have a fight and the time lines have changed by every editing and and so on so it's it's anything but real right yet it's presented Israel and some people consume it Israel and I think when you're in that world which that's just one example but you know on the internet you have websites which are truthful and valuable and authoritative and other websites which are garbage and they both look the same and they both seem to have the same level of authority and I think we do live in this moment where it's hard for it's hard for many people to properly distinguish between truth and lies and when you get into that world it's a dangerous world to be in and an oddly fiction which tells you upfront that it's not true may be a way of regaining our sense of the truth well it's much the way I like to use comedy I always say it's like a rubber sword I can make a point without drawing blood yeah but I agree with that I think comedy is did that rob a sword of yours maybe the sharpest weapon that there is well when you talk about that that what's real and what's not real in a way for me I feel it's a second occurrence of that as an indigenous person here in Canada of course our background the this is I don't come from a literary family so when I was trying to explain to my family how important this was and I said he's Indian and my of course my family was saying from what First Nation and so of course I had explained oh he's dots not feathers it's different but but a very similar experience with our friends the English yes and through residential school my community lost touch with what was real and what was real and now it's I look out and it seems like the entire population is finding themselves in that same position yeah and I think well it's we can talk about colonialism all night if you like but I do think I do think that one of the one of the important techniques of colonialism was to tell people lies about their own history and and many post-colonial nations have had to fight back against that but retell themselves the stories of themselves so yeah I mean so I think maybe then if you're you know I spent most of my life is an immigrant somewhere yeah twice over first from India to England and then from England to America and that happens to immigrant communities every day that there's a false narrative about you that's out there and that you have to fight against by by telling your own story you know and so anyway that's that the serious thing under the book is this question of truth and lies the Grad which is related in our time I think to the question of sanity and insanity because we are in some way being driven as societies are being driven made unhinged by being lied to all the time I mean I don't want to mention the name of the show Nagi mentioned that we just called him 45 yes you don't mention him in the book either but it's lovely I really just thought I don't want his name in the book I just don't want it that we spend so much of our day being forced to think about him that I thought in the between the in the 400 pages of this book between these hard covers he's not getting in there I really appreciated that I really did yeah and also because I thought you know here's this novel which is a journey across the continent this enormous beautiful unbelievably varied interesting place I thought it's so much more interesting than the occupant of the White House it's sure it and I were to write about it I want to write about this place and this and and the here's another thing I think about the United States is it historically it has been very optimistic it's a kind of optimistic country sometimes that's little self-aggrandizing you know the kind of exceptionalism mm-hmm but there's a sense of that things are possible and so I thought send this optimist across the country which may not be at its most hopeful moment and just see what happens in the engagement of those two things and but I said too soon that I wasn't I really wasn't interested in trouble you know I was interested in that one of the things that really took me in the book as a book is funny I've always found your writing to be funny though even the things that and again I interviewed Jennifer Aniston once and I said to her what does it like to be 50 and they're still asking you about the haircut and the boy you had when you were 22 so I'm not gonna ask anything about a certain book from 30 years ago Oh like Jennifer Aniston's hairdo I'm sure you're tired yeah it sort of is for me Jennifer his hairdo yeah it's a very good way to think about yeah but I have eaten that book I found funny but in this travel across America there were a couple of moments that were incredibly serious for me and one brought me instantly back I remember being ten years old it was 1978 and my parents wanted me to see our country and we climbed into a half-ton truck in northern New Brunswick and we drove from northern New Brunswick to Victoria British Columbia and my father was the kind of and who was scared of nothing very brave man and I remembered being in a little Valley out west and it was the day was getting long and we were gonna take a hotel for the evening and I was in the middle between mummy and daddy and the truck windows were down it's a beautiful summer day and we slowed down and started to pull off the road and there were about five men sitting on the front porch of this hotel and I noticed my father looking at them and them looking back at him and just ever so calmly he increased the speed and we pulled out onto the road and I was looking at his face and couldn't figure out what I was seeing we drove for about another six hours and set up a tent and once they thought I had gone to sleep I heard my father say that wasn't the place for an Indian man and his white wife and beige baby so hopefully we'll be safe here for the night and I had this incredible epiphany that oh my goodness that was fear I had never seen my father scared before and your character has those experiences that I just thought you know racism is an everyday fact in America and for and most of it of course the primary subject of racism in America is between the white and black communities so and these are Indian American people traveling right but in the place of Indian Americans in the racial subject is complicated and has sometimes been easier much easier for them than in some other countries but in the time after 9/11 it has got more complicated and dangerous because people can't tell the difference between shades of brown you can't tell the difference between a Sikh turban and dirt right Islamist turban and so on and so I thought it would be chickening out I thought to write a book of this about this journey and not to mention any moment of hostility as you as you described of yeah and so there are three or four of those moments in some cases it's just like in the kid story you just said about your father like just a sense that this is the wrong place to be yeah and sometimes this is just something it's verbal and at least one occasion in the book it's physically dangerous so I wanted that to be there because it's it's because it's true no and those bits of the book are yeah not funny although sometimes they're written funny yeah when you tear because you got away from them yes I mean there's a moment in the book in actually in New York when they get to New York in Central Park where you would think you know liberal New York doesn't happen which is why I wanted to put it there right where there are these men in suits who come across young Sancho is the son of the tee shot and and they seem to have round their necks dog collars with broken leashes he has a tendency the kid to see visions so he says to them why are you wearing dog collars as they say they they are not it's just something he's seen but they are in fact like the dogs who've been unleashed you know somebody let the dogs out yes and they attack him and beat him up for daring to see who they really are right you know and I I just thought that stuff needs to be there it made me wonder about your own journey you mentioned about the fact that you're in a way you're at home everywhere in a way you're a foreigner everywhere do you miss the feeling of being in your own territory man I live here in Toronto but I never call this home because for me unless I'm on MIG mod territory I never quite feel like I am home do you have I mean I think not exactly because I think that the place that I grew up in Bombay which I don't call them by calling it Mumbai is like calling Saigon Ho Chi Minh City it's like what you know Saigon is no officially called Ho Chi Minh City oh yes nobody calls it how she gets it's like on same thing that city where I grew up you know it's not there anymore mmm I mean the city has changed so much become a larger darker different place and I think the problem of as that about not being able to go home again it's not that I mean I can get on a plane and go right but it isn't there to go to right because it's changed yes yes and you have changed and I've changed so I think you know as the famous opening sentence of Hartley's that go-betweens is the past is another country they do things differently there I think that's true but where you were a child you know and I think it's true it doesn't have to be a different country I mean so many of us leave the town where we grew up we're a child and live somewhere else so then maybe you maybe it's not so easy to go back because it isn't the same so I mean I you know I feel equally at home and not at home in three different cities I mean I feel in New York 20 years and I feel very at ease there even longer than that and I still have very close connections to it and Bombay it is the place where I was a child so I go there I have that feeling that you have when you go to the place with your a child mmm so the idea of home becomes complicated but I think in this age of migration that's almost a commonplace now so many people so many millions and millions of people end up in places which are not the places they started out and many of them are ending up in large urban centers yes which both in Canada and the United States is creating major problems in those small rural areas terms of economic base depression is at an all-time high and as we explore in Keisha opioid drug addiction yeah so and no from listening the interviews that you've done that you've lost a sister to that problem yeah how much of that do you think is from this displacement from the fact that small towns are feeling so well I think I've often left behind I think it has something to do with the feeling of isolation I do I think I think because that's where the problem is it's much more there than in the big cities yeah and I do think we've somehow created an isolated culture in which theoretically we have 27 ways of being in touch with each other now and having quotes friends on quotes quotes followers of quotes yeah and we don't know these people but we're alone yeah but we're alone and I think I think that may have something to do with people reaching for for the consolation if you like of a drug and do you think some of what plays into that is I feel that in this culture we've gotten to a place where we somehow feel that discomfort is unnatural and I think discomfort is is part of life I love to make people uncomfortable my work and even the experience of pain I think it's something that you're meant to live through not mask that's so interesting what you say about discomfort creating discomfort as a response I mean I I think I think one of the things that that just speaking as a reader not as a writer one of the things that great books do when you read them is they jolt you out of an easy place to be they they make you think difficult thoughts about human beings and society and so on you know and and if they're not doing that they're not doing much mm-hmm so I think well I've always thought the thing you want to do is to create a space for the reader to inhabit that the reader kind of wants to be there but once they're in there you can shake them off a bit child so I'm gonna go back to grimace and say that grimace shook me up a bit I'm so happy you're the second person in the world who liked it my favorite book of yours is Shane which we're gonna get to it's well no the other when it came out it was it was generally not well liked except kinda rather wonderfully by Ursula K Le Guin who gave it this wonderful rave review and I've always was for the rest of my life I'd be grateful to her well I was reading along and then the two main characters who were indigenous and we're brother and sister engaged in sex yeah and all my hackles went up and I instantly said now who does this guy think he is writing about indigenous people and making them incestuous all those white people are gonna read this and think that we had sex with our siblings and you know before I could even stop myself I was I almost I almost picked up a phone I was almost one of your trolls and then I said this is Salman Rushdie he's trying to push me somewhere uncomfortable yeah but talk about that a little bit and about your feelings around pushing on some of those boundaries I think pushing on the boundaries is the whole job the whole job the whole just about all of it yeah no I mean of course a lot of the job is telling a story creating people that people want to read about and making you laugh making you cry all that but I do think that pushing outwards you know is is a lot of the is a lot of the thing that is valuable in art there's a there's a wonderful moment in in Saul Bellow's novel the deans December where the main character hears a dog barking in the distance in the winter and he because it's a dog in a Saul Bellow novel we have to know what the dog is talking about and the main character decides of what the dog is doing is is protesting about the limitations of his experience and and what he's saying is for God's sake opened the universe a little more right these are all beautiful very Bolivian sentence it's a very smart dog clearly but I think that idea of opening the universe you know you do that by going to the edges but pushing I think that's part of the job now here in Canada there's been a discussion over the last few years particularly when it comes to non-indigenous people writing indigenous stories and from an indigenous perspective and we've had a few controversies with some writers who were writing as indigenous people and then that became part of the question and my in my favorite book of yours Shane there's this wonderful little exchange which I I wrote down so that I wouldn't mess it up trying to remember it poacher pirates speaking about us in your forked tongue the answer to which is is history to be considered the property only of the participants so talk to me about that a bit because I'm still in this struggling place where I feel and for me its its economic on some level it's it's for years people have made money on our stories but yet from your perspective I love that idea that it doesn't just belong I think you have to I think you have to say that anybody can write about anything but they don't say you have to say that anybody is allowed to write about anything but it doesn't mean that they could get away with it you know I mean I grew up reading books about India written by white people in which the white people were always the center of the story mm-hmm and you know white women would arrive in India and there would always be a Maharajah waiting you know yes but they got off the ship we have those students so they're just an endless supply of Miraj is available for a white yeah and that at least two very famous books Passage to India and the jewel in the crown both have at their centre the story of an alleged rape of a white woman by an Indian man which is both cases is is not true and and it just struck me if we're going to get if we're going to use rape as a metaphor this is the wrong way around yes you know I familiar with people telling the story of my part of the world it might be deeply pissed off about it mm-hmm but I think I mean look even in the golden house I had there's a character who is in the middle of a confusion about about gender about not knowing whether they wish to transition or not right and and I I mean I have I have some you know I know I have some close friends who have gone through this process it saturates right and I thought okay well I do it this is something if people are certainly in New York City's big subject of that moment of it and and so I thought I want that to be a part of the book because I've tried to write about the city at this moment and so on and then I thought okay but now I have to not be stupid about it I have to actually go and find out about it yes and that means getting out of your own comfort zone and going where the story is and talking to people and learning and listening you know and then coming back and doing the best job you can you know I think that I think is legit and also it's legitimate for people then to say to you well you didn't get it right yes yes and I was actually incredibly interested in the fact that when that book came out nobody attacked me yes I know I tried to find I said somebody somebody but there really was but I couldn't find it so I thought I guess my baby didn't step on a lot my yeah maybe not I just thought for sure the sex between brother and sister yes that was gonna get you you know ancestors I mean all you have to do is watch Game of Thrones but yeah nobody has sex with anybody except their brother or sister such a tongue-in-cheek in almost every book I feel like you see the humor of it before you see the intimacy no I think I think if if you're not actually having sex with somebody you love sex is funny it is that's true because it's kind of clumsy and it's yeah we're not almost beautiful and no nobody is accepted in their own opinion yeah or in Hollywood exactly so I've always thought that the only really first one I've always been rather shy about writing about sex there isn't a huge amount of it doesn't seem it well it's lately I've got a bit better at it yeah that's what comes of age you get shameless but for a long time are you for example in Midnight's Children there is a lot of sex sort of taking place but almost all of it takes place off stage but comically trying to hit the spittoon yeah that's that's that was definitely a laugh out loud tell me under my quilt late at night yeah well but there's there's one scene in the Moors last sigh where the character is trying to describe the moment at which his mother and father first made love and he's deeply embarrassed he says now anyone's because nobody wants to talk about your parents have exactly so he's crippled with embarrassment he can't actually talk about it properly and I think you know that to find the funny I think is a good way of talking about sex it's funny I mean it's good other things too but it can also be one of those things that pushes the boundary you know in in the MiG my language there isn't even a word for vagina that's not considered offensive hook so when I do comedy in my own community I talk about vagina a lot and people will get really upset and say that you know that's indigenous that is antithetical to and that has happened to me in times when I have been in a community where the chief has been convicted of sexual assault and re-elected after doing his time which they don't consider offensive but for me to have a microphone in my hand to say vagina so uh sometimes I get so frustrated with the fact that like how do I even argue with you if you don't understand the intellectual nature of what I'm trying to do how is that for you that experience for you because I know you've been criticized you have your trolls out there people don't like to hear the truth then they don't like the years somebody really break it down yeah I think I've just reached the age where I don't give a damn isn't that lovely that age I think I'm just going to I have this just this I have this story to tell I have this thing to explore I have this stuff to get off my chest and I'm just gonna do it and if you don't like it yeah yeah that's why there are more than one books in bookshops I mean I'm not sure that entirely it's a good idea that should really just be mine yes yes sure that but given given democracy etc yeah well what's left of it anyway maybe maybe people should have a choice um I mean I I also I know that if I'm reading a book I don't like I don't finish it hmm I put it down life's too short right so my view is read the books you like love is so prevalent in keyShot and love is a big thing for me I think it's the answer to everything yeah when people talk about reconciliation or race relations or inclusion until people learn first of all to love themselves they're never gonna love one another reconciliation and forgiveness are big things in this book I think they're about loving relationships a lot of the book at the heart of it there are loving relationships that have been wounded or broken or strained no and I not so much romantic love but the family Katy parents and children brothers and sisters you know and the question of whether wounds given or received slights done you know in justices between people who are very intimately related and connected you know whether those things can be forgiven whether they can be healing and renewal you know and and there are three or four of these stories in the book and they don't all end the same way and why now why this book did you choose to delve into that I'm not sure actually I'm not sure I just think that I wanted to write about love that was not romantic love right and I mean the romantic love in the novel is represented by key shots cockeyed obsession with this woman whose name by the way is Salma are yes yeah just one illustration that was very few one consonant away from my name by some accident yeah so when people you know people always now want to know who is the autobiographical character if I say it's her and she has a bipolar problem and she's an opioid addict and and she's female talk show host so obviously that's me but yes that's what in the novel I the romantic although it starts out as a kind of comic thing his room his obsession with her and without telling you what happens it doesn't go in the way you might explain you know but the other things I think partly I wanted to write about diaspora families you know families which are separated by my travel yeah and are often oceans and continents apart and and how that can create emotional distance between people and how some thing that somebody said to you 25 years ago and Ranko and getting your way because you're physically not close to each other you know and I think that's one of the kind of it's part of the immigration story that your families can be separated in that way you can be driving a taxi in Manhattan and your family is in like Azerbaijan of course and I wanted to write about that about about about about whether there are things that are forgivable and whether there are things unforgivable I heard you speak about love in the most beautiful way once when you were being interviewed about your personal life about your wives and as if I was gonna let you get away without talking about that sleaze we're getting the brexit to just hold on take a gravel it's gonna take us a minute but we're gonna get there first wife first wives that breaks it yeah and hopefully you'll still be talking to me buddy and as the two kinds of divorce but what was beautiful is you were talking about your first wife and you were talking about the love the non romantic love the love that you continued to have for her and the fact that you walked with her to the end of her life yes and that was such a beautiful statement of how love can can change and can alter can you just talk about that well you know in that case we were both very young when we met and and we were together for a long time and we just became different people mm-hmm it just stopped working as do yeah but we never stopped being close friends you know and and of course we shared it a child right and then sadly she had breast cancer and then she had was treated and she was better and she was in remission for five years and then at five years is supposed to be you're supposed to be okay right and five years of one week it came back and killed her in two weeks and and you know our son was 19 and it's the hardest thing I've ever had to do is to to help him face that right you know and yeah I mean I was the person sitting there and I'm glad I'm glad that I was but I think it just said such a beautiful example what I heard you speak about yeah well I mean you know she's very significant in my life now when I saw the love in this book it made me think are you in love now I thought I would just try to slide that in the back door and you would tell me y'all know I could not say are you happy there is you know my favorite exchange in Waiting for Godot is when Vladimir and asked Esther go and ask each other if they're happy are you happy what are you happy I don't know are you happy I think so you're happy there yes I'm happy are you happy they say we're both happy yes we're both happy what shall we do now that we're happy and the answer is wait for God oh so yeah well you know I'm gonna interpret happiness now in my own way I'll just go there on my own but the idea of time and how that changes our perceptions of happiness and what we need and and even in some of the comedy of of his your characters obsession you know I think geez when I was 20 how it was fifty year olds I was obsessed with now that I'm 50 it's it seems it's 20 year olds that I'm obsessed with which may not be politically correct to say but it's the reality that I'm living in I loved how you were free about exploring that well I mean you know the point is his it made quite clear that his feelings towards her unimaginably improbable yes and actually the only reason they even meet in the book can I say this without spoiling the book well he's a pharmaceutical salesman and she has she has an interest in in you know vicodin percocet oxy yes and so that's that's how they come together at the most romantic that's cold that's what they're probably what they call beating huge yes that's right but what follows after that is surprising to them both hmm and I want you to just just not to go in the obvious way yeah I wanted something to happen which was unexpected between them and that theme now you're all wondering how I'm going to segue here's how I'm gonna segue that theme of forgiveness and breaking up and still trying to get along let's talk brexit how is that divorce gonna go and will will they still be friends when it's over it's gonna go horribly and no they won't no no I mean it's it's I mean I don't you know I don't live there anymore so I'm watching like everybody else I'm watching from outside but it just seems impossible that that the British turn out to be these crazy people everybody thought they words everybody thought the British were kind of moderate and sensible and middle at the road and you know conservative and it turns out they've mad and are now being led by you know narcissistic rag doll who only only cares about who cares about nothing except his own advancement nothing he'll drive the country over a cliff if he thinks he'll come out of it better and in the state of the world you know we're constantly talking about our kids and the next generation and everybody always wants to leave it to the next generation like somehow that wasn't us at one point and yeah we pooed the bed so you know let's just say they're not going to but I would never let a child watch c-span you know if you're trying to teach you two or three-year-old how to how to bathe that is not the thing to watch they don't set good examples it's so true you know how how can we if the systems don't change how are we ever going to get different results well we're gonna change the system I mean what I do think is that bits of the system are working I think the destruction test of the American system that's being carried out right now the bit of it that has not crumbled is the other low chords for example a lot of the assault on environmental law has been if it has been overturned in the courts after the after the administration has tried to enforce it I think the British Supreme Court well it's conceivable that they might just have saved the country mm-hmm you know by this extraordinary verdict but that the government was deceitful that the Prime Minister lied to the Queen I mean these are things that have never been said about a British prime minister right and there have been some serious lawyers most of the if we have our share as well but I do think that I was worried a lot of avid friends of mine who are constitutional lawyers who were looking at what was happening in the UK said you know this it's kind of too close to call which way the court is gonna go and they're saying you know it might be a 6-5 decision and the consequence of that will be just to deepen the divisions that already existed the country and then they came out with a unanimous decision 11 nil that has been is very important because now there is a law passed in England which makes it illegal for Boris Johnson to leave European Union without a deal right no illegal and that's hopeful and now he's trying to see if he could break the law right you know we have the prime minister of a country openly talking about wanting to break the law and this is the Conservative Party which has always been called the party of law and order yeah but yeah only the ones I like okay yeah but all over it seems right now I keep trying to check myself because I'm saying is it because I'm getting old I don't want to be one of those people that get to a certain age and just say oh what's happening now is so horrible in the day back in the day when I had to walk uphill it's not you think that that's what these leaders are saying there they are create they what they have in common 45 and Bojo mm-hmm oh I like it oh my god there's the next book 35 in BO Jones and even indeed the Prime Minister of India what they're all three doing is to is to invent a golden age that never existed hmm in order to justify what they're doing now hmm so you know the brexit people have this fantasy of an England that was wonderful before all these foreigners showed up yeah and if you just get rid of the foreigners we could have that England back hmm except you know that there'll be nobody to run the hospitals and there will be no to pick the harvest and there'll be nobody to run than to drive the buses and d'être so the country will grind to a halt but never mind we'll be happy yeah we'll be free yeah they often want me to go back to where I'm from as well you know the Red Hat you know that is a fantasy of an America that I want to say what is the date when America was great yes yeah what is the moment to which we should aspire to return you know was it for example before the abolition of slavery yes was it before women had the vote was it before the civil rights movement I mean I think he means all that you know just tell me the date mm-hmm but if we if we try to turn the clock back and go back to some mythical Golden Age tell me when it was and the point is that the Golden Age is always is always a fantasy there never was such a time and and yet in all these countries this the myth of a golden age is being used to justify appalling behavior in the present moment it does and there's there's this notion of people think that he created this but once Barack Obama was in office I thought then okay that was a big plunge Ilham swing and there is no avoiding is gonna swing back yeah I didn't predict it was going to swing that far nobody did I didn't either but it's quite clear now that there was a piece of the country that for eight years was finding it impossible to deal with the fact that there was a black family in the white house mm-hmm and this is the reverse swing yeah of that anyway yeah that's not in my book it's not but I once heard you say that you hope that your writing would live on that would stand the test of time I think you were talking about Midnight's Children and you were saying how you were feeling good that it's 25 years later and and still relevant yeah absolutely it's such an amazing story this book is different in that it's not as much fantasy as we maybe are used to but boy doesn't put a finger on the pulse of a certain point in time well I hope so I mean you know there's a I've always been very interested in doing a thing that one is told not to do which is I'm bad at being told not to do things but one of the things you're told not to do is to write right up against the present moment because they say you don't have distance you don't have perspective and you should you should wait until you have those things no yeah I mean you know Warren piece is written about events that took place more than half a century before Tolstoy wrote a turd and that that's a good principle and it is a good principle but there's something very excitingly dangerous about going up against the present moment because if you get it wrong if you don't do it well then your book is irrelevant two days later like yesterday's newspaper right you know and but if you do it right then you can capture something and I think you did thank you but I hope so but there's a wonderful there's a thing that Hemingway says in one of his bullfighting texts I can't remember he says the great matador works closest to the ball that's safe the bull is over there not so exciting no nobody claps if the bull is brushing your thigh as it goes past then every movement you make has to be perfect and otherwise you get a hole in your side yes that's painful so so so but then if you do it right everybody Cheers mm-hmm and you're a star you know and I've always thought this thing about writing up against the present is that it's working close to the ball and if you do it right then everybody cheers if you do it wrong people throw the book away and I hope well buy the book first before you throw it away yes but let me ask you this now that you know we've spoken about the idea of time going by and and how that changes our perspective and the fact that there's there's gonna be a limited number of books in the future is there something that is left undone that has been niggling at you like you had mentioned you always wanted to do this road idea is there another idea like that somewhere that you know what to do before it's all over the answer to that as always no until you think of it I mean right now I I'm not at all sure what's next I have I have some some things that maybe not are not real I mean I haven't I I've always had this feeling that I have not written enough short short stories right I mean I published one book which has nine stories in it and there's about there's about half a dozen more that I haven't collected at the moment but I just feel maybe this book is a big encyclopedic panoramic let's have everything in put it in the book kind of woman and maybe an interesting next step would be to do very small things and try and make small beautiful things instead of a big sort of it's cyclopædia thing along that vein I wonder now that your you are so prevalent on television not in the reality realm but in things that we enjoy much more but that cuts in the writing time how do you balance now with this incredible public persona that you have with having enough time to really get that though I spend most of my time sitting a load of the room and all not watching television right no but I I mean that the television thing I mean I've course you know what's happening in TV drama is so exciting in many ways right now that there's a kind of I sort of have a sort of desire to think maybe I can think of something you know I thought this series called fleabag great idea that'll catch on I think that would that might that might win an award or two anyway but but I did try once I'll tell you about I guess eight years ago so god I was asked by Showtime if just if I would develop her the serious live and I developed this this science fiction idea and for a year I wrote like several drafts of a pilot script and and it was a real learning experience because every draft I would send them they would rave they would they would have orgasms of joy they would say this is the most brilliant thing we've ever seen there's never been anything of remotely this degree of originality and it's going to blow everybody's mind starting with our minds already blown and you know this went on and after a year I got a text message say we've decided not to go in this direction and I thought okay that's why I write novels yes because when you write a novel and you finish the novel it's it's the work finished you know when you write a script you're sort of a few steps on the way to the work and I think that's why I'm somebody who's been deeply influenced by cinema you know I thought that the movies have been as formative for me as any book that I've read and yet I with the exception of the one movie that based on Midnight's Children that I made with Deepa Mehta that's the only little foray that I've made into the world of cinema I think it's because in the end I'd like to doing it by myself right I like being the person sitting there having the idea and doing the best I can with it and then saying here it is what do you think rather than having to rely on committee money and actors and directors and sets and music and everything that makes a movie you know at which you in the end may or may not like if you're the writer favorite maybe one or two movies of all time oh well yeah well they're all I mean I'm of the generation of of the there's extraordinary moments I think between about the late 50s and the early 70s when world cinema had this extraordinary flowering you know and it's very hard now I think to explain to people what it was like to go to the movies when things that are now considered to be the great classics were this week's new movie right yeah you go to the cinema and there's this film called dolce vita mmm you know looks interesting and then the next week there's a new God ah and the week after that there's a new Ingmar Bergman and the week after that there's a new such a year a week after that there's a new Kurosawa and so on you know but then there's the new bun ul and then there's you know the new Agnes Varda or there's the new etc mm-hmm thrilling thrilling to go to the movies in that moment and so of them what I don't know I like when you else film the exterminating angel it's a very it's a very up there one because it's surreal and anti-religious and other things that I like when you all had a very mixed relationship with religion in fact he famously was asked what he wanted the his gravestone to read and he said it should read thank God I died at atheist and his communist friends disapproved at the fact God parted he had to explain to them that it was a joke so that'll do that's my all-time favorite gravestone is quite famous I think now as I think it's in Key West which is all it says on it is I told you I was sick like there's so many from that period I mean I great admirer of the French New Wave so got out before you know one of those people I went to see when when Lana Del Piero Marienbad came out I went to see it three times in consecutive performances Wow so that I could work out what the hell that film but yeah I used to be a huge movie freak in those days now there's there's less to see because it's all superhero stuff yeah I know appetite for superhero movies or reboots rebooting something that's already happened it's already there I mean I heard they're gonna remake the Princess Bride yeah I think why would you remake the Princess Bride when you already have a Princess Bride because that was so important you know inconceivable let me ask you this as our as our last question which makes me sad because I wish we could talk for hours given where you are now 72 years old the incredible career that you've had thinking about this character who was so hopeful and so optimistic where is Sir Salman Rushdie on that scale no I think I think he I do think he's I do think he's related to me in that regard I remember you know when I had my little moment which we haven't talked about I don't respect when I know not that moment when I was on Curb Your Enthusiasm and I was talking to - Larry David about his character and he said yeah I mean it is like me but it's like me pushed way out there it's a enormous exaggeration I think there probably is a bit of OCD in Larry David you know but yeah but but the the the exaggeration of the character is what makes it funny and and I think that he shots optimism is also mine I think I'm by nature not prone to despair I think of despair as some kind of self-indulgent luxury and and I believe that things don't have to be the worst that they possibly could be and that it's possible that they might be better than they are now and then we have the ability to change things if we try I think I think it's one of the things about growing up in the 60s the 60s were full of garbage you know mmm they were full of real trash yeah but the one thing that they did do is to give us but I was 21 in 1968 I'm completely swass on Twitter you know the year I was born I was in a way also because what it did being growing up in that moment was to give you the belief that by your direct action you could change the world hmm you didn't have to be rich and powerful yeah by your direct action you could change the world you know the Vietnam War was startling in that way and and so I think you carry that with you I've carried that belief with me that that the world is not something of which you are simply the victim mm-hmm that you can also be the maker it gives me great comfort to know that you still believe as I do that each one of us can do something yeah I think that so I gave him he shot a crazily exaggerated version of that because that makes him funny yes and so but yeah I think he is in that sense there's no question of the relationship between the character and the author it is there well thank you so much for an incredible book and for a wonderful conversation so I just wanted to say thank you I mean wonderful that so many of you came out and and thank you to the - to the Art Gallery of Ontario because it's such a wonderful space to be hosted in and thank you to you and thank you to everyone involved in organizing this day the Arnie Saltzman I always do everything she tells me that's that's me that's me my rule I mean several years ago she invited me to when she was working in Banff to come there and speak so now Dave eonni says show up I show up that's that's five you love that Canada has thank you love you back [Music] you

Channel: Art Gallery of Ontario

Views: 1,426

Rating: 4.7333331 out of 5

Keywords: SALMON RUSHDIE, AGO, toronto, Art Gallery of Ontario, art, literature, Candy Palmater, Quichotte

Id: X6OODOHfp1I

Length: 75min 12sec (4512 seconds)

Published: Tue Oct 15 2019