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- [00:00]
A
This is me, Craig Ferguson. I'm inviting you to come and see my brand new comedy hour. Well, it's actually, it's about an hour and a half and I don't have an opener because these guys cost money. But what I'm saying is I'll be on stage for a while anyway. Come and see me live on the Pants on Fire tour in your region. Tickets are on sale now and we'll be adding more as the Tour continues throughout 2025 and beyond. For a full list of dates, go to thecraigfergusonshow.com See you on the road, my dears. Hello. Welcome to the Joy Podcast. My name is Craig Ferguson. I am your host today. I've just finished reading this book. Well, not this one. This is a fancy show off version, but I've read the same book, Inside Bits, but this is the new cover. It's by a gentleman called Salman Rushdie, who is one of the greatest writers of our generation. And you're going to talk to him right now with me. You're not going to talk. I'm going to talk and he's going to talk.
- [00:59]
B
You're gonna listen.
- [01:02]
A
So let me just say this before we go any further. I just finished reading the 11th hour this morning, which is a little late for me to talk to you about it because I like to kind of get a little cynical and have a bit of distance from the book so that I'm not like fawning and fanboy. But I am going to fawn and fanboy a little bit.
- [01:24]
B
Okay.
- [01:24]
A
I don't know, though, because sometimes you're a seasoned professional. Sometimes flattery sounds like manipulation, doesn't it?
- [01:31]
B
No, it just sounds.
- [01:32]
A
All right.
- [01:32]
B
That good.
- [01:32]
A
I'll go for it. So here's what I thought. I think that this book, because I've read. I don't know if you know this, but you've written a few books and I've read them. This one, I feel, is the most accessible thing. Either I'm getting smarter or you're kinder. It feels like a very affable book to me in a weird way, you.
- [01:56]
B
Know, it was very enjoyable to write. It's very enjoyable to read, which isn't always necessarily the same thing.
- [02:02]
A
Right.
- [02:03]
B
But this one, it was like, you know, because I wrote this nonfiction memoir about the attack, et cetera.
- [02:09]
A
Right.
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B
And somehow the moment I finished it, like, this door in my head opened and I was able to go back into fiction.
- [02:17]
A
Yeah.
- [02:17]
B
It's funny, though.
- [02:18]
A
There's a real meta feeling about It. I wanted to talk to you about it because some of it feels like classic. You're in a fictional environment. It somehow feels fictional. Then someone will turn up or the event, even from the first story with junior and senior and arguing on the balcony. And I'm thinking I'm settling into this lovely, almost subcontinent, odd couple thing going on. And then it gets very dark and strange. Then a very real. I don't want to do too many spoilers for the book, but a very real thing happens and it kind of. I wonder later on in the book, in the story Oklahoma, you get into an argument with the wife of the writer or you. I don't even know if it's you. I don't know if you're narrating or not. But she says you steal people and put them in books. Do you do that?
- [03:12]
B
Do you still think we all do that?
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A
Right.
- [03:14]
B
But actually the character in Oklahoma is. He's not as nice as me.
- [03:18]
A
Right. Because I thought you were a bit tough on yourself.
- [03:22]
B
He's a bit of a fraud.
- [03:23]
A
Right.
- [03:24]
B
You know, and I hope I'm not. But no, what happened was that I remembered when I had been in South India once. I mean, the story's called in the South.
- [03:35]
A
Right.
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B
And I'd been in the city, which I still call Madras because I'm old fashioned.
- [03:39]
A
Right.
- [03:39]
B
You know, have to call it Chennai. Right. Anyway, I met this very sweetly grumpy old guy, Right. He was very old, very Cantagoras. Hated being old. Kept saying he wanted to die, but he was full of life. I kind of really liked him.
- [03:59]
A
Yeah. I liked him in the book, if it's the same.
- [04:01]
B
So what I did, I kind of doubled him.
- [04:03]
A
Yeah.
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B
I kind of said, let's have two of him and let's have them disagree all the time.
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A
Right.
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B
And that became the story.
- [04:11]
A
It's a lovely story. There's a lot of aging in the book. I mean, I'm guessing that's because, like.
- [04:19]
B
Us all your age, not getting young.
- [04:21]
A
Yeah. Right. I mean, there's stuff later on though, there feels like the second story in the book, the Musician of. How do I pronounce? See, I definitely. I'm glad you said it. Yeah. That to me, like, there's a lot of revenge in that. There's revenge in a couple of the stories, actually. In the third story. What's the story about? What's the name of it again? About the Oxford dawn, the ghost. Oh, late, late. Yes. Both of these are quite. They're almost books in themselves. These stories don't you think they're long.
- [04:56]
B
They're novellas, really, and. Yeah. They both ended up being revenge stories.
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A
Yeah. How much of that is.
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B
Yeah, because I wasn't planning to write, you know, let's sit down and write some revenge stories.
- [05:09]
A
Yeah.
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B
But that's just the way the stories went.
- [05:13]
A
So when you. When you write fiction, then you don't have. You don't outline. It's going to go this way, it's going to go that way.
- [05:20]
B
I used to, you know, when I was a kid, I had to have quite a detailed structure before I could actually get going. Right. And what's happened is, as I've gone on is I've become a little looser about that. Of course, you have to have some kind of general sense of what it is you're writing about. But I like the process to be discovery that you find out what you're writing by writing it.
- [05:50]
A
It feels like that as a reader, actually. I think. I wonder if that's how. When I. When I was reading through the book, I felt like I was surprised often by the way things went.
- [06:06]
B
Yeah. I think you've got to take some unexpected left turns.
- [06:09]
A
Yeah. Well, when the sitar music becomes a source of. I mean, it was interesting that the sitar music had the power to cause all the magical problems, but the piano doesn't. Is that how you.
- [06:24]
B
Piano doesn't really.
- [06:25]
A
Right. But is that an east west thing you think as well?
- [06:29]
B
Yes.
- [06:30]
A
Yeah.
- [06:30]
B
I just thought the tower is superior.
- [06:34]
A
Is that like your personal taste?
- [06:36]
B
Do you prefer the Depends what day of the week it is?
- [06:38]
A
Right.
- [06:39]
B
I mean, I actually have a niece who is a brilliant concert pianist, and so she's a little bit the germ of the story as well.
- [06:47]
A
Right.
- [06:49]
B
Only in her talent, because the character in the story is not at all like her.
- [06:53]
A
That story fascinated me, though, because of the mathematician, the atheist mathematician who gets drawn into a cult.
- [07:02]
B
A religious cult.
- [07:02]
A
A religious cult. And I wonder because I always think of you as being, in your own words, actually a hardline atheist. And I wonder if you're being drawn as like all of us. You're getting older. If you're beginning to soften on it.
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B
No, I'm hardening.
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A
Good. I always loved the way that Hitchens, even when he was dying, was like.
- [07:20]
B
No, no, no, no. There was a. Who is it? The story about they're asked on their deathbed if they will renounce Satan and they said, this is no time to be making enemies.
- [07:35]
A
Oh, yeah, who was that? I remember that. Oh, we need to figure Out. We'll find out and we'll put it up here on the little thing. But yeah, it's. That's great because I always. It's one of the things. And I. I noticed in this book it's very funny in places.
- [07:50]
B
I hope so.
- [07:51]
A
No, it really is, though.
- [07:52]
B
But I. I think I've always been a bit funny.
- [07:56]
A
Yeah. I've always thought that you never get credit for it. It's like Evelyn Waugh, who. Also very funny.
- [08:00]
B
Very funny.
- [08:01]
A
Yeah.
- [08:01]
B
Yeah. But I always thought that it's the thing that when I was. When I was starting out, people used to say it about my writing.
- [08:08]
A
Yeah.
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B
Midnight Children. People used to say, oh, it's funny. Yeah. But as time has gone on, that's not what they say. But actually I've gone on being the same writer.
- [08:17]
A
I think it's because you're clever. I think it's because you're clever and people want to feel clever and they don't feel clever when they're laughing.
- [08:24]
B
Oh, I don't know. I think there's some very clever funny people.
- [08:27]
A
Oh, so do I. But I think that. But I think with one of them. Yeah. But I think that the idea of, I mean, like comedy's never win Oscars and that's, you know, it's like. It's because I think you can say about comedy, well, you can't say about great literature or drama. You, you run the risk of someone saying, well, you don't get it. You don't understand it. But with comedy you can say, I don't get it. And people. And. And then the person who doesn't get it has the kind of upper hand.
- [08:58]
B
To say, because it's always the writer's fault.
- [09:01]
A
Right.
- [09:01]
B
If you're trying to be funny.
- [09:02]
A
Right.
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B
And not being funny.
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A
Right.
- [09:04]
B
That's terrible.
- [09:05]
A
That's awful. That's why when you see a movie and it's. They're trying to be funny, so they have a guy walking down the street or just doing something not funny, but they put music on it. It really drives me crazy because I know I'm like, that's. You don't have to do that.
- [09:18]
B
Yeah. There's a wonderful story about Buster Keaton shooting one of his films. And like a locked off camera on a street corner, a man comes around the corner eating a banana, passes the banana skin over his shoulder, walks out of frame. Buster Keaton walks around the corner. Everybody thinks he's going to step on the banana, but he steps over the banana skin, he looks at the camera, he Makes the high side with his nose. And he said when he shot it, nobody laughed. So they reshot it. Same thing happens. Buster Keaton steps over the banana, makes the high sign with his nose, walks on a step and slips over a banana skin he hasn't seen. That's funny.
- [09:54]
A
That is funny. That is funny. But that's the surprise.
- [09:57]
B
Exactly. But.
- [09:57]
A
But that's. I mean, it came to mind when I was reading the second story, which I feel like the musician of say the Name of the Town again.
- [10:05]
B
Kahani.
- [10:06]
A
Kahani. I felt like that particular story was like a Bollywood musical. It felt like you almost like you're kind of like, that could be a.
- [10:16]
B
You know, it's my hometown, and it's obsessed with the movies. So a little bit of movies. When I've written about Bombay, little bit of movie stuff always creeps in.
- [10:25]
A
Right. But you. You cannot. But that one, though, not just movie references. Like, I think if no one's optioned that to be a Bollywood musical, they should be working on it right now. Would you ever allow that?
- [10:37]
B
Yes. We have people for that. Yeah.
- [10:39]
A
Yeah. Look, this may come as a shock to you. I'm not involved in Bollywood, but if I was, I'd be like, this is the new rrr. This is amazing.
- [10:50]
B
Well, let's see.
- [10:52]
A
Yeah, I know.
- [10:52]
B
I mean, I think actually the second story, the ghost story Late, I think that's a kind of natural movie.
- [10:58]
A
I thought so, too, but more a kind of Brideshead Revisited sort of. Or it has a more kind of.
- [11:07]
B
Meditative lichen Tiri film.
- [11:08]
A
Yes, exactly. Yeah, yeah, it has. It's almost like, you know, the story. Do you know what I laughed at out loud in that, though? Is when you used the go to work on an egg thing.
- [11:19]
B
Oh, yes.
- [11:20]
A
Because that was the advertising slogan that you wrote, right?
- [11:24]
B
No, no. Faye Wilbendrop.
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A
Oh, I thought it was you.
- [11:26]
B
I wrote adorable.
- [11:28]
A
Adorable.
- [11:31]
B
And I wrote naughty.
- [11:32]
A
But why didn't you get the booker prize for that? That is adorable.
- [11:35]
B
And I wrote naughty but nice.
- [11:36]
A
Naughty but nice is good. But even in that story, I thought, I wonder if he did that on purpose when the professor realizes he's dead. But it's not that bad.
- [11:46]
B
And he said.
- [11:48]
A
And he says, if this was death, it was something he could live with. And I thought, that's a fucking advertising grace. Right? That's like almost advertising death. It was very funny.
- [11:58]
B
It's a gag. Yeah, it is.
- [11:59]
A
But it was great, though. And I think that one of the things. Cause I think of you and look, I try not to be fawning. But I honestly believe that you are in the pantheon of great writers. Not just. Well, he can write a thing or two like great writers. And what interests me about great writers in the field that I would put you in, which is Evelyn Wall, which is Vonnegut, is the idea of. Or even Dickens, if you like. Although Dickens, I think, is a little sentimental for my taste.
- [12:26]
B
Well, he stops. He gets less sentimental as he gets older.
- [12:29]
A
Right. Have you. I don't. You haven't gone sentimental, but I think you've softened a bit.
- [12:34]
B
Well, that's all right though, isn't it?
- [12:37]
A
It's all right. It's only New York. I thought it's a New York owl. It's like, move out the way. But you seem to be like. Even although the stories were revenge based or not revenge based, they had contained elements of revenge.
- [12:53]
B
Yes.
- [12:55]
A
In general, I got from the reading of the book that you were quite. You were in quite a good place, I think. Yeah.
- [13:05]
B
I mean, one of the things the book asks is when you reach this kind of later act in your life, when you reach Act 5.
- [13:13]
A
Right.
- [13:14]
B
Is what do you. How do you approach that? Yeah. You know, and seems to me that there's in this, in the book, there's two ways of approaching it. One is. One is with serenity.
- [13:25]
A
Yeah.
- [13:26]
B
You know, where you think, okay, here we are. You know, Henry James's last words are supposed to have been. Here it is at last. The distinguished thing.
- [13:35]
A
Right. That's. I wouldn't have the presence of mind for that.
- [13:38]
B
But I'm not Henry James nor knows anyone else.
- [13:40]
A
You're a bit closer than I am.
- [13:42]
B
You know, so either you're. That you can. Okay, here I am. I've been there and I'm here, and it's all okay. And you write out of that sense of serenity.
- [13:52]
A
Right.
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B
Or you're angry and you write out of rage. You know Dylan Thomas saying, do not go gentle into that. Good.
- [14:00]
A
Yeah. I didn't get any rage from you.
- [14:03]
B
No. In my view is that it doesn't have to be either or.
- [14:05]
A
Right.
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B
You can be serene on Tuesday and angry on Wednesday.
- [14:08]
A
Well, that's. Somebody even says that. And the.
- [14:12]
B
So I wanted the book to be a bit about that, about how do you. How do you approach age and mortality in general? How do. What's your take on it? What's. How do you go for it? And I did feel quite kindly towards the characters.
- [14:28]
A
Yeah, it comes across like that. I mean, one of the things that I. I really loved about the story late was it felt like you were writing a historical wrong. Was that the intention?
- [14:45]
B
Well, you know, the college in this story is not named, but it's pretty obviously the college that I was at, which was King's College, Cambridge. Right. And the two of the grand old figures of that college, one is the imposter who I did briefly meet.
- [15:00]
A
Wow.
- [15:00]
B
Okay. I mean, I was 19 and he was pushing 90.
- [15:05]
A
That's incredible. Thank you. That's amazing.
- [15:08]
B
Yeah. And the other is a great figure of World War II, Alan Turing, who was the leader of the group that broke all the German codes, etc. But both of them suffered terribly in that time because they were both gay and it was illegal and they were very badly treated because of their sexuality.
- [15:28]
A
Right.
- [15:29]
B
I mean, Forster, after writing Passage to India, never wrote another novel for the rest of his life.
- [15:34]
A
Right.
- [15:35]
B
And Turing was, you know, he was offered this choice of chemical castration.
- [15:39]
A
Yeah.
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B
And I just thought, here are two of the greatest figures who ever went to the. Sure.
- [15:44]
A
Yeah.
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B
And they were both treated in the same way, and it crippled them both. And so I thought, I'm going to make a character that's kind of both of them and a bit of myself as well, and talk about that. Talk about how great people can be crippled by the prejudices of their time.
- [16:04]
A
Yeah.
- [16:05]
B
And now, of course, now there's a statue to Alan Turing at King's College, Cambridge, the same place where he was treated horrifically.
- [16:14]
A
Yeah. There is a. It's horrific. The story of Alan Turing. And it's. What I liked about it as well, was the kind of Arthurian legend woven in as well.
- [16:27]
B
What did you write with King Arthur story? All my life, because I was very attracted to the body of stories surrounding King Arthur, Knights of the Round Table, Holy Grail, all of that. And I thought, if I was trying to write a modern version of that, what would it be like? And I tried various things, and I always discarded them because they were always no good. And then, oddly, having this story, which has nothing to do with knights and roundtables, et cetera, about this old fellow in a Cambridge college who turned out to be called Other Fellow, which he wasn't when I started writing the story.
- [17:11]
A
Right.
- [17:11]
B
Okay. I suddenly thought, oh, maybe this is. And he, oddly, became my way into the Arthurian stuff. Well.
- [17:18]
A
And also the magical Merlin world of it as well. And the idea that, you know, that. Well, I don't want to spoil the end of the story for people who haven't read it, but it is a wonderful kind of. It Was almost like. You know, I loved Tarantino's Once Upon a Time in Hollywood because he. Taking the Tate LaBianca murderers and rewriting the end of it. He did it in the. Like the Inglourious Bastards. Me Right in the end of the second.
- [17:45]
B
Well, I just thought, I'm going to take these. This very well known history.
- [17:50]
A
Right.
- [17:51]
B
And just turn it in the light and make it something a little different.
- [17:55]
A
It was. And kind of beautiful. It was kind of over and over and over again. Even in the saddest moments of the. And there are some very sad moments in the. In the book, which I want to talk to you about the construction of it as well, by the way. But before, I just want to mention that even in the saddest moments, there is great beauty in this book.
- [18:17]
B
Well, I think beauty is the job, you know. Why do we read books? We read books for beauty.
- [18:24]
A
Well, you certainly have contributed with this. What I thought was fascinating as well. It says that these are five stories and they're laid out. They are five separate stories, clearly. But I got a sense that the order was on purpose and there was a. Not necessarily a written narrative, but almost like an album that a musician.
- [18:52]
B
I think it's a concept album.
- [18:54]
A
Right, Right. Yeah, but. But not a Rick Wakeman concept album. Yeah.
- [18:59]
B
Or like sergeant Pepper.
- [19:01]
A
Right.
- [19:01]
B
Pet Sounds.
- [19:03]
A
It has that. It has that feeling about it that everything kind of. Kind of joined.
- [19:08]
B
I hope that when people read it, it would feel like a work.
- [19:12]
A
Yes.
- [19:13]
B
Often collections of stories are just a bunch of bits.
- [19:16]
A
Right.
- [19:16]
B
You know, and I didn't want it to read like that.
- [19:19]
A
It doesn't read like that.
- [19:20]
B
I wanted to feel like this is a. This is a work, you know, even though the five stories are very unlike each other.
- [19:26]
A
Yeah. But I would say that. I would say that the last story of the Old man and the Piazza is impossible to read without reading the four. That the procedure. You wouldn't. It wouldn't resonate in the same way. It would be. It would be like an essay or a comment on language and speech.
- [19:42]
B
But it acquires a kind of weight because of all the characters.
- [19:46]
A
Yeah.
- [19:46]
B
Before.
- [19:47]
A
I think it's just changed, as you probably should be by a book, you know, that we all kind of change going through the process.
- [19:56]
B
No, I was very. You know, because the sequence in which the book in which the stories are placed is not the sequence in which they were written.
- [20:03]
A
Okay.
- [20:04]
B
I mean, actually the first and last stories were the first ones that I wrote.
- [20:09]
A
That's interesting to me, especially in the. In the last one. Because the last one feels like the. Like the culmination of the story five.
- [20:19]
B
Or six years before the others.
- [20:20]
A
That's really fascinating. So do you think the book was.
- [20:24]
B
Was. I went over it. Went over it. I mean, I revised everything.
- [20:27]
A
Sure.
- [20:29]
B
So the form that they're in now is shaped all at one time, but actually, yes, the Old man of the Piazza is one of the older stories. The first story I wrote was the. Well, I wrote the two shorter stories before the longer stories. But of the longer stories, the first one that I wrote was the ghost story.
- [20:46]
A
Right.
- [20:47]
B
And then I wrote the Musician. And then I wrote Oklahoma was the last one I wrote.
- [20:53]
A
Oklahoma is an interesting story as well, because when the Stone of Madness. The concept of the idea of madness being a stone, madness being a stone in the head and having it removed. But I kind of. In the. There is a passage in there where you write as mad. And it is very unsettling to read. If I fear madness, I feel like I've touched up against it a couple of times and it worries me. I don't like it.
- [21:25]
B
I was so struck. I mean, I was in the Prado Museum in Madrid, and I went to look at the famous Bosch paintings, the Garden of Death. It's late, but in that room there's this very small painting. It's about sort of 12 inches by 8 inches. This is all about this man being held down by a couple of other guys while some kind of monkish figure with a long pair of pincers is pulling something out of his forehead. And the painting is called the Extraction of the Stone of Madness. And I thought. PATRON YELLS Great title.
- [22:01]
A
Yeah, that's pretty good. That is great.
- [22:04]
B
And it just stuck in my head, and I thought, I want to do something with this. And then I discovered that this Argentine poet had already used that as a title for a collection of poetry, and she had committed suicide.
- [22:19]
A
It is an odd thing. Do you think you've ever rubbed up against it yourself?
- [22:24]
B
No, I don't think so. I think one of the things I've not done. I've done a few things, but one of the things I've not done is consider ending my own life. No.
- [22:33]
A
Well, listen, to be fair, there's so many people willing to do it for you.
- [22:37]
B
Exactly. Yeah. Take a number.
- [22:40]
A
Yeah. It's like. It's fine.
- [22:42]
B
You don't need to.
- [22:43]
A
Good Lord. But it fascinated me, though, that to write in that style, I feel, would be disconcerting. Do you feel a strong emotional pull, not just affection for the Characters. But actually being insight like you are the stone.
- [23:00]
B
No, I get very worked up by writing. But the thing that I can do, which I think some writers can and some can't, is I can leave it behind, you know, so. So when I finish a day's work.
- [23:15]
A
Yeah.
- [23:15]
B
And I get up from the desk and I leave the room, it stays behind.
- [23:20]
A
Yeah. I've always been struck by you about that. You communicate like a human being, which is not always.
- [23:24]
B
Yeah, right. Actually like it. I think it's good for me as a writer to be able to leave it behind and go and do ordinary life things.
- [23:31]
A
Yeah.
- [23:32]
B
You know, go see a movie, go.
- [23:33]
A
Out to dinner, participate in the world.
- [23:36]
B
Hang out with a friend.
- [23:36]
A
Yeah.
- [23:37]
B
You know, I like to do that because what it does is it refreshes me and when I get back to the desk the next day, I'm fresh again.
- [23:46]
A
Do you think that comes from copywriting when you were a kid?
- [23:49]
B
I don't know. I don't want to give that any credit at all.
- [23:52]
A
I don't know. Adora Bubble should be remembered. Perhaps not with the Satanic verses or.
- [23:57]
B
The 11th hour, but that's not very often remembered. Just occasionally. Because I remember the day I walked out of the ad agency for the last time and it felt like getting out of jail, really. You know, it felt like freedom. Did you.
- [24:12]
A
Did you know you were going to be okay? Did you know you were.
- [24:14]
B
Yeah. Well, I mean, Midnight Children came out.
- [24:16]
A
And that was the second book though. Midnight Children.
- [24:18]
B
Right. But when it came, the way I wrote Midnight Children was I had a part time job in advertising.
- [24:23]
A
Right.
- [24:24]
B
And I. And so I had half the week to write my own stuff and the other half to write, you know, dog food commercials. Literally.
- [24:32]
A
You never get them mixed up.
- [24:35]
B
But what it did do, advertising is it gave me discipline.
- [24:38]
A
Yeah.
- [24:39]
B
You know, when you know that you've got a meeting. 2:30 on Friday. Yeah. And that you've got to have it done and it's got to be good. It gives you discipline and I've always retained that. I have very strong writing discipline. Clearly I can sit down and do a day's work.
- [24:55]
A
I had the Irish writer Maeve Benchy, who used to. She would. I'd drink a carafe of wine and write 2,000 words every day. And then after that she would drink the carafe of white sangria. I think it was. Do you drink when you were.
- [25:09]
B
No. I mean, I don't think you can write particularly well if you bet.
- [25:15]
A
I couldn't agree more. But there are those I mean, there's famous stories. Yeah.
- [25:20]
B
Hemingway, Fitzgerald.
- [25:21]
A
Yeah. I wonder if they would have been better if they were sober, though.
- [25:26]
B
Of course they were.
- [25:26]
A
I think so. Right. It's almost sacrilegious to say that, because then the people. It's the Henny.
- [25:32]
B
Hemingway, I think, was lying. I don't think he drank very much when he was writing.
- [25:35]
A
Yeah, that's. He stood up. So how could he have been drinking? In my world, you can't stand up.
- [25:39]
B
I think did drink. Fitzgerald, I think did drink.
- [25:42]
A
Yeah, he. He kind of. He left the game early then.
- [25:46]
B
He. Yeah. And felt like a failure. Did he? Yeah.
- [25:49]
A
That way he believed when, you know.
- [25:51]
B
He hits on the record. I mean, when. When he died, he thought he had failed. So for the right thing.
- [25:57]
A
There's a couple of things like that. Like Herman Melville thought that Moby Dick was a disaster. It was in the fishing sections of bookstores.
- [26:02]
B
Well, it got very bad reviews.
- [26:04]
A
Yeah, it really did. What are the reviews like for this? I haven't looked yet. Are they good? Yeah.
- [26:09]
B
Well, it's only had the preview. I mean, it's had starred review and Publishers Weekly.
- [26:13]
A
There you are. That's fine. If you get Publishers Weekly in Kirkus, that's all you got. Everyone else will follow that.
- [26:18]
B
Got them.
- [26:19]
A
Yeah. Well, there you are.
- [26:20]
B
Starred boxed review, starred box review.
- [26:23]
A
I think you've got a future in the game. You're going to be all right.
- [26:26]
B
Maybe stick at it.
- [26:28]
A
I have to tell you, I think this is one of the best. It's too early to tell. This one feels to me like.
- [26:35]
B
I don't think so. What I think is that it's a very good introduction to my work.
- [26:38]
A
That's what I was going to say. It's almost like the starter, if you want to get into some.
- [26:44]
B
Which is.
- [26:44]
A
It's ridiculous because if you look at the canon of your work, this is the easiest way in as well.
- [26:49]
B
Because, you know, we live in an age where people don't want to read a lot.
- [26:52]
A
Right.
- [26:53]
B
They could read 75 pages. It's better than reading 500.
- [26:57]
A
Is it affected. Is it affected the way you write?
- [26:59]
B
No, I. You know, I actually really found myself enjoying the novella length.
- [27:05]
A
Right.
- [27:05]
B
You know, the kind of 75 page.
- [27:07]
A
It feels natural in the story.
- [27:09]
B
I think, you know, some of the best things ever written are written at that length. You know, Death in Venice, that wasn't a valiance.
- [27:18]
A
Right.
- [27:18]
B
No one writes to the Colonel.
- [27:21]
A
I haven't read that.
- [27:24]
B
You know Metamorphosis.
- [27:26]
A
Yeah, that's right. Metamorphosis. Is not Metamorphosis appears in.
- [27:31]
B
Yeah. Kafka needs a guest appearance.
- [27:33]
A
And I was kind of fascinated by the idea of the protagonist in the unfinished novel starting a journey into America, which he never finished.
- [27:43]
B
He never finishes it. It's the novel of Kafka's that even people who love Kafka often don't read.
- [27:49]
A
I haven't read America, which is weird because I do love Kafka, and it's the one I haven't read.
- [27:52]
B
It's very common that people who read everything else don't read that unfinished first novel. And it has such a strange ending where his character Carl gets hired by this very mysterious thing called the Nature Theater of Oklahoma. Nobody knows what it does or why he's been hired and what he's been hired to do, but he gets a job and he gets on a train going to Oklahoma, and he never gets there because Kafka stops writing him. He gets stuck in this railway carriage full of cigar smoke.
- [28:26]
A
And people have had a crack right in the end of it.
- [28:30]
B
Nobody, I don't think nobody's ever tried to finish it. I think you tried to finish a story by Kafka.
- [28:35]
A
It's a little bit.
- [28:36]
B
It's like trying to write a last scene of a Shakespeare play. Yeah.
- [28:42]
A
The walk down, wherever he takes the bow, that's it. He gets the day in and there's no smoking carriage, and he gets out. The idea of the writers that you're talking about, who are the people that resonate with you now in your life?
- [28:56]
B
I mean, one of the reasons why the two great artists who appear in that story, Kafka and Goya, and they're huge for me, in my imagination. Yeah. I mean, when I was young, the first time I ever was in Spain, I was in the Prado. And I. I thought these. There's three rooms. The Goya, black Goyas and the Velazquez, Las Veninas and the Velasquez stuff is crazy.
- [29:24]
A
It's insane. Yeah.
- [29:25]
B
And. And the Bosch. You know, I just thought, these are the three greatest rooms in any gallery in the world. And I always, all my life, every time I've been able to be in Madrid, I've gone back and I think I just need to see those three rooms.
- [29:37]
A
It's funny, the, the Velasquez. What's the Velazquez one with the mirror?
- [29:40]
B
Last minute.
- [29:41]
A
Last minute. That's the one that I, I. It's one of the strangest paintings I've ever seen.
- [29:48]
B
Yes. Because the game with the sight lines is It's. It's so profound. Nuts.
- [29:52]
A
Yeah. I mean, it's really kind of hard that you can look at it and look at it and look at it and look at it. I wonder if I can see how that would attract to your mind.
- [30:02]
B
Yeah, it did. It's always just. It's one of. You know, there are works of art would just stick in your head forever, Right. And that's one of them.
- [30:09]
A
Talk to me about the Bosch ones a little bit, because Bosch is. The Bosch art I've always thought is, you know, I've always associated with. And I know this is an apocryphal story about the idea that Bosch would paint in bursts and he would eat the rye bread, and the rye bread had mold on it, and the mold was hallucinogenic.
- [30:27]
B
The mold was hallucinogenic. I remember finding out when I was writing the Enchantress of Florence that poor people in Florence who were too poor to buy fresh bread would buy the bread that was stale and which the baker was about to throw out. And it had mold in it, and the mold had hallucinogenic properties. And so everybody saw visions of the Virgin Mary.
- [30:50]
A
And I wonder if that's. It feels plausible to me. I mean, if you look at Bosch, nobody was painting anything.
- [30:59]
B
Nothing like that. I like the idea that the Virgin Mary appeared because you ate moldy bread.
- [31:08]
A
Are you trying to piss off the Catholics as well?
- [31:11]
B
It's just a comedy line.
- [31:15]
A
Let me ask you about the spirituality that is evident particularly in this new collection.
- [31:22]
B
Right.
- [31:23]
A
That you are a hardline atheist. But it feels to me that there is a. Not a cracking a little on the idea of when you talk about not an immortal soul, but a mortal soul, which is a phrase I've never heard before.
- [31:40]
B
I love Aristotle. Did. Said.
- [31:42]
A
Did he? Well, there you go.
- [31:44]
B
He had this idea, that. Which I think many of us would agree with, that when we consider ourselves, the thing that we call I is not just the flesh and blood and bones. There's an I which is not just the physical self.
- [32:00]
A
Right.
- [32:00]
B
And we all think that about ourselves. So what the hell is that? The mortals is an. So Aristotle had this idea that there could be such a thing as a spirit, you know, what the philosopher called the ghost in the machine, but that it doesn't outlive the body.
- [32:21]
A
That seems to make more sense to me. I'm not an atheist because I feel like it's too kind of hard to use your word, a hard line. I can't toe it because I feel like there's clearly no proof in the existence of.
- [32:33]
B
No. All I can say is having come really quite close to the exit door.
- [32:37]
A
Yeah.
- [32:38]
B
One of the things that there wasn't was anything like a spirit leaving the body.
- [32:45]
A
Right.
- [32:46]
B
I thought, well, I'm dying in this. At least my body's dying and I'm dying with it. There was no tunnel of light.
- [32:55]
A
Did you feel fear or sanguine or.
- [32:58]
B
I just felt. Here it is. I just thought that I was quite. Trauma.
- [33:04]
A
That's interesting. I wonder, whenever I've been in any dangerous situation, it's usually afterwards I experience fear. It's like later on. Did you get that?
- [33:12]
B
Yeah. No, you get all kinds of stuff. I mean, because stress, post trauma trauma is real. Trauma is real. And the consequences of trauma are real. Sure. But at the time, no heavenly choir.
- [33:26]
A
Right.
- [33:27]
B
No. No lights, no sense of going somewhere.
- [33:31]
A
But what's interesting is about you saying that and then having just read the story about the ghost.
- [33:37]
B
The ghost story?
- [33:38]
A
The dead man.
- [33:38]
B
I've never written a ghost story.
- [33:40]
A
Who's surrounded by fog and isn't quite sure what's going on. I feel like having this conversation with you now. I'm like, well, that seems to be connected in some way.
- [33:49]
B
Well, I just thought he wasn't supposed to be dead.
- [33:53]
A
Right.
- [33:53]
B
I mean, I thought initially that I was going to write a story about this old gentleman and this young Indian woman student, which is a lovely story, and how they have their love of India in common and it would make them friends. And so they would have this friendship of a very old person with a very young person. I thought that would be the story. And I sat down to write it and I wrote this sentence which came out of nowhere, which said when he woke up that morning, he was dead. And I thought, excuse me, where did that come from?
- [34:28]
A
That's an interesting surprise twist in the beginning of your story.
- [34:31]
B
Yeah.
- [34:32]
A
Are you an advocate or do you in any way attracted to Jung and the collective unconscious and all that kind of thing?
- [34:37]
B
There was a moment in my life when I did read some of that. It doesn't stick with me very much, but I just thought I left it on my computer for a day or two, just sitting there. I thought, oh, well, you know, I've never written a ghost story. How would that go if I wrote it? And so the story changed. It's still about the old gent and the young girl, you know, but with this twist in it.
- [35:02]
A
It's an interesting thing that you. That you didn't connect with the Jungian aspect of It. Because I felt a little bit of that in.
- [35:11]
B
Well, in the two mainstreams. I mean, you know, readers bring their own things.
- [35:15]
A
Well, that's true. That's the thing. It's not yours anymore. It's ours.
- [35:18]
B
Exactly.
- [35:19]
A
I mean, do you get a sense of loss when it's published?
- [35:22]
B
No, when it's finished, I'm really done with it. With anything I write. Once it's finished, it's finished. I don't have to hang on to it, let it go.
- [35:36]
A
Do you ever go back and look at it?
- [35:38]
B
Not very often. I mean, sometimes. For example, when we made the film of Midnight Children and I ended up writing. Writing the screenplay, which originally I wasn't going to, but that's how it worked out.
- [35:50]
A
You're a writer. You're a control freak.
- [35:51]
B
Then I had to. No, it was all about money.
- [35:54]
A
Well, you certainly don't have to apologize about that.
- [35:57]
B
No, I mean, it was clear that we were not going to.
- [35:59]
A
You've got to be able to.
- [36:00]
B
We're not going to get the money to write the film unless I wrote the screen. So I. And then I had to do a deep dive back into this novel, which I wrote when I was so much younger. And I. You know, what happens when you read your old stuff is some of it you think, yeah, that's quite good. And some of it, you think, well, maybe that bit could have been left out.
- [36:22]
A
Yeah, I've experienced that a bit with my own, like. I mean, if you do even, like a lot of younger comedians right now, as they get a little older, are starting to realize that some of the stuff that you say when you're young doesn't go away.
- [36:36]
B
Yeah.
- [36:37]
A
And people get. Get into trouble. Everything's visible right away.
- [36:42]
B
But I also think with the book that's out there and published and has had its life in the world, is that you shouldn't go back. You can't go back in. You can't go back and fix it.
- [36:51]
A
Well, I think what's interesting, though, as a reader of yours and of other great writers, is that when it belongs to the world, as the books that you write now do, and this one will join them, is that they do stand up to. And I mean that by going back and reading them again now perhaps, obviously as the writer, that's a different experience. But is there a book that you return to. Are you a voracious reader?
- [37:20]
B
A book of mine?
- [37:21]
A
No, another book.
- [37:22]
B
Not your. Oh, it used to be that I would read ulysses once every 10 years. Okay. I don't know. I Think I've read it enough.
- [37:34]
A
You know what Peter Cook used to say about Ulysses? When people said, they're reading it, he said, neither am I.
- [37:43]
B
That's very good.
- [37:44]
A
Yeah.
- [37:45]
B
I mean, if I was to read Joyce now, I'd be more likely to read Dubliners.
- [37:50]
A
Right.
- [37:50]
B
Or Portrait of the Artist.
- [37:53]
A
Ulysses is a hard. Is a hard.
- [37:55]
B
It's a hard book. But it's got funny in it.
- [37:57]
A
Yeah.
- [37:58]
B
There's funny stuff in it and there is that incredible soliloquy at the end.
- [38:02]
A
Yeah.
- [38:02]
B
You know, Molly Bloom letting rip.
- [38:08]
A
Yeah. It's a long way to get to that. I mean, I've never successfully completed that book.
- [38:14]
B
Well, it's still waiting. Right.
- [38:16]
A
Well, I'll go back to it.
- [38:17]
B
But, I mean, there are books that I. This novel of Saul Bellow's, the Adventures of Woggy Marsh.
- [38:24]
A
Right.
- [38:24]
B
That I do pick up and look at every so often.
- [38:26]
A
I'm not familiar with the book at all.
- [38:28]
B
Well, it's. When Martin Amos wrote about it, he said, this is the great American novel.
- [38:33]
A
Really? Okay. He could write a bit. Martin Amos. Were you friendly with Martin Amos? I would imagine you were probably coming. You were around at the same time.
- [38:43]
B
There was a bunch of us, Martin and Ian McEwen and me and few others. Ishiguro.
- [38:50]
A
It's a bit of a posh crew, isn't it, hanging around Carter. Yeah.
- [38:54]
B
You know, Julian Barnes. Etc. There's a bunch of us.
- [38:57]
A
Are you social with writers now? Do you still hang?
- [39:00]
B
Few friends, yeah. You know, I mean, a lot of my friends are not writers.
- [39:04]
A
Right.
- [39:04]
B
But. But I. I mean, I was very close friends to Paul Austin, so that's a. That's a real loss.
- [39:11]
A
Yeah.
- [39:12]
B
I'm friendly with Don DeLillo and some of the younger people. You know, I'm friendly with Zadie Smith and.
- [39:19]
A
Right. It's funny that, because. Are writers competitive in the way that business people are?
- [39:28]
B
I'm not. I mean, some. I think. I guess some people are. I think there's room for everybody.
- [39:33]
A
You know, I think also, to be fair, you're fucking Salman Rushdie, so why would you care?
- [39:39]
B
You know?
- [39:40]
A
I mean, like, you made your bones.
- [39:43]
B
Well, thank you for saying so.
- [39:44]
A
Yeah.
- [39:44]
B
But. But I will.
- [39:45]
A
So eloquently. I think you were probably going to add as well.
- [39:48]
B
Very. Well. I couldn't have said it better myself, but I do think that there is room for everybody.
- [39:55]
A
Yeah.
- [39:55]
B
You know, and one of the. I mean, the great thing about, you know, you walk into a bookstore, there's all those books, a lot of books, and there's and there's room for all of them.
- [40:05]
A
Do you know, I've noticed that a lot of people would do now as well, I don't know if you know this, that they will say they've read a book when they haven't read it, they've listened to it.
- [40:11]
B
Yeah. And I don't mind that. I don't mind how people consume the stuff.
- [40:15]
A
Right.
- [40:15]
B
You know, if they want. If they. If it's easier to listen, if it's easier to read on. I mean, I now read on an iPad in a way that I never used to.
- [40:25]
A
Yeah. Do you have that setting, though? So that the.
- [40:27]
B
Well, what I could do is, first of all, it's lit and secondly, I can adjust the type size.
- [40:33]
A
Right.
- [40:33]
B
And it's easier, thanks to my eye problem, to do that. But I never used to read. I used to be scornful of iPads and I use them every day.
- [40:42]
A
Yeah, no, I don't mind. I just feel like the, the process of the. Like when I was reading the 11th hour, there's no audio form of it available to me right now. So I'm looking at the galleys of this book and I'm reading it and as I read it, I'm thinking to myself, I'm so glad I'm doing this and not having this done for.
- [41:09]
B
We made a decision with the audiobook, which is to have five different people reading the five different stories.
- [41:14]
A
That's great. Do you know who they are?
- [41:15]
B
Yeah, they're all good people.
- [41:16]
A
Yeah. Good. I mean, I feel like I would have been fine for maybe one of them, but it's. Yeah. Let's just say that when you write the great Scottish novel, then we do it. Scotland does get a mention, though.
- [41:32]
B
I noticed that at one point.
- [41:33]
A
Where was it? It's in late. When they're talking about the homosexuality laws. When you're talking about that and the fact that Scotland was late in adopting.
- [41:42]
B
Exactly. When it became legal in England, it was still illegal.
- [41:45]
A
Still illegal in Scotland, which. It's so bizarre. You try to explain that to my own children now with the idea that being gay was against the law. You could go to like, they're like, that's. It's crazy.
- [41:58]
B
I know. It's like being blue eyed.
- [42:00]
A
Yeah, I know. It's such a. It's such an insane thing to me.
- [42:04]
B
But it was there for a long time.
- [42:05]
A
It was for a long time. But it was funny that I remember when it passed in the House of Lords, the legalization, it passed very quickly and I remember some Very clever theatrical person in London saying it was because of the interest of the people involved in the House of Lords. But there used to be all these euphemisms for it in British society. Are you musical?
- [42:29]
B
Yes. Confirmed bachelor.
- [42:31]
A
Confirmed bachelor was one. Oh. Do you know what I loved, by the way? I meant to tell you in the book, when you referenced the rise and fall of Reginald Perrin. Oh, yes, the BBC.
- [42:42]
B
The BBC TV series.
- [42:44]
A
That was a great. That fascinated me as the idea that you could fake your own death and disappear into. I still think about that a little bit.
- [42:53]
B
Yeah. Because it was so beautifully acted as well.
- [42:55]
A
Yeah, it was. Leonard Rossiter.
- [42:58]
B
Yeah.
- [42:59]
A
He was a fabulous actor. And the idea that you can disappear into the world. There's a line in a U2 song somewhere about disappearing into the arms of America.
- [43:09]
B
Yeah. Well, you see the title that Kafka almost used for his unfinished first novel. Cause America was a title that was put on.
- [43:17]
A
He didn't write that one. That's right. I learned that from this book.
- [43:20]
B
But he was thinking of calling it the man who Disappeared.
- [43:23]
A
Right.
- [43:24]
B
And so that's what gave me the clue for my story, because it becomes actually about two men who disappeared.
- [43:30]
A
Was ever a temptation for you back in the fatwa days to like. I mean, because. Yeah. In fact, you can add to this.
- [43:35]
B
I had to be very. Yeah, I had to be very low key, let's say, for a while, but. But it made. It prompted in me the opposite desire, which is to get my life back.
- [43:45]
A
That's interesting. Yeah. I guess that makes sense as well. I mean, the. I was out in the American west, like last week, and we were filming something out in the desert. Have you ever been out there?
- [43:58]
B
A little bit.
- [44:01]
A
We were filming out in the desert and everything had to be turned off for a minute. And I was on my own in the middle of the desert. And it was the first time in a long time that I'd heard the enormity of the silence. And it feels to me. This is one of the reasons why I can't underscore atheist in a character description for myself. Because there's something about the enormity of that silence that feels like, divine to me.
- [44:26]
B
Well, the place where I felt it. That's years ago now. I went on a safari in the Serengeti. Okay. And if you're in the middle of the Serengeti in the middle of the night with these unbelievable stars over you where you can actually see the whole galaxy. It's astonishing. And that you can't hear anything.
- [44:52]
A
It's fascinating to me, the sense of wonder and the sense of mysticism and oddness in your writing that you say atheism. Is that an anti religious stance or a definite.
- [45:10]
B
I just don't need it to explain what I'm trying to explain.
- [45:15]
A
Yeah, yeah, yeah. But I think that. But I think the idea of. I mean, the idea of. Of not knowing.
- [45:23]
B
Yeah. I don't like religions. Yeah. I don't like.
- [45:26]
A
I can see why that would. That.
- [45:28]
B
I just don't just. Actually, the religions I like most are the police, the polytheistic ones.
- [45:33]
A
Right. They're like them. And you go like, this is the river God for this river.
- [45:38]
B
More stories.
- [45:39]
A
Yeah.
- [45:39]
B
More better stories. And after all, if you think about what we now think of as mythology, I mean, the Greek myths were originally the religion of Greece and the Nordic myths were the religion of the Norse countries. So religions which have pantheons have wonderful stories.
- [45:58]
A
I think my personal belief is that's why the Catholics got all the saints to come in, because it wasn't exciting enough just to have.
- [46:05]
B
Yeah.
- [46:05]
A
God.
- [46:06]
B
Just to broaden the canvas.
- [46:08]
A
Yeah. Just like. Well, let's have, you know, saints and then they can, you know, and then you can pray to a saint, which it feels a little bit, you know, like, you know, like a little bit like you're having a polytheist environment. The pantheon of the saints.
- [46:22]
B
I'm gonna leave it to you to say that. Yeah.
- [46:24]
A
You know what? We got it out if it looks like trouble, but I don't blame you. But it does seem to me like it's like a little bit like that, you know, I was fascinating.
- [46:34]
B
Do you ever read.
- [46:35]
A
I suppose you probably knew him. I met him briefly myself as Gore Vidal.
- [46:38]
B
I met him a few times.
- [46:40]
A
Right. Apparently not an easy and easy customer to get along with, but I don't know. I mean, my personal experience.
- [46:47]
B
He got crustier as he got older.
- [46:49]
A
Yeah, well, it can happen. But he has his book on Julian the imposter. I particularly enjoyed.
- [46:59]
B
He was the best as a historical novelist.
- [47:02]
A
That's what I think too. Right.
- [47:03]
B
I mean, Burr is a wonderful book.
- [47:05]
A
Burr's book, Creation is a great book.
- [47:07]
B
Lincoln is a very good.
- [47:08]
A
Yeah. The narratives of Empire.
- [47:12]
B
Yes. Creation is a very good book.
- [47:15]
A
That's the one where Buddha and Socrates and Alexander. Yeah. And Xerxes the Great and Darius the Great and the Hellenic wars and all that is fantastic. And it makes it very livable. And if I can fanboy out a little bit on your stuff, particularly in this book right now, is the idea that Everything in the book that I have just finished reading is plausible within the world, which is weird because there's a lot of miracles and strange things and magic.
- [47:49]
B
But this is what, you know, what you try and do as a writer is to create a world that is believable to the reader, at least for the length of time that they're reading it.
- [47:58]
A
Right. Well, achievement unlocked. Move to the next level. Because the idea of the family that was pulled apart in what I now think of as the Bollywood movie the Musician. The Musician, where the mathematician is taken into the cult and the baby that grows up to be the piano player that takes her revenge with the sitar. Music is.
- [48:31]
B
So, you know, I was thinking for before, long before I knew what the story was, I just had this idea of music giving the musician a kind of superpower, and I didn't even know what that might be. Superpower. And then I remember reading the poem, the Pied Piper of Hamelin. Oh, yeah. You know, and of course, Robert Browning's poem. Of course, in that case, the power of the music is used first for good getting rid of rats, and then for evil getting rid of children. But I got thinking that there was something I wanted to do about music and the magical power of music, and I finally found the story.
- [49:17]
A
Do you listen to music for inspiration?
- [49:21]
B
I can't listen to anything when I'm actually writing.
- [49:23]
A
Right.
- [49:24]
B
I mean, I know people who write with music playing all the time. Right. I can't do that.
- [49:29]
A
What about the idea of the. Before you're actually physically. Right.
- [49:33]
B
Yeah. I mean, sometimes just to get in.
- [49:35]
A
The mood, depending what to think about a story you're working on, because it feels to me like, you know that lovely Basquiat quote, art is how we decorate space. Music is how we decorate time. Which I wonder in the thinking process of thinking about, because clearly you don't sit down and write something like the musician or late in a day. So there has to be a process of mulling the story over.
- [50:08]
B
No, I mean, I listen to music when I'm not writing.
- [50:12]
A
And what do you listen to? Is it, I imagine an eclectic.
- [50:16]
B
I don't know, everything. You know, everything. I listened to Prince. I loved. I was into the Rolling Stones.
- [50:26]
A
Yeah.
- [50:28]
B
I mean, I. I went to see the Dylan movie, and I've seen it three times.
- [50:32]
A
Okay, so you liked it or you really hated it?
- [50:35]
B
No, I really liked it. What I really liked was the music.
- [50:38]
A
That's just twisted.
- [50:40]
B
Watching that great music being, as it were, dramatized. Yeah.
- [50:44]
A
And he did, I believe, Chalamet did his own singing on that.
- [50:46]
B
He did his own singing. And also Monica Barbara playing Joan Baez. She did?
- [50:51]
A
Yeah.
- [50:51]
B
That's kind of. I thought nobody could sing like Joan Baez, although apparently they can.
- [50:56]
A
There's all these people coming up there. They're pretty impressive. Do you look at any young writers now and think that's somebody very important on the way? Is there anyone that you'd.
- [51:07]
B
I mean, I don't. I'm. I'm not as well read in very. In the. In the, you know, first novelists and so on.
- [51:13]
A
Right.
- [51:14]
B
As I should be. But there's a lot of younger writers that I admire very much. I mean, I. I very much like the African American writer Jasmine Ward. Well, she's, you know, won the National Book Award twice before she was 30.
- [51:28]
A
I should probably.
- [51:29]
B
You publish her. Yeah, yeah. And I'm not that young, but James McBride's last couple of novels have been astonishing. There's a novel called the Heaven and Earth Grocery Store, which is about a very interesting Jewish slash black community in Pittsburgh. Brilliant novel. And the novel before that, which is called. I keep confusing its name with the Murakami title, the Good Lord Bird.
- [52:04]
A
Right.
- [52:04]
B
Which is about the. The Harper's Ferry John Brown Uprising. Oh, okay.
- [52:09]
A
Right.
- [52:11]
B
And they're very, very good.
- [52:13]
A
I. So you're immersed in. In literature all the time.
- [52:18]
B
Yeah, yeah, yeah. I mean, when I'm writing fiction, I really don't read very much fiction.
- [52:24]
A
That would probably be.
- [52:26]
B
Yeah, I don't want to be infected.
- [52:28]
A
Yeah.
- [52:28]
B
No, I know what you mean by somebody else's voice.
- [52:31]
A
Yeah.
- [52:31]
B
And there are. I mean, good writers are infectious.
- [52:35]
A
Yeah. I think that. I think that you. Because you respond to it, it's almost like it's an emotional connection.
- [52:43]
B
But, you know, when I'm trying to make my own music, I don't need somebody else's music.
- [52:48]
A
I think that makes sense.
- [52:49]
B
Yeah.
- [52:50]
A
Let me ask you a little bit about. Because we're gonna have to wind up in a minute because we've been yakking for a while. But let me ask you a little bit about the. I want to take you back to. Late for a minute. The. The Ox, the Cambridge dawn story. I say Oxford. My head.
- [53:08]
B
Just because it's.
- [53:09]
A
Because it's rock and because it's my head. But. But the idea of. I'm fascinated by the idea of people like H.G. wells and C.S. lewis corresponding. The idea of these great differing opinions from kind of the same world clashing in this very elegant letter writing way. Is there anyone in your life that you have that kind of.
- [53:45]
B
No, unfortunately, nobody writes letters anymore.
- [53:47]
A
Right.
- [53:47]
B
You know, emails don't. Not the same.
- [53:50]
A
Do it the same.
- [53:51]
B
Not the same thing. So, I mean, I do think that there is even in. In. In American literature, there's. If you look just to that generation we were talking about, the. That generation before mine.
- [54:02]
A
Right.
- [54:02]
B
They all wrote to each other, letters about their books.
- [54:05]
A
Yeah.
- [54:05]
B
And they weren't even nice. Yeah. Yeah. They said, I admire you so much. Your new book is really dreadful.
- [54:13]
A
Well, people still review other people's.
- [54:15]
B
No, but the point is, what was interesting about that, those interactions, it didn't create hostility.
- [54:20]
A
Right, right. It was like. Yeah, it was. It was a.
- [54:24]
B
They were able to have that conversation.
- [54:26]
A
Yeah.
- [54:26]
B
There's something about the nature of the letter that allows that to happen.
- [54:31]
A
I think also, though, I would agree with that. But I think there's also. There's a fashion to be right or wrong.
- [54:40]
B
Yeah. I don't know. I mean, I. I feel very out of the loop sometimes about what's happening in what we call now.
- [54:47]
A
Yeah.
- [54:49]
B
I don't think I. I don't think I live in now.
- [54:52]
A
Yeah. I don't blame you. I don't think I do anymore either. I mean, it doesn't look like an attractive loop to me.
- [54:58]
B
No. It's like Twitter.
- [55:00]
A
Yeah. I mean. Which is. Is gone.
- [55:03]
B
It's just. It's just like a room you don't want to be in.
- [55:06]
A
Yeah. Well, I remember back in the days when the Internet started run about. Sometime in the 1940s, perhaps, that I have. I remember people used to be in chat rooms.
- [55:17]
B
Yes.
- [55:18]
A
And I was like, why would I want to be in a chat room, A virtual room with people that I don't know. But apparently that's the thing that took off.
- [55:25]
B
Well, I prefer what we call friends.
- [55:28]
A
Yes.
- [55:29]
B
Yes. That you can be an actual.
- [55:30]
A
Yeah. Yeah, I think so. Well, listen, it's a pleasure to be in an actual room with you. Always is. And congratulations on the 11th hour, because I honestly, honestly believe right now is one of your best. But I've only just finished it.
- [55:45]
B
Thank you. Tell your friends.
- [55:47]
A
Give me. Well, I don't have any.
- [55:51]
B
They're all in this room. That's it. All right. Get out of here. Thank you. That was great.
- [55:57]
A
Lovely. And I really.
- [56:06]
B
Sam.