Salman Rushdie slams poetry & Kerouac, praises Zadie Smith, Fitzgerald & himself

A couple weeks ago, I was convinced by a friend to go see Salman Rushdie read at the Harvard Memorial Church in Cambridge. I bought two tickets, and my “date” ended up being my dad, who admitted that his only experience with Rushdie’s lit was when he bought The Satanic Verses “to see what all the fuss was about” and gave up after the first thirty pages put him to sleep. That was ten years ago, when my old man and Rushdie himself– they were born in the same year– were mere sprightly youths of 52.

I felt inclined to agree with my dad’s verdict. The sole Rushdie book I had read was Haroun and the Sea of Stories, a title assigned in my high school English class by this cracked-out baby boomer teacher all the student loved until they actually had a class with him. The book felt so much like an acid trip that my friends and I were sure the author had dreamt the entire thing, woken up, and scribbled the whole mess down. How in the world, we wondered, did he pass the thing off as a legitimate novel (albeit children’s lit)? The book involved a tap in a child’s sink from which teardrops of stories flowed. Conversations took place on magic carpet rides, and central characters included a pair of rhyming fish. Rushdie himself, it seemed obvious, had hoped to become a rapper (with character monikers like The Ocean of Notions and the Sha of Blah), but must have given up and decided to pinch off a living as a writer. Needless to say, the book was an inappropriate choice for seventeen-year-olds, and I readily developed a (admittedly unfair) low opinion of Rushdie and his work. I knew he must be good– no, not just ‘good,’ probably great– but after slogging through the depths of his shroomed-out Sea of Stories I had no interest in giving him another shot.

Rushdie was met with a packed house. The Harvard book store sold out the church, and then allowed even more worshipers to take up standing room at the back. An overzealous senior employee from the book store introduced him, remarking on the Midnight’s Children Booker win in 1988, and its subsequent crowning this year as the “Booker of Bookers.” The audience shared a nice giggle at the sheer volume of this man’s award collection. However, the poor girl then embarrassed herself by reflecting, “It appears that Mr. Rushdie might provide some of his own competition with the book he is here to discuss tonight, The Enchantress of Florence.” Had she somehow avoided reading the scores of abysmal reviews? She selectively quoted a raving review from The Financial Times– apparently the most quotable source she could find, since the book got panned in the NYTimes Book Review (twice) as well as in New York Magazine. Then she wrapped up by listing his other books, and shared with us that Haroun and the Sea of Stories is her “personal favorite.” Go figure. After plugging the book store and its upcoming events a few more times, she stepped down proudly and our portly, wizened old owl, Sir Salman himself, took the podium.

Rushdie began by telling us about the new novel, which is a fantastical story about– what else?– the magic of storytelling and the moving love affair of some royal princess and prince (or whatever). He explained that the passage he would be reading us is about the “lost princess and her beloved, an Italian mercenary who is working as a general of the Ottoman army.” Like I said, whatever.

“Much of the weirder stuff in this book is true, and the kind of ordinary stuff is the stuff that I’ve made up,” he said. Big laughs for that one. He busted out another snazzy one-liner when he told us, “I discovered to my intense delight that the Ottomans were, amongst other things, fighting a war against Dracula. I mean actual Dracula himself, Vlad the Impaler. And the moment I realized that I could have Dracula in my novel, you know, without cheating, I thought that I’d gone to Heaven, really.” This, too, raised the roof. Rushdie himself cracked up. He concluded, quite pleased with himself, “So the book is full of all this absolutely improbable stuff that is in fact in the historical record. And all the probably stuff is the stuff that I wrote.” Yeah, we get it. Finally, before beginning, he squeezed in one more zinger: “I have this weird moment where I have to, ah, to see you I have to wear one pair of glasses, but to see the book, I have to wear a different pair of glasses [dons the new spectacles], so now you’ve all disappeared, but, oh look, here’s a book. Let… me… read to you from it.” Ha! He chuckled along with his fans. A real gut-buster.

I won’t re-type the passage he read here. I’ll spare you, but let’s just say that there were massive highs and crushing lows. The intensely detailed descriptions of minutia– flower varieties that the soldier liked, ornate decorations on a magical mirror– were yawn-worthy. However, the passage had its moments of great wonder and entertainment as well. A description involving a tattoo of a tulip that the princely figure had on the shaft of his penis (I know, right?) prompted my friend to nudge me and whisper that Rushdie might be sharing an autobiographical detail. I wouldn’t be surprised; a penis tattoo might explain how this 62-year-old intellectual had managed to lure the ridiculously gorgeous, 37-year-old model/chef Padma Lakshmi into his bedchamber.

The passage also included a footrace that was won by the male hero thanks to the stock ‘bad guy’ character yielding to “a bout of the foulest farting anyone had ever smelled.” As Rushdie continued to describe the farting with stone seriousness, chuckles filled the room and functioned, also, as a collective sigh of relief at the opportunity to wake up, slap ourselves into attention again, and laugh. Otherwise, the reading in no way made me want to buy the novel itself.

It was the question and answer period that brought some real entertainment. When asked to compare writing novels to a “9-5 job,” Rushdie said he has never been a writer who can get up early in the morning and work. “Martin Amis does that, Martin Amis gets up real early, he finishes his work by twelve noon, and spends the rest of the day playing tennis and drinking and smoking.” This name-dropping tickled everyone pink, and prompted Rushdie to ease into a hilarious, lighthearted jab at poets:

“I can’t write in restaurants, you know, I have to be at my desk. I can’t go sit at a café or under a tree. Poets do that. You know, poetry? You know, where the words don’t go all the way across the line? And the lines don’t go all the way to the bottom of the page? And you have sixty pages and you call it a book.”

Ouch. Tough jab, but you know what, I’m pretty skeptical of modern poetry too, so he certainly won points with me. Everyone was rolling at this point, which egged on our would-be comedian to add: “So, I guess you could do that at restaurants.” More laughs. “Sorry, poets.”

One audience member/supplicant asked the Booker Guru what he’s reading for pleasure right now. He began his reply by imitating the Italian accent of Umberto Eco (his good friend) who apparently said, “If it’s like my writing, I hate it. If it’s not like my writing, I hate it.” More snickers for the impersonation, with the biggest laughs coming from Rushdie himself again.

His first mention was of Junot Diaz. Somehow, as soon as he was asked about his own reading interests, I just knew he would say Junot Diaz. He called Oscar Wao a “wonderful book,” but said that other than this, he likes to revisit older lit, and doesn’t really “read to keep up anymore.” He qualified this: “Well, naturally I still have to read what my friends write, or they get cross…”

Then, to everyone’s delight, said:

“I just re-read Gatsby. I hadn’t read Gatsby since I was 21, and I just couldn’t believe how good it was. I mean, I knew it was good. But just what I had forgotten was how extraordinary it is; sentence by sentence brilliance. It was just absolutely electrifying to read it again. Really, there isn’t a bad paragraph.”

Audience members nodded their heads vigorously, like ‘Yes, yes. Oh, so true. He’s right!’ It was funny.

Next he added that he also re-read On the Road recently, and he “was terrified to read it again because I assumed it was going to turn out to be garbage. But, very interestingly, it did not.” He couldn’t stop there. “Other Kerouac, I think, is very close to the garbage can.” Wow. Finally, he mentioned One Hundred Years of Solitude and called it the greatest novel of the last hundred years. Wow. It wouldn’t have been my choice.

The final question came from a timid young female student who asked him if he had any advice for aspiring writers. He became pretty animated. He said the best writers that he knows all began careers in their twenties and were immediately successful. All had a certain drive. “If you don’t have that real thing burning in you that makes it possible to spend twelve years trying to learn to do something without any guarantee that you’ll ever learn how to do it, um, then, it’s a problem.” Everyone laughed here, though I couldn’t quite see why. I felt this comment was quite serious. He continued: “The great writers have always known why they wanted to be a writer. They’ve always known what was burning inside them that had to get said. So, if you don’t have that fire, don’t write.” There was silence. “I’m sorry, it’s brutal, but it’s a real truth. There are, you know, enough books in the world. None of us in this room could ever read all the great books that there already are to read. If you’re going to add to that mountain, it better feel necessary to you. It better feel like a book that you can’t avoid writing. And then it has a chance of adding something interesting to the mountain.” Bravo. Honestly, this was just enormous. Well said, and more precious than any of the nonsense he read from his book.

Talking about people he knew becoming writers/the process, etc., prompted him to suddenly tell what I thought was a great story about Zadie Smith:

“I am slightly responsible for the career of Zadie Smith, I have to say. I met Zadie at my friend’s house, and by the end of the evening, it was clear that she was so brilliant. And she was like 20, or 19, something pornographic! [huge laughs] And I was so impressed by her that I said what I never say, I said, ‘If you ever have anything that you want me to read, let me see it.’ And what is interesting is she didn’t then go home and print out two hundred pages and send them round. She waited a year. A year later, she sent me a hundred pages of an early draft of White Teeth, and it was just absurdly good. I thought ‘God, you’re now, twenty and a half years old?! I mean, I should either kill you or help you.’ And it was close! [big yuks] But, in the end I helped her get a literary agent. And if I hadn’t, she would have found one in thirty seconds, because the work was so obviously extraordinary. And ten seconds after that, the agent got her the zillion dollar advance, because it was so obvious. I mean, it was obvious. So, I guess that’s what I’m saying, you know. The real writer, you can feel that blazing thing inside of them.”

Then, to the delight of some but the horror of the girl, he added “So my view is that if you need the advice, don’t write the book.” Everyone laughed/gasped and he said helplessly, “I’m sorry, I’m sorry! It’s tough, but I think it’s true.” With this, the audience erupted into applause as the poor girl slunk back to her seat.

So I can’t deny that Rushdie was at the top of his game when answering questions. His witty remarks about the writing process had the audience in stitches, and managed to make us all forget, briefly, the sweltering, uncomfortable summer humidity of the packed cathedral.

To be precise, he was entertaining. A real one-man show. I was impressed with him, in the end, but not with his writing (which should have been the draw). Really, though. This rolly-polly, fatwa-surviving, bushy-bearded, near-sighted teddy bear of a man was actually quite charming, though his effort to be so was obvious. And although I have no new interest in his work, he’s obviously very brilliant. And far more interestingly, he’s funny and fascinating.

It was no surprise, then, to read when I got home that the man is trying to become a movie star. I just discovered this article from New York Magazine:

Just how hard is Salman Rushdie trying to break into showbiz? First, we had Helen Hunt telling us about casting Rushdie as her obstetrician in her new movie, Then She Found Me. Now we’ve got Rushdie showing up, somewhat inexplicably, in Scarlett Johansson’s new music video.

If this guy shows up on the big screen, hey, I’ll shell out my nine dollars. I’ll probably buy a fucking popcorn, too. Let’s see it.

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~ by DBR on July 15, 2008.