W: Salman, welcome to Waterstones first of all
SR: Thank you W: We're here to talk about your latest novel, Quichotte. We should probably clear up first of all the pronounciation question. Have I
pronounced that correctly? SR: Yeah. Quichotte, it's really the
normal French pronunciation and there's an opera called Don Quichotte in French
and the character who uses this as his pseudonym likes the opera so he calls
himself after the French version. W: Very good. Now it is of course inspired by Don
Quixote and I thought we could maybe start off by talking about why you
wanted to take that inspiration, to take that classic foundation text of Western
literature and use it as the sort of inspiration for a very modern book. SR: Well it's just that I was thinking of writing a novel that that
traveled across America. Really, it's an antidote to my previous novel which
happened almost entirely on Manhattan Island. I remember telling
myself you should leave home now, time to leave town. And so I had this
idea of doing a kind of a road novel and and somewhere around the time when I was
thinking about this coincidentally I had to read Don Quixote because there was
an anniversary of Cervantes and I was asked to write something about it. So I
picked it up after a long time and the moment I looked at it I thought oh well
this gives me a very good sense of how to write a road novel. And
immediately my own characters, who are rather different from Quixote and Sancho,
popped into my head. So it became, it was like a trigger
mechanism, you know, this experience of rereading
Don Quixote. And actually the journey that my characters go on is not
really it's not really based on the original but it certainly gave me
the starting inspiration. W: I suppose a word that's gonna be used a lot when talking about this book is satire, a word that was used for Don Quixote as
well, satirising the times that it was written about. And you appear to be
having the time of your life actually in this book, taking elements of modern
popular culture and satirising them. Did you ever have any worry that we're
living in an age which is almost beyond satire? SR: I mean certainly it is true that the old phrase about truth being
stranger than fiction has never been more true. But what I've found just living
in America is that actually there's still very much a place for this kind of
pointed comedy because of an evening, sitting at home, turning on the
late-night comedians; I'm very grateful for them, you know? If I'm listening to
just Stephen Colbert or Samantha Bee or Bill Maher. I feel actually that
through the use of comedy they're sharper than the news
commentators in the daytime and they sometimes, the knife goes deeper, you
know? And so I think there still is very much a role for this kind of - whether
it's stand-up comedy or written down books - I think there's
really a place for it. Because if you do it right you can really just go a bit
further than ordinary reportage. W: So, with this novel what were the things that you were really hoping to sort of puncture? SR: Well, junk television
to start with you, in particular reality television. But also all that other stuff
that we have now on the internet which which begins to blur the edges between
truth and lies. I mean I think that one of the problems of the web is that you
could have two websites, one of which is scholarly or authoritative etc and
another one which is total junk. And they look exactly the same you know and they
seem to have the same kind of authority. And I think increasingly it gets hard
for people, to some people anyway, to distinguish between these things. I
think that's dangerous, when there's rubbish like, you know, Kardashians and
Bachelorettes and you know Big Brother houses and so on. When that
begins to occupy the front of people's minds and presents itself to you as
reality, whereas in fact it's complete unreality, it's completely manipulated
reality you know. I think you do something, you begin to do something
dangerous to people when you make it hard for people to distinguish truth
from lies and so I wanted to have a go at that. W: As you say with that difficulty to
distinguish there is that worry that that people might see a novel as just
simply entertainment and maybe not understand the more serious point that's
being made SR: Well the thing is that there's that, the satirical side of the novel, but there's also a kind of... I mean in many ways I think more
important human side of the novel. Because what I liked about my
version of the great Don is that he's not - the original is quite
melancholic. You know he's referred to as 'the knight of the dolorous
countenance.' He's a sort of sad faced, sad-sack. My character is
actually absurdly optimistic and hopeful, you know, and smiley. And I liked the
idea of having an optimist. Of somebody who is unshakeably hopeful and
believes that that the world will carry him to his goal. That love will find a
way. I wanted a character like that to go through the craziness of
the present which is not always, which doesn't always justify optimism or hope. W: We don't want to give away what happens to Quichotte on his quest for true love but I wonder whether you yourself feel optimistic about where we
are now and what's happening. SR: Well, I'm not despairing. Because I think that despair is a kind of luxury. I mean we have to, there's a lot
wrong, which I don't even have to specify because we all think about it
every day, you know, but I remember... I was a history student not a
literature student. And one of the things that history teaches you is that history
does not run on tramlines. It's not inevitable that it
will go in a certain direction. Events can make very sudden left turns or right
turns without any warning and the world can change dramatically overnight. You
know the fall of Communism is an example of that.
One doesn't despair. You don't think that the world is inevitably going to hell. It
might not. It might go somewhere worse! Or somewhere better. So that's what I
think. I mean there's a wonderful phrase much used that was said by the Italian
philosopher Antonio Gramsci where he said that what one should have is
pessimism of the intellect and optimism of the will. And I think that's
how I think about it. When I finished Midnight's Children all
those years ago and nobody knew who I was etc I thought to myself,
I think this is pretty good, you know. But I had no way of knowing whether
the world would agree. And I hoped it did and as it turned out it
was okay. This book I had a similar feeling. I thought you know I think I've
done something here that to me feels a bit special. But I have no way
of knowing whether the world will think that too. I haven't
had that particular feeling except on these two occasions. So, you know, I hope it works. W: I can't answer for the world I can only answer for myself but, as I say, it was just a riotous read, there's so much in there to enjoy so, Salman, thank you
so much for the book and thank you telling us a bit more about it. SR: Thank you
