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The son also rises |
Desi families like to provide well for their children. Parents give their kids money, cars, businesses … and now it seems that some even help procure girls for their darling little boys. That’s right – having Salman Rushdie as your father helps you score chicks. While this isn’t a huge surprise (Duh!), I was made a bit queasy by the way the famous family discussed the matter.
First there is Rushdie, fils, talking about his dad:
Zafar Rushdie, 27, often accompanies his father on nights out because the pair are usually swamped by attractive girls keen to impress the literary genius. He says, “Most people who go to a party with their parents try to run away from them. Not me. If I want to meet girls, I just stand near him. “All the beautiful women want to talk to Dad, so I stand close and bask in the sunlight. Beauty loves brains…” [Link]
Then there is Rushdie, pere, engaging in mutual admiration:
“Every time I see a picture of him in the paper, he has four girls around him, so I think he’s not doing badly,” the author tells the paper. “He’s absurdly charming – lethally, disgustingly charming. He has it like a weapon…” [Link]
A weapon, huh? Really, we don’t need to hear about your son’s Louisville Slugger. Just tell the researchers and leave us out of it.
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p>Lastly, step-mom and fourth wife Padma also agrees that Zafar, a mere 9 years younger, is a stud:
… actress Padma Lakshmi, 36, is equally complimentary of Zafar, talking him up as a red-hot ladies man who can’t be resisted. [Link]
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p>
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p>In addition, Salman says, his son is a “red-hot ladies man who can’t be resisted.” [Link]
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p>I know the family that pimps together stays together, but can’t the Rushdies save the meddling in their Zafar’s sex life until he’s ready to get married, like decent people? Or is this just a further extension of the same principle – they’ll help puttarRushdie find his wife, his girlfriends, and even his short term flings.
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p>Please understand that my reaction isn’t one of pure prudishness – we are firmly pro-groupie here are Sepia Mutiny. We just believe that groupies should be earned, not inherited.
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p>Oh and Zafar, a piece of advice from a humble blogger. While this is a great story (below), I think you want to avoid talking about the “loss of your childhood innocence” at the hands of Islamic fundamentalists – somebody might get the wrong idea.
“The fatwa was fun for me at first. I was 9, and I came home one day to find police in the house,” Zafar told the paper. “It was really cool to be around these big guys with guns. But I soon found out enough to realize there was a big deal going on, and it wasn’t good . . . I’d answer the phone and this voice would say: ‘We’ve got your number. We know where you are and we’re going to come and kill you’ . . . I lost my childhood innocence early…” [Link]
See also: The NYPost’s Page Six: THE RUSHDIES: BABE MAGNETS?, Rushdie & Sons
No cica, we’re just stunned into silence. And we thought you were a good
IndianSouth Asian girl.I certainly followed it, like a lamb to the slaughter. Now I need therapy.
(Kavita, bigups.)
oh damn, that’s funny
err..it was a little unnecessary. my apologies. I just couldn’t resist.
thanks Kavita
I hope the kid remembers that daddy specializes in fiction.
I know who Rushdie is 😉
Seriously, though, are you implying that hot women are dumb and uneducated?
And there are too groupies for authors. It’s very easy to fall in love with someone’s writing. But they have to be a very, very good author.
Conversely, publishing houses do seem to feel compelled to place attractive (and if they are desi, exotic and native-dress-wearing) photographs of female authors on their book back covers. Are men more likely to read a book if the female author is hot?
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blockquote>Are men more likely to read a book if the female author is hot?
The short answer? Yes.
Not just men, either. Everyone. I heard some pseudo science-y thing recently that calls it the “halo effect.” Beautiful people are perceived as just being better.
Now excuse me while I go stick my head in the oven.
Sorry!
The short answer? Yes.
Not just men, either. Everyone. I heard some pseudo science-y thing recently that calls it the “halo effect.” Beautiful people are perceived as just being better.
Now excuse me while I go stick my head in the oven.
Cicatrix, I trust you are correct since you know this stuff but to me it is a turn-off to know what an author looks like period (guy/girl, hot/not) . Just like their characters I prefer they remain malleable to my imagination. It’s kind of like when I read DaVinci Code and I didn’t enjoy it as much because I kept picturing Tom Hanks (who I don’t like as an actor) as the main character. Similarly, I am much less inclined to read a book if I know what the author looks like because I will probably identify with them less. Weird.
hey Abhi, I don’t think it’s weird. It’s why I dont like seeing movie version of books I like. It limits the experience (and/or the memory) of reading the book. I think it’s just easier to market the book for some reason if the author is hot. More memorable, perhaps?
coach diesel
hey… you should have listened to that guy go on and on and on… and he was obviously in love with his voice… the girl was increasingly resembling overcooked linguini with each passing minute. i had to get up and leave.
kavita
toot
sic temper
hey man.. that was a disturbing comment. maybe i’m just at an age where friends are trying to get pregnant and have had miscarriages (it is way way more common than i think you realize) or stillborns and know the effect it has on families… so am sensitive to this. but this could be very hurtful to lakshmi – and i hope she never reads this. anyhow, if she should – i apologize for you and for me for this sidethread. that being said, that dress is not flattering.
metric
i dont understand your grouse. this wasnt an infatuation.. .neither of them is a naif. they got married . obviously there was some chemistry and they seem to have kept it going. yes, he isnt tops in the looks department, but i have heard him. the man has charisma and then he has had the spotlight shine on him brightly for quite a while. i am sure that would be extremely attractive to a professional model… that is, if you really want to measure off a sirloin and brisket on their relationship. and for all you know, the guy might be really hung like a whale. so good for them. live long and prosper. cheese and polenta for all.
There’s nothing quite as expressive as writing, no matter how social or gossipy someone is. It’s not a cop-out; sometimes, spoken words just don’t do the written word justice.
I was being gender-specific because we were talking about writer males in particular, weren’t we?
Up to a point. Too hot and you go in with prejudice on quality. Studies say the same is true at work.
This is Cic’s conundrum.
You may want to take a look at the following two NYT essays on the subject of “looks” and “sex” in the business of literary logrolling:
She’d Be Great on TV You Can’t Get a Man With a Pen
At a high level these say that a female writer better be more photogeneic than a male writer to sell her stuff, and that (sucessful/ famous) male writers do get groupies with the caveat that writing and peddling books is an arduous strategy for a man to adopt to touch “base”.
By the way, Mr. K… let me proffer some advice and save you much time: You need to talk about the novel you’re writing, not actually write it.
How will you meet chicks when you’re holed up in a room getting ink-stained or carpel-tunneled? No, my friend. No. You go out. you dine, you wine, you mix, you mingle, you move, you shake…and they’ll swoon 😉
This is precisely the vomit-inducing scenario that prevents me from using my art degree. And…that’s why I coach kid sports instead.Blabbing about the irrelevance of the object or Shirin Neshat’s use of Morrocan scenery started making me tremble with uselessness. The conversations sounded like the one hairy_D was describing earlier at the cafe. Blechh!
OK. I’m going to throw a bomb into this discussion. Apart from Zadie Smith, which female author is hot? I can’t think of a single one. And don’t say Jhumpa Lahiri — I like her writing but she’s a little too prim and precisely fragrant to be hot.
No, I don’t think there are any hot female authors out there.
I mean, that I know of. Feel free to point to the hotness.
Sounds like “Suddenly, Last Summer” without the darkness or the gayness; and with Rushdie as Violet Venable.
Kobayashi:
Spoonerism alert ?
ok snapper. i’ll bite.
i dont know if you’ve ever been on an internet dating forum. i have. and the number of ‘hits’ one gets when one puts up a picture is way more than when you go without a face. this isnt exactly parallel to reading but the intent is the same. a person – at least i – is looking for a good time when reading a book. it is far more likely that if the author is physically attractive, that (s)he will have experiences with more excitement – thus enhancing our respective lives.
as a sidebar – i know of at one english guy who is extremely derisive of indians and is borderline racist – i associate with him because i have to do so professionally – even he seemed somewhat smitten by lahiri’s pic and plonked down a few for the namesake.
and at a stretch, one can argue that anna’s extreme photogenecity has something to do with her readership. to stretch my point further, if you go back into the archives, you’ll see the level of attachment the reader has to her life in the numerous ‘marriage’ offers pinged her way off and on, in response to particularly poignant outpourings. this is not to detract from her writing. i think she writes very well – but the point i want to make is that a good writer makes the reader lose him/herself in a fantasy world – the more that one can place into the writerscape, the greater the pleasure one derives from the reading – ergo, an attractive writer is more likely to sell more – btu we all know quality does not need endorsement to stand the test of time. indeed, we should stand equally indifferent to barbs and plaudits and plod on at our own beat.
Yeah hairy_d I see what you’re saying. But I can’t think that I enjoyed ‘Inheritance of Loss’ any less because I don’t fancy Kiran Desai. Some of the women here are saying that a male author is somehow inherently sexy.
Have writers always attracted this kind of attention and erotic curiousity? Or is it a recent thing? Since the Booker Prize glamour took over? I think some women are just attracted to creative men who are successful. I was watching an interview with Courtney Love and she said that she only ever wants to fall in love with ‘geniuses’ because their talent is what attracts her.
Whenever all this kind of thing is discussed I can’t help thinking of poor Franz Kafka, lonely, tortured and alone, romantically frozen, erotic failure, but literary genius in his Prague room. Poor guy hardly ever got laid.
Now, can anyone point me to some female writers who they think are hot in that superficial, shallow and non literary way?
I have never seen a picture of Kiran Desai but I don’t think I would favor her either. I heard her on NPR a couple weeks back and she was annoying the hell out of me… Kept breaking out into fits of pretentious giggles.
Those giggles werent pretentious, they were charming. A pretentious giggle would be a James Joyce-esque Mkgnaohurr hurr hurr hurr. Mademoiselle Desai’s giggles are more aheeheeeheeheeheehuh.
She’s a talented author. More big sisterly than hot.
hairy_d:
Sigh… Not everyone gets married for the right reasons. And people do overcome infatuations… sometimes only to find out they don’t really like the person they were obsessed with. Anyways, I don’t know this couple and I can’t judge the sincerity of their relationship (I’m sure they care for each other). I’m just tired of people accusing HER of being a golddigger etc, like she ran after him with the intent of scooping him up and using his name to further her career, when in fact there are many factors at play. Also, I only say I suspected some infatuation on his part; because of Salman saying things like this:
If I were to venture a guess, based on the above statement, I’d have to say, his mind was made up before he even met her. At any rate, I still won’t go on the record to say “He’s only interested her in because of X”; I don’t know that, and nor do I care. The thought merely inspired me to write a bit more about what I have observed in MY circles – something I can write about with a good degree of certainty. Beauty and how we interact with those who possess is it is very bizarre and interesting.
A
Lauren Weisberger Okay, so she’s no Hemingway, but she did write a highly successful novel turned into a movie.
It’s interesting that Zadie Smith, being so attractive, was able to so coherently document the experiences of an unattractive teenager in On Beauty. Maybe she had an ugly duckling stage.
oi, not true. excitement in people’s lives is not restricted only to the beautiful people in this world. One can argue that people who don’t rate all that high on the beauty scale, have had more interesting experiences compared to ze good lookers.
When it comes to entertainment, the uglier the better. Look at the great directors of the world and you will see my point. If your good looking then it is impossible to be creative because there is no neeed to be because everything is just handed to you. If your a good looking guy you just say “What’s up with you?” and bam you get laid. If your a ugly guy, you have to pull off some James Bond shi# just to get a “hello” back at you. If I look at a picture of the author and I see some guy who looks like he’s been through a couple of drive throughs in his life then I know this disgruntled fellow is going to hit me with some good angles to the story.
A key to comedy is being ugly. You will hardly ever see a good looking comedian because again there is no need to be funny. The only time you see a popular good looking female author is when she writes a book about shoe’s and cocktails and of course other good looking females will call her a genius.
The puppet masters to all things entertaining are the gargouls of society. End of story.
So Shallowthinker are you implying (or perhaps saying it more clearly than I am reading) that attractive people have things come easy to them and don’t necessary have to step out of the norm or bring out the creative insides out nor develop it while ugly people are naturally inclined to be creative because it is their owly contribution/outlet to the world?
The nuanced, communicative male is as great a female fantasy as the ass-kicking female is for men 🙂
I’ve met her at a small party in London. She’s cute, but don’t confuse the straightened-hair-fill-lighting cover photo with the real person.
Some rockers and rappers are so goofy-looking, you just know only went into music because it was the only way to get the ladies/laddies.
You do realize she reads us regularly, right? 😉
p.s. Hi Kiran! 😀
What is ugly?
Some days back NYT ran an article about the author Will Self walking from JFK into Manhattan. And in the article the author descrobed his own face as sack of genitals. Would that be way toooooo hot? Or ugly?
Hi Kiran! Loved the book.
Does anyone recall the scandalous all-female bachelor party held for Mr. Rushdie in 2004, just prior to his marriage to his Mrs. du jour, Ms. Padma Lakshmi? Pretty hot stuff!
No, they exist, but they get boring after six months. A woman coming out of a relationship with an animal will dig a sensitive and nuanced man in touch with his feelings, but then they get bored, because that’s alright in small or medium doses but then it just becomes like eating cold and wet spaghetti. The ass-kicking female ditto for men – when you have that woman who just doesnt give a damn, treats you mean and keeps you keen etc etc it’s all good, until you just want someone to simper occasionally and make you breakfast in bed and want you to let the animal in you come out and drag his knuckles on the floor.
Love is tough.
It’s the whole vibe though. Turban wearing mixed race (Jamaican-English) lady with posh accent who writes well.
I wish you could tell us more about your literary soirees and meetings.
Sashi…..The second link is so on point…I can completely see the writer of ‘Prep’ longing after David Foster Wallace…Infinite Jest is like what happens after ‘Prep’ (with endnotes 🙁
I’d imagine the full fantasy is someone with both– someone well-rounded 😉
I do! This was before the blog.
Bitch!:P
I like the turbanated Zadie more than the straightened hair version, myself. But then I’ve never gotten to MEET her, unlike some lucky exotica-haters…
Either way, why would you go after Zafar Rushdie when there are people like Gautam Malkani around? Or even that HOTT Gawker intern?
I love Zafar’s ‘The fatwa was like, so totally awesome!’ bit.
Cool writings mate.
Anyone read Londonstani and want to discuss? (the book that is, not Malkani!)
The turban is a pure touch of class.
Thanks mate.
I snuck a peek at the card she wrote for the birthday boy, a college classmate of hers. It was sharp, dry and hilarious. Talented lass.
I’ve seen Zadie in passing on the street and thought she was hot. I’ve bumped into Rushdie in the same town and thought he looked … middle aged.
It looks as if they really know how to host literay launch parties in Bombay. I think William Dalrymple probably got a few sausage rolls and cheap red wine at a Borders with a sitar music CD playing in the background when he launched in London!
Which has the stronger literary culture, Delhi or Mumbai?
Kal Penn, Zach Braff, Jay Chandrasekhar, Jon Stewart (okay my view of the last one is affected by his rapier wit but he’s not a bad sight either), Owen Wilson, Luke Wilson…the list goes on. That was MUCH easier than coming up with attractive female authors so I believe that thesis is debunked.
Most of them are primarily actors, so they’re screened for looks. Stand up comedians are … not as pretty 🙂
Agreed 🙂 Mencia immediately comes to mind.
But…I think Shallowthinker’s argument was that attractive people don’t need to be funny, but the aforementioned clearly learned to be funny before becoming movie stars. Reese Witherspoon, by contrast, is a movie star who just happens to be good at comedy. The others, I think are famous primarily because of their funniness. I agree they would not have become movie stars if it weren’t for their good looks, but they are funny in spite of their good looks.
Some unfortunate people think Dane Cook is attractive…
And what about Aziz?!
Good thing you didn’t sleep with him then, Ennis.
On a Fresh Air (NPR) interview she said that she was a heavy child. Isn’t the character in White Teeth (the jamaican-brit girl what’s-her-name) basically autobiographical ?
The funniest Rushdie-spotting story I know is of a friend-of-a-friend who saw Rushdie in an NYC-bookstore not long after watching the Bridget Jones movie. And he told his friends how cool it was that he saw “that actor from that Bridget Jones movie”.
True dat. C’mon, the man never would have had plastic surgery if he thought his looks were perfect just the way they were. And he is middle aged.