{"id":2123,"date":"2005-08-30T01:16:57","date_gmt":"2005-08-30T06:16:57","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/sepiamutiny.com?p=2123"},"modified":"2005-08-30T01:32:10","modified_gmt":"2005-08-30T06:32:10","slug":"remarkabubble_r","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"http:\/\/sepiamutiny.com\/blog\/2005\/08\/30\/remarkabubble_r\/","title":{"rendered":"Remarkabubble Rushdie"},"content":{"rendered":"

The blazing hot publicity machine for Shalimar the Clown<\/I> rolls out another feature on Salman Rushdie, this time in GQ<\/a>. The cheapskate mag offers only 2 (out of 20!) sections from the print version online, so despite protestations from the Sepia Legal Dept., I transcribe the juicy bits below. Without further ado, here\u00c2\u2019s the ever-quotable Salman on:<\/p>\n\n

\"GQRushdie.jpg\"<\/p>\n\n

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  1. Comics<\/li>\n<\/ol>\n\n
    He liked Batman the most \u00c2\u2013 \u00c2\u201cbecause he was the weirdest,\u00c2\u201d Rushdie says. \u00c2\u201cStrange thing to do, you know, hang upside down dressed like a bat and go out at night.\u00c2\u201d He was always happiest when Batman came unaccompanied. \u00c2\u201cI didn\u00c2\u2019t like Robin the Boy Wonder at all,<\/I>\u00c2\u201d he explains, his voice still leaking some youthful annoyance. \u00c2\u201cI thought he was completely redundant and had a silly uniform.\u00c2\u201d <\/blockquote>\n\n

    [Yes, but does he know about this<\/a>?]<\/p>\n\n

      \n
    1. Perceptions of his character after the fatwa, and Indira Gandhi bashing<\/li>\n<\/ol>\n\n
      \u00c2\u201dThe thing that happened to me had certain characteristics – it was theological, it was humorless, it was difficult to understand \u00c2\u2013 and all those characteristics got transposed onto me. So because it<\/I> was humorless, I<\/I> must be.\u00c2\u201d\u00c2\u2026\n\nSome were stung by the account of the previous few decades of Indian history in Midnight\u00c2\u2019s Children<\/I>. Indira Gandhi, India\u00c2\u2019s prime minister at the time actually sued him for suggesting that her son Sanjay blamed her for the death of her husband, his father. Rushdie eventually yielded to pressure from his publishers to remove the passage, as long as she agreed that there was nothing else in the book \u00c2\u2013 a book fairly critical of her \u00c2\u2013 that she considers objectionable, and he says that the Indian press concurred with his view that this settlement was more a humiliation for the prime minister than for the author. <\/blockquote>\n\n

      [The Iron Lady picked that over the transistors-for-sterilization bit? Color me surprised.]5. The trials of English boarding school<\/p>\n\n

      Before his journey West [at 13], his mother tried to prepare him for some of the horrors he would face there. \u00c2\u201cSuch as,\u00c2\u201d he remembers, \u00c2\u201chaving to wipe your bottom with paper.\u00c2\u201d This he had refused to believe. \u00c2\u201cI said, \u00c2\u2018What do you mean? It\u00c2\u2019s not possible. No water? Not possible.\u00c2\u2019\u00c2\u201d \u00c2\u2026\n\nHe brings up one of the great perceptions of such English educational establishments: \u00c2\u201cI managed to get through four and a half years of English boarding school without a single homosexual experience\u00c2\u2026I certainly never came anywhere close to it, either being hit on by anybody or the other way round. In that sense, I missed out on some apparently essential part of the experience.\u00c2\u201d<\/blockquote>\n\n
        \n
      1. Atheism, that pesky minute of \u00c2\u2018conversion,\u00c2\u2019 and his subsequent renunciation of faith<\/li>\n<\/ol>\n\n
        He went and ate his first ham sandwich [at 14, in Britain], \u00c2\u201cin order to prove that the thunderbolt would not strike me.\u00c2\u201d\u00c2\u2026The ham sandwich itself wasn\u00c2\u2019t so good, but soon he discovered bacon sandwiches, and that was another matter altogether\u00c2\u2026\n\nIn an interview he gave shortly afterward [declaring his faith in Allah], he exemplified his new way of thinking: \u00c2\u201cI feel that had I been a Muslim at the time that I wrote the book, I would clearly have written it differently \u00c2\u2013 clearly, and I want to make that point, and let there be no argument about it.\u00c2\u201d But within him there was plenty of argument about it, and this conversion to Islam, as it was widely presented, was itself soon renounced. In truth, even in his days of darkest need, deep down his atheism never abandoned him. <\/blockquote>\n\n
          \n
        1. Paging Michael Moore<\/li>\n<\/ol>\n\n
          I think if the West is to blame for anything, it is to blame for giving the house of Saud keys to the oil money and allowing them to use that money to propagate around the world Wahhabism, the most backward, primitive, and crummy version of Islam there had ever been, and to present that as Orthodoxy\u00c2\u2026<\/blockquote>\n\n

          \"youngRushdie.jpg\"<\/p>\n\n

            \n
          1. His life as an ad-man (check out the pic Rushdie circa 1974!)<\/li>\n<\/ol>\n\n
            He was responsible for two campaigns known to anyone living in Britain in the 1970s \u00c2\u2013 for the designation of cream cakes as \u00c2\u201cnaughty but nice,\u00c2\u201d and for the description of a new chocolate bar called Aero, full of air bubbles, using a chain of mutated adjectives: adorabubble<\/I>, delectabubble<\/I>, incredibubble\u00c2\u2026<\/I> \u00c2\u201cIt took me ten years to find out how to be a writer\u00c2\u2026It would have been so easy to give up. I had all kinds of temptations. I was doing pretty well in advertising, and they dangle huge sums of money under your nose and a glamorous lifestyle, you know \u00c2\u2013 girls, commercial shoots, and locations, America, South Africa. The World opens up, and all you have to do is sell peanut butter and shampoo.\u00c2\u201d<\/blockquote>\n\n

            And damning word of praise-<\/p>\n\n

            upon reading it [his widely panned debut novel Grimus<\/I>], his father said, \u00c2\u201cWhat this tells me is that one day you will write a great book.\u00c2\u201d<\/blockquote>\n\n
              \n
            1. Scavenging for material<\/li>\n<\/ol>\n\n
              My view is that writers need to go everywhere. You need to put your hands into as many pieces of life as you can. You\u00c2\u2019ve got to go to the whorehouse or the ballgame or the prison or the nightclub, it doesn\u00c2\u2019t matter. You\u00c2\u2019ve got to go everywhere. Because otherwise you don\u00c2\u2019t know enough\u00c2\u2026I\u00c2\u2019ve always really liked the contrast between going really inside yourself for a living and then coming out and being with friends.<\/blockquote>\n\n
                \n
              1. Shalimar<\/I><\/li>\n<\/ol>\n\n
                Much of Shalimar the Clown<\/I> is set in Kashmir, the territory disputed by India and Pakistan, and his family\u00c2\u2019s original homeland. Though it is far from what the book is about, Shalimar the Clown<\/I> is at times savagely direct in its appraisal of the region\u00c2\u2019s history and dilemma, and of fanaticism and fundamentalism\u00c2\u2026He points to the book\u00c2\u2019s second epigraph, borrowed from Romeo and Juliet<\/I> – \u00c2\u201cA plague on both your houses\u00c2\u201d \u00c2\u2013 and says this is, \u00c2\u201cvery strongly what I feel. I think Kashmir got fucked twice. First it got screwed over by the Indians, then it got screwed over by the fundamentalists coming over the border. So it\u00c2\u2019s had it at both ends. And during this long time, more than half a century, the views of the people living there have never been taken into account\u00c2\u2026They\u00c2\u2019ve been trampled over in both directions. And the book tries to tell the truth about that. This is the writer\u00c2\u2019s job \u00c2\u2013 to tell the truth.\u00c2\u201d <\/blockquote>\n\n

                18.The effect of a fatwa on his writing<\/p>\n\n

                Shalimar, an international terrorist at this point, is sent to kill a writer, \u00c2\u201c a godless man, a writer against god, who\u00c2\u2026had sold his soul to the West.\u00c2\u201d In the novel Rushdie makes clear the writer is French-speaking \u00c2\u2013 perhaps partly to make it obvious that it\u00c2\u2019s not him, and also as an acknowledgement of Tahar Djaout, a secularist Algerian writer who was murdered by Muslim terrorists in 1993. (\u00c2\u201cOne of the things I think it\u00c2\u2019s important to say,\u00c2\u201d Rushdie points out, \u00c2\u201cis that many writers have been killed in this period in which I was not killed.\u00c2\u201d) \u00c2\u2026 Describing how to prepare a venue before the arrival of a potential target: \u00c2\u2018Any professional knew that the so-called principal was easiest to attack in the space between the door of his vehicle and the door of the location he planned to enter.\u00c2\u201d<\/blockquote>\n\n

                Also discussed: Bono, Padma Lakshmi (\u00c2\u201cShe always thinks that she is the heroine of all my books, including the ones written before she was born, essentially\u00c2\u201d), The Power Rangers (\u00c2\u201cIf I ever see another episode of Power Rangers<\/I> it will be much too soon\u00c2\u2019), Mark Knopfler of Dire Straights (\u00c2\u201cI find as I got older that almost the only quality I look for in somebody is personal warmth\u00c2\u201d), marriage, Madonna (upon being sent The Ground Beneath her Feet<\/I> \u00c2\u201cnot only had she not read it, she had shredded it\u00c2\u201d), and Lou Reed (\u00c2\u201cThe idea that one day I would get to hang out with Lou Reed was\u00c2\u2026it was like telling me that you would hang out with God\u00c2\u2026Only more fun.)<\/p>\n\n

                Related posts: 1<\/a>, 2<\/a>, 3<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

                The blazing hot publicity machine for Shalimar the Clown rolls out another feature on Salman Rushdie, this time in GQ. The cheapskate mag offers only 2 (out of 20!) sections from the print version online, so despite protestations from the … Continue reading →<\/span><\/a><\/p>","protected":false},"author":12,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":[],"categories":[5],"tags":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/sepiamutiny.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2123"}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/sepiamutiny.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/sepiamutiny.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/sepiamutiny.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/12"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/sepiamutiny.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=2123"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"http:\/\/sepiamutiny.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2123\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/sepiamutiny.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=2123"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/sepiamutiny.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=2123"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/sepiamutiny.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=2123"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}