David Remnick Speaks to Salman Rushdie About Surviving the Fatwa

Summary

Podcast Summary: David Remnick Speaks to Salman Rushdie About Surviving the Fatwa
On the Media
Release Date: February 8, 2023
Host: David Remnick (Editor of The New Yorker and Host of New Yorker Radio)

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Introduction

In this poignant episode of On the Media, David Remnick engages in a profound and introspective conversation with the acclaimed novelist Salman Rushdie. This interview marks Rushdie's first public dialogue since the harrowing knife attack in August 2022, which left him critically injured. The discussion traverses the personal and professional ramifications of the attack, Rushdie's enduring resilience, and his latest literary endeavor, Victory City.

Surviving the Attack

The interview opens with a candid exchange about Rushdie's physical and emotional state following the assassination attempt.

[02:00] Salman Rushdie: "You know, I've been better, but considering what happened, I'm not so bad."

Rushdie details his injuries, emphasizing the severity of the attack and his remarkable survival.

[03:12] Salman Rushdie: "I think there must have been somewhere between 15, 20 [stabbings]."

He reflects on the immediate aftermath, highlighting the swift and heroic efforts that saved his life.

[06:37] Salman Rushdie: "I have nothing but huge admiration for those young women, and not all of them young. And for the men who have supported them."

The Impact of the Fatwa and Attack

Remnick probes into the long-term effects of living under the shadow of the fatwa issued by Ayatollah Khomeini in 1989, which declared Rushdie's novel The Satanic Verses as blasphemous and called for his assassination.

[24:05] Salman Rushdie: "Oh, you know, evil Arrogant, terrible writer. Nobody would have read him if there hadn't been an attack against his book."

Rushdie discusses the creation of a "false self" in the public eye, shaped by external perceptions and criticisms during the fatwa's height.

[26:08] Salman Rushdie: "Everybody loves me."

Despite the trauma, Rushdie expresses a sense of gratitude and a determination to continue his literary pursuits without adopting the victim narrative.

Victory City: A New Chapter in Storytelling

Rushdie delves into his latest novel, Victory City, which was completed just weeks before the attack. He shares insights into the book's genesis and thematic depth.

[07:15] Salman Rushdie: "What I'm hoping is that people will be able to say, oh, here's a writer. I've tried very hard not to adopt the role of a victim."

Victory City is a historical fable set during the Vijayanagara Empire in South India, blending fantastical elements with rich historical context. Rushdie emphasizes his intent to create a narrative that transcends personal tragedy, focusing instead on universal themes of power, treachery, and the complexities of Indian history.

[10:39] Salman Rushdie: "I think that it's just another way of telling the truth."

He highlights the advanced role of women in the Vijayanagara Empire, drawing parallels to contemporary societal structures and challenging reductive historical narratives.

[11:53] Salman Rushdie: "There were women generals, there were women lawyers, there were women merchants. There were women doing everything for long periods of time."

Storytelling and Historical Narrative

A significant portion of the conversation explores Rushdie's philosophy of storytelling and his approach to intertwining history with fiction.

[07:09] David Remnick: "The first question you need to ask yourself is whose story are you telling?"

Rushdie articulates his method of world-building, where he allows his characters, particularly Pompa Campana, to guide the narrative organically.

[07:42] Salman Rushdie: "For me, in part it was just a pleasure of world building. Just having a chance to create a big canvas on which there would be... And that the book would also be about somebody who was building the world."

He underscores the importance of incorporating diverse perspectives and voices to present a multifaceted portrayal of history.

[13:17] David Remnick: "It's kind of a novelist." [13:18] Salman Rushdie: "And I thought, what a great piece of advice for a novelist."

Relationship with India and Contemporary Politics

Rushdie candidly discusses his complex relationship with India, his homeland, especially in light of the rising Hindu nationalism under the Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) led by Narendra Modi.

[14:30] David Remnick: "The BJP is India's ruling party, the Hindu nationalist party of Narendra Modi."

Rushdie critiques the BJP's simplistic and sectarian portrayal of Indian history, advocating for a more nuanced and comprehensive understanding.

[14:49] Salman Rushdie: "The history of India is much more complicated than that. It's not that there was an ancient culture that another culture came in and destroyed."

He draws parallels between historical misrepresentations and contemporary political rhetoric, emphasizing the dangers of perpetuating false narratives to justify present-day injustices.

Coping with Trauma and Continuing the Literary Journey

The conversation shifts to Rushdie's personal journey of healing and his determination to return to writing despite the psychological scars left by the attack.

[35:53] Salman Rushdie: "I've been found it very, very difficult to write. I sit there to write and nothing happens."

He opens up about experiencing Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder (PTSD) and the challenges it poses to his creative process.

[36:45] David Remnick: "Would you have forecast in any way, or did you think, was it out of mind what happened in August?" [36:47] Salman Rushdie: "I won't say that I hadn't thought about it over the years."

Rushdie emphasizes resilience and the importance of moving forward with gratitude, despite the lingering effects of the attack.

[28:13] David Remnick: "What's a scared book?" [28:15] Salman Rushdie: "Well, a book that doesn't tackle anything important, that shies away from things because you worry about how people will react to them."

Literary Legacy and Future Works

Reflecting on his extensive body of work, Rushdie contemplates the enduring impact of his novels and his aspirations for Victory City.

[40:37] Salman Rushdie: "I just hope something lasts. I mean, you don't know, do you?"

He expresses a desire for his stories to transcend generational boundaries, much like beloved classics that resonate with both children and adults.

[42:06] David Remnick: "When you look down the rear view mirror of your work, even though knowing there's more ahead, how do you assess it in terms of what you think will last and what you think the best of it is?" [42:13] Salem Rushdie: "I just hope something lasts."

Conclusion

The interview culminates with a reflection on the precarious state of global politics and Rushdie's cautious optimism for change. He acknowledges the unpredictability of societal shifts but remains steadfast in his commitment to storytelling as a means of fostering understanding and joy.

[50:05] Salman Rushdie: "I have to keep... I have to keep... I have a promise that I'd write a book he would want to read."

Through his eloquent discourse, Salman Rushdie not only recounts his personal ordeal but also reinforces the profound role of literature in capturing complex histories, challenging oppressive narratives, and celebrating the enduring human spirit.

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Notable Quotes with Timestamps:

1. Salman Rushdie on Survival and Resilience

   [02:00] "You know, I've been better, but considering what happened, I'm not so bad."

2. Rushdie on the Fatwa's Public Perception

   [24:05] "Oh, you know, evil Arrogant, terrible writer. Nobody would have read him if there hadn't been an attack against his book."

3. On Avoiding the Victim Narrative

   [07:15] "What I'm hoping is that people will be able to say, oh, here's a writer. I've tried very hard not to adopt the role of a victim."

4. On Storytelling and Historical Truth

   [10:39] "I think that it's just another way of telling the truth."

5. Critique of Simplistic Historical Narratives

   [14:49] "The history of India is much more complicated than that. It's not that there was an ancient culture that another culture came in and destroyed."

6. On Overcoming Fear in Writing

   [28:15] "Well, a book that doesn't tackle anything important, that shies away from things because you worry about how people will react to them."

7. On Literary Legacy

   [40:37] "I just hope something lasts. I mean, you don't know, do you?"

8. On Promise to His Son

   [42:15] "I had made him a promise that I'd write a book he would want to read."

9. On the Future of Indian Politics

   [44:35] "I don't know quite. I don't know about whether I can go anywhere, you know, and I'm just, I'm..."

10. On Finding Joy Through Art

    [38:31] "And I've been quite lucky in the way I had hit a very big bump in the road with the Satanic Verses... The main overwhelming feeling is gratitude."

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This in-depth conversation not only sheds light on Salman Rushdie's personal struggles and triumphs but also offers a rich exploration of his artistic vision and unwavering commitment to storytelling amidst adversity.

Transcript

[Salman Rushdie]

On the media is brought to you by Progressive Insurance. You chose to hit play on this podcast today. Smart Choice make another smart choice with Auto Quote Explorer to compare rates for multiple car insurance companies all at once. Try [e-mail] Progressive Casualty Insurance Company and affiliates not available in all states or situations. Prices vary based on how you buy.

[David Remnick]

Hi. This midweek podcast proudly offers you something you can get somewhere else, but we didn't want you to miss it. David Remnick's in depth interview with Salman Rushdie, the writer's first since a knife wielding fanatic attacked him on stage at a festival in New York in August 2022. Sure, it's about the stabbing that maimed him and almost killed him, the impact of that, but it's even more about what kind of life Rushdie has led, the choices he's made, and how being under mortal threat for some 35 years clarifies the mind and influence influences how and what you write first. David Remnick, editor of the New Yorker and host of the New Yorker Radio.

Hour 34 years ago, the Ayatollah Khomeini, then the supreme leader of Iran, declared that a novel called the Satanic Verses was a blasphemy. He issued a ruling of fatwa ordering the assassination of its author, the Indian British novelist salman Rushdie. After 10 years of fugitive life in London and then more than 20 years living freely and unguarded in New York City, history caught up with Rushdie. And history came in the form of a young man named Hadi Matar. Dressed in black and wielding a knife, Matar attacked Rushdie on a stage in August, stabbing him repeatedly. Rushdie barely survived. First, I need to ask how you are. Just how are you feeling?

[Salman Rushdie]

You know, I've been better, but considering what happened, I'm not so bad. As you can see, the, the big injuries are healed. Essentially this, this, this had a knife injury in the middle of it because.

[David Remnick]

Do you have feeling in your left hand?

[Salman Rushdie]

I have some. I have feeling in my thumb and index finger and in the bottom half of the palm.

[David Remnick]

Can you type?

[Salman Rushdie]

Not, not very well because of the lack of feeling in the fingertips. The big injuries was here.

[David Remnick]

It's right under your right jaw?

[Salman Rushdie]

Yes. The neck. The neck and, and up around here, the right side of my face. There was a lot there. There were chest wounds and the liver was injured.

[David Remnick]

Do we know how many times you were stabbed?

[Salman Rushdie]

You know, I wasn't counting, but not at the moment anyway. And I've read different articles which have had different numbers.

[David Remnick]

How the hell would they know?

[Salman Rushdie]

I don't know. Maybe they asked the hospital. I think there must have been somewhere between 15, 20. I mean, he had. Again, I only know this from reading the newspapers, but apparently he had 27 seconds before people jumped on him. So that's how much damage you can do in 27 minutes.

[David Remnick]

27 seconds. Yeah, it's a hell of a lot. This is the first time that Salman Rushdie has spoken publicly since the attack. And so we're going to spend all of the New Yorker Radio Hour today with him talking about the fatwa and the near assassination 33 years later. But we'll also talk. And this is what he was most eager to do about literature, about storytelling, starting with his new novel, Victory City, which comes out this week.

[Salman Rushdie]

Well, I actually, it's just a piece of good fortune, given what happened, that I had actually finished the last bit of editorial work on it. I'd actually had corrected the galley at the end of July, like two weeks before.

[David Remnick]

Unbelievable.

[Salman Rushdie]

I mean, we had the jacket, we had. We actually were beginning to get the blurbs. I mean, everything was ready.

[David Remnick]

Are you concerned that Victory City would read through the prism of what happened in August?

[Salman Rushdie]

Well, I'm hoping that to some degree, it might change the subject. I mean, I've always thought that my books are more interesting than my life, and unfortunately, the world appears to disagree. But your life is interesting.

[David Remnick]

Yeah.

[Salman Rushdie]

What I'm hoping is that people will be able to say, oh, here's a writer. I've tried very hard not to adopt the role of a victim. Then you're just sitting there saying, somebody stuck a knife in me for me.

[David Remnick]

You know, you don't feel that way.

[Salman Rushdie]

Which I do sometimes think it hurts. It hurts. But what I don't think is that's what I want people reading the book to think. I want them to be captured by the tale and to be carried away and to enjoy being in it and to want to know what happens next and, you know, to read a book.

[David Remnick]

I remember that line of. I think it was Martin Amos's line that, you know, Salman has disappeared into the. Vanished into the front page when the fatwa happened. And it's happened again. Let's go beyond the front page. You finished this extraordinary novel just before, one month before. Tell me a little bit about the history, the origin story of the Free City.

[Salman Rushdie]

Well, what had happened? It actually began thinking about this book really a long time ago. It was very hard to find the voice for it. I kept, you know, that's often the way with me, I mean, I. Even when I know what the story is and so on, to find the right door to go into the story, you know, sometimes takes me a few attempts and that you fill the garbage can a bit. Yeah, I just get it wrong. I start. And sometimes the place where I started actually belongs in another place in the book. And you know, it's just not the beginning.

[David Remnick]

What was the case with this?

[Salman Rushdie]

Well, when I found out, I read something about this little kingdom where the.

[David Remnick]

Women had all committed sati self sacrifice, ritual suicide.

[Salman Rushdie]

And there is some historical record of that event. It's not exactly as I've portrayed it, but something like that happened. And then my little nine year old girl stood there watching it and I thought, okay, now I know whose story it is.

[David Remnick]

That young girl became the heroine of Victory City. She's named Pompa Campana.

[Salman Rushdie]

And it's one of the things when I've been teaching this strange craft that I have said to students is the first question you need to ask yourself is whose story are you telling? Then you have to ask yourself other. You have to ask yourself a why question. I mean, why are you telling a story? What's the story?

[David Remnick]

How did you answer the why question here?

[Salman Rushdie]

Well, for me, in part it was just a pleasure of world building. Just having a chance to create a big canvas on which there would be. And that the book would also be about somebody who was building the world. So it's me doing it, but it's also her doing it.

[David Remnick]

Pompa builds the world of the story magically. She's been given a divine power, a bag of seeds to sow an entire city into existence. Now, ever since he published Midnight's Children, his first really great novel in 1981, Rushdie has written wonder tales, stories that mix the fantastical and the historical. And the setting of Victory City is in fact historical. What he's written is a kind of fable about the founding and the fall of the Vijayanagara empire in South India. In medieval times.

[Salman Rushdie]

A lot of people in India know very little about the Vijayanagar Empire. And yet for 200 years it was running most of South India. And I thought, I remember thinking then maybe one of these days I've got to pay attention to South India, being myself from North India. And so I'd had it in my. And I'd been.

[David Remnick]

It's like a New York boy wanting to write a southern novel, isn't it? I mean, you're a Bombay boy.

[Salman Rushdie]

Yeah, yeah. Or even Manhattan boy. Wanted to write about Brooklyn.

[David Remnick]

That distant.

[Salman Rushdie]

So it took 15 years for you to find. That's the seed. It's just to find the story. And what happened is that this, this girl, this my main character, just showed up. She just showed up in my head. I have no idea where she came from.

[David Remnick]

When you say it shows up in your head, we all know from our rock and roll history, Keith Richards having.

[Salman Rushdie]

A dream and having the, having the satisfaction riff in his head.

[David Remnick]

I don't imagine it's quite as easy as that.

[Salman Rushdie]

No, but look, here's the thing. The Vijayanagar Empire, it seems to have come out of nothing. I mean, that's to say, one minute it's not there and there's lots of other kingdoms, and the next minute it's the most powerful thing in the place. Right. Just bang, like that. I thought that's very strange.

[David Remnick]

Now, for an American reader, and you've talked about this a bit before, most American readers are steeped in the tradition of, of realism. And I, I, I forget whose analogy this was. Maybe it was Kundura or something like that. That there are two big streams of fiction and you are of the other kind.

[Salman Rushdie]

Yeah.

[David Remnick]

Which is to say fantasy and fable. And this is what you grew up reading.

[Salman Rushdie]

Yeah. But I also think that it's just another way of telling the truth.

[David Remnick]

Tell me about that.

[Salman Rushdie]

I mean, I think. Well, put it like this. The first kings of Vijayanagar announced quite seriously that they were descended from the moon. And the reason they said this was in the ancient Indian myths, in the Ramayana and the Mahabharata, there are heroes who are supposed to be part of what's called the Lunar dynasty. That's to say the moon God is their ancestor. So when these kings, Hakka and Bukka, announced that their members of the Lunar Dynasty, they're basically associating themselves with those great heroes. It's like saying, I've descended from the same family as Achilles. And so I thought, well, if you could say that, I could say anything.

[David Remnick]

As a storyteller.

[Salman Rushdie]

As a storyteller.

[David Remnick]

So in other words, the didactic or polemical elements of this, the way some readers, I think, mistakenly read novels sometimes is the. What's my takeaway? What's my, what's the news here that comes last? Yeah, it's the story, it's the fantasy that you've dipped your cup into the, into the river of.

[Salman Rushdie]

Yes, but there are things about reading about the empire that were very surprising. For example, that the role of women was quite advanced, you know, and that women were allowed, were Able to be things which even today is difficult. There were women generals, there were women lawyers, there were women merchants. There were women doing everything for long periods of time. Not always. There were some periods which were more repressive. But I thought, that's interesting that this is the 14th century.

[David Remnick]

Is there some point in the writing of a text where the character takes.

[Salman Rushdie]

Over, takes over completely? She told me how to write it, how it should go, and she really did. I just thought, oh, you know exactly what you're doing. I just follow you. And she just opened the book up. One of the things I really have there was this history professor called Arthur Hibbert who was one of the geniuses of his time. But he said to me this thing he said, you should never write history until you can hear the people speak. He said, because if you can't hear them speak, you don't know them well enough and you can't tell their story.

[David Remnick]

It's kind of a novelist.

[Salman Rushdie]

And I thought, what a great piece of advice for a novelist. And it always stuck with me and been helpful.

[David Remnick]

And that happens in the thinking or it happens in the daily writing.

[Salman Rushdie]

Daily writing. Some of it is history. You know, there. There are things in there that people in there who existed. I don't quite give come out of.

[David Remnick]

The bibliography that you provide.

[Salman Rushdie]

And yeah, I mean, you know, the Hakka and Baka were historical characters. You know, they weren't quite as I have described them, but they were the first two kings, right? And they were brothers. I've just taken liberties.

[David Remnick]

Well, why not?

[Salman Rushdie]

Why not? You know, I mean, they're not going to object, but in many ways been true to the spirit of what was happening then. There were periods of great bigotry and there were other periods of great openness. And I just wanted to say, look, this is the history of India. It's not what the BJP says it is.

[David Remnick]

This is a point that's quite important to Rushdie. The BJP is India's ruling party, the Hindu nationalist party of Narendra Modi. And that party frames Indian history as one giant battle between Hindus and outsiders, Hindus and Muslim invaders, good guys versus bad guys.

[Salman Rushdie]

You know, it's much more interestingly complicated and confused and messed up. And what people are being interested in is not just what God you worship, but who's in charge. So it's about what public life is about. It's about politics, it's about power, it's about treachery and all those things which are much more interesting than sectarianism. And to try and Reduce Indian history to that sectarian description. It just. First of all, it's wrong, but secondly, it's not interesting.

[David Remnick]

And also, I think it's also what's about many things, but one of the things it seems to be about, and I don't want to over talk on the timing of its publication and what's happened in the last year, but it's an insistence on the permanence and importance of storytelling as opposed to the impermanence and vanity of the powerful.

[Salman Rushdie]

Yeah. And I think in India knows this because these stories, I mean, the Ramayana, the Mahabharata, they're thousands of years old and yet everybody still knows them. I mean, there was a television series made from the Mahabharata that ran for years and it had audiences like 300 million people. Then there's a very famous line of comic books in India which take the stories of antiquity and turn them into comic book stories. And so children grow up knowing these stories by reading comics, not by reading the actual original texts.

[David Remnick]

When's the last time you were in India?

[Salman Rushdie]

Seven or eight years ago.

[David Remnick]

And is that become. Is that a possible thing to do?

[Salman Rushdie]

I mean, everything was possible until this happened, you know, and. And now I don't know quite.

[David Remnick]

You don't?

[Salman Rushdie]

I don't know about whether I can go anywhere, you know, and I'm just, I'm. Well, put it like this. I'm never. It's not about whether I can or not, it's whether I'm ready to or not. You know, I'm not thinking long term, I'm thinking short term.

[David Remnick]

Salman Rushdie. He completed work on the novel Victory City just weeks before the attempt on his life last August. We'll continue in just a moment. This is the New Yorker Radio Hour.

[Ben Smith]

On the Media is supported by Progressive Insurance. Do you ever find yourself playing the budgeting game? Well, with the name your price tool from Progressive, you can find options that fit your budget and potentially lower your bills. Try [e-mail], progressive Casualty Insurance Company and affiliates. Price and coverage match limited by state law. Not available in all states. I'm Ben Smith. I'm Max Tawny. And we host Mixed signals from Semaphore Media. The future of media feels like a moving target. So every Friday we pull back the curtain on the platforms, ideas and people that are shaping the new media landscape. We'll tell you what really matters and try to figure out what's coming next. Plus, we go behind the scenes with the most important players in media right now. Whether you are yourself a Media Insider or just simply curious about who or what will be all over your feed next, Mixed signals from Semaphore Media is the perfect addition to your media diet. Listen wherever you get your podcasts.

[David Remnick]

This is the New Yorker Radio Hour. I'm talking today with the novelist Salman Rushdie. This is the first interview Rushdie has given since an attack that nearly killed him last August. A number of his books came up as we talked that I'll mention here. Midnight's Children and Shame, two novels about the subcontinent. The Satanic Verses, of course, which is mostly set in London, and, and a memoir that he wrote about the fatwa called Joseph Anton, which was a code name he used while living in hiding. Rushdie's new novel is out this week, and it's called Victory City. You're writing it in particular years. In the last five years. I don't know how long it took to write.

[Salman Rushdie]

I don't know, three.

[David Remnick]

And so you're writing in the Trump years, you're writing in the Boris Johnson years. You're writing in a time of illiberalism, to say the least, in India, your three countries of greatest concern. How much is that impinging on the novel?

[Salman Rushdie]

Well, actually, the three previous novels had all dealt with that stuff, you know, about what's happening to us, you know, not just in America, but, as you say, all over the place. Sure. And I just thought, enough already. I think I've looked at that really for years now, and I had this desire to go back to the beginning, you know, go back to the kind of storytelling, the kind of book that made me fall in love with books and to return to that place of love, you know, and write a book out of that.

[David Remnick]

What do you think is the stylistic or aesthetic path you've traveled from Midnight's Children to Victory City? How do you, when you stand back and look at your own.

[Salman Rushdie]

Well, I think it's interesting. There's a language thing that's changed. I mean, let's say when I started out with Midnight, Children and Shame and, you know, to some extent, even with the Satanic Verses, I was deliberately trying to find something in English that sounded un English, you know, I, I, I remember reading about Joyce trying to colonize the language back, you know, to have an Irish English instead of an English English like Derek Walcott made a Caribbean English, you know, and, and, and of course, American writers. America was a colony too, you know. I remember you were there.

[David Remnick]

Yeah, I was.

[Salman Rushdie]

American writers, of course, have made many Englishes, and I thought, I want to do that. I want to find a way.

[David Remnick]

I just want to locate it consciously. Before heading into Midnight's Children. You made that determination?

[Salman Rushdie]

Yeah, because, you know, I was very lucky when I was at Cambridge that one of the people I met a few times was E.M. forster. I met him three or four times and he actually said something which I treasured, which is that he said, he always felt, he felt that the great novel of India would be written by somebody from India with a Western education.

[David Remnick]

He felt it was a blessing.

[Salman Rushdie]

I thought it kind of was. Yeah. Thank you. What I kind of rebelled against was Fosterian English is very cool and meticulous and so on. And I thought, if there's one thing India is not, it's not cool.

[David Remnick]

It's hot.

[Salman Rushdie]

It's hot. It's hot and noisy and crowded and excessive. And how do you find a language that's like that?

[David Remnick]

And so you found that in Midnight's Children, God knows. And what I'm asking is, what's the stylistic.

[Salman Rushdie]

Well, what happened is at certain points I thought, I've done that enough. You know, certainly by the time I wrote the Satanic Verses, even by then I thought, you know, I don't need to do that anymore. I've done that.

[David Remnick]

This is the New Yorker Radio Hour. I'm talking with Salman Rushdie. The publication of the Satanic verses in late 1988 changed everything for him. The fatwa was announced. Rushdie went into hiding in England. Several people associated with the book, translators and publishers in other countries who were easier to find were attacked, some even killed. After a decade, though, in 2000, Rushdie moved to America and he began going out, appearing in public. He took a very visible position as the president of Penn American center, which champions freedom of expression for writers and human rights. One of the things that's so sobering to remember now is just how many people in the west were really hostile to Rushdie. At the worst time, as I wrote in my profile in the New Yorker this week, some people behaved well, but some people behaved disgracefully. Cat Stevens, John Le Carre, Jimmy Carter, the Archbishop of Canterbury, the British Foreign Secretary, they all criticized Rushdie in one way or another, just as he came under the fatwa, an outrageous and bloody minded decree. And they implied to one degree or another that he had brought this nightmare on himself.

[Salman Rushdie]

Well, there was a moment when there was a me floating around, right, that had been invented to show what a bad person I was.

[David Remnick]

How would you define the, the me, the Salman Rushdie that you're just describing?

[Salman Rushdie]

Oh, you know, evil Arrogant, terrible writer. Nobody would have read him if there hadn't been an attack against his book. Etc. There was a. There was a false self that had a lot of that was floating around, you know, and I mean, I've had to fight back against that false self.

[David Remnick]

Are you forgiving of it? The litany of names of people who behaved badly and said stupid things at best in the.

[Salman Rushdie]

Yeah, I mean, I remember some of them. And my mother used to say that her way of dealing with unhappiness was to forget it. She said, some people have a memory, I have a forgettery. Do you? And I think as I get older, I'm beginning to develop that, you know.

[David Remnick]

You came here to the States and you did an amazing thing. You assertively decided, I'm not only going to live, I'm going to live three years in every year.

[Salman Rushdie]

Well, one of the things I thought is there were often people. People were scared to be around me. Right, right. And I thought the only way I can stop that is to behave as if I'm not scared. I remember being in a restaurant in East Hampton with Andrew Wylie, taking me out to dinner, Nick and Tony's and Eric Fischl came by to say hi to Andrew. And then he looked at me and he said, shouldn't we all be afraid and leave the restaurant? And I said, well, I'm having dinner. What are you doing? You could do what you like.

[David Remnick]

But I mean, there almost seemed somewhat. I remember there's a piece in the Times at one point, years ago, you going out, you're doing this, going to ball games, dancing, whatever the hell you were doing. And there was a. It was almost a censorious tone.

[Salman Rushdie]

Yes. People didn't like it because I should have died. Now that I've almost died.

[David Remnick]

They love you.

[Salman Rushdie]

Everybody loves me.

[David Remnick]

Yeah.

[Salman Rushdie]

I was told afterwards, when I became conscious again, that there had been this great outpouring of support and affection, which I'm very grateful for. I'm not aware of it. I didn't see any of it. My impression is that suddenly everybody's on my side and. Thank you.

[David Remnick]

Want to talk a little bit? Let me ask the horrible question. I think at some point, one of your books, you say security can never be absolute, or some better version of that. Do you feel that you made a mistake?

[Salman Rushdie]

Well, I'm asking myself that question. I don't know the answer to it, but I mean, I did have more than 20 years of life, so is that a mistake? But also, I wrote a lot of books, you know, I mean, I The Satanic verses was my fifth published book, you know, my fourth published novel, and this is my 21st.

[David Remnick]

It is interesting to remember that. That's true. It was a relatively early book.

[Salman Rushdie]

So three quarters of my life as a writer has happened since the fatwa.

[David Remnick]

So you wouldn't have traded it?

[Salman Rushdie]

No, I mean, I think, you know, in a way, you. You can't regret your life, you know, because without your life, you wouldn't have had your life.

[David Remnick]

One of the amazing things, and you. You say it in so many words in Joseph Anton, and you live it, is that you refused to let the fatwa impinge on your imagination, your imaginary life, your writing. But that was a real determination.

[Salman Rushdie]

It was. I just thought there are various ways in which this event can destroy me as an artist. One way is that I should be scared and that I would write scared books or not write.

[David Remnick]

What's a scared book?

[Salman Rushdie]

Well, a book that doesn't tackle anything important, that shies away from things because you worry about how people will react to them. That's a scared book. A lot of them around these days, I'm too old for that. The other way it would really wound my work was if I wrote vindictive books, if I wrote kind of revenge books, because both of those make me a creature of that event. I lose my individuality. I mean, this is my 21st book, and I don't know how many there's left, but there's not another 21. So I've done my work, you know, and I've been very fortunate in that I found really quite a wide readership, you know, which pays the rent and. And I've been quite lucky in the way I had hit a very big bump in the road with the Satanic Verses. But in general, I mean, to go back to your earlier point, people do seem to have got the point of this kind of writing, whether it's in England or America or India. Enough people have got the point of it to allow me to be a writer.

[David Remnick]

Fat was a bump in the road, which is an elegant way to put it. What is this? Imaginatively, in other words, the. No, no, the event and the way it impinges or not on your freedom as an artist?

[Salman Rushdie]

Well, the thing. It is, what it is, it's something I'm going to have to write about.

[David Remnick]

And I've been in the mode of Joseph Anton.

[Salman Rushdie]

Well, not in the third person, I think. It doesn't feel third personish to me. I think when somebody sticks a knife into you, that's a first Person story. That's an I story. What I'm thinking now, which is this is my germ on the way to the book. Right. Is that one of the things that my books have tended to be is panoramic. They've tended to be like widescreen with substantially large casts of characters, sometimes multi generational and sometimes like set in many places. What Henry James used to call a loose, baggy monster.

[David Remnick]

Monster. This can't be panoramic. Is what you're.

[Salman Rushdie]

What I'm saying is the kind of book I haven't written is the book which focuses on a microscope and makes the universe from it. You know, Mrs. Dalloway having a dinner party. There are people who write books which where they can take, you know, to see the world in a grain of sand.

[David Remnick]

And you do that. The idea would be to do it imaginatively in great measure or documentary because if it's so brief.

[Salman Rushdie]

Yeah. How do you spread when you're in.

[David Remnick]

The hospital for six weeks? And if I look at the clips, there's very little there.

[Salman Rushdie]

There's very little there. But this. But there's a lot.

[David Remnick]

Seems to be an idiot.

[Salman Rushdie]

I mean, I don't know what I think of him because I don't know him. You know, all I've seen is his idiotic interview in the New York Post. Right. Which only an idiot would do. I know that the trial is still a long way away. I guess I'll find out some more about him then. I've always tried to find a thing to do that I haven't done, you know. So why I'm saying this about writing about this event in this way is that that gives me an artistic reason to think about it, you know, to try and do something I've never done, which is a small frame from which you create the world.

[David Remnick]

Salman Rushdie speaking about the knife attack that nearly killed him last August and the book that he might write someday about that. My profile of Rushdie covering all this ground and more appears in the New Yorker this week. This is the New Yorker Radio Hour. More to come.

[Ben Smith]

On the media is supported by Progressive Insurance. Do you ever find yourself playing the budgeting game? Well, with the name your price tool from Progressive, you can find options that fit your budget and potentially lower your bills. Try [e-mail] Progressive Casualty Insurance Company and affiliates Price and coverage match limited by state law. Not available in all states. I'm Ben Smith. I'm Max Taney and we host Mixed signals from Semaphore Media. The future of media feels like a moving target. So every Friday, we pull back the curtain on the platforms, ideas and people that are shaping the new media landscape. We'll tell you what really matters and try to figure out what's coming next. Plus, we go behind the scenes with the most important players in media right now. Whether you are yourself a media insider or just simply curious about who or what will be all over your feed next, mixed signals from Semaphore Media is the perfect addition to your media diet. Listen wherever you get your podcasts.

[David Remnick]

This is the New Yorker Radio Hour. I'm David Remnick. In this week's New Yorker, I wrote a profile of Salman Rushdie, which you can [e-mail] Just before Christmas, Rushdie and I sat down for a long interview at the office of his literary agent, Andrew Wiley. This is the first time he's spoken publicly since he was attacked. The assailant was a New Jersey man named Hadi Matar, who parroted the claims of Ayatollah Khomeini that came out more than 30 years ago, claiming that Rushdie was an enemy of Islam and that his novel was a blasphemy. Rushdie suffered multiple injuries and he lost the sight in his right eye.

[Salman Rushdie]

I'm able to get up and walk around. You know, when I say I'm fine, I mean, there's still, there's bits of my body that need constant checkups, you know, I mean, it was a colossal attack.

[David Remnick]

And in your days, now, obviously, you're not writing. You're not at a desk eight hours a day, and you're doing some physical therapy. Your days are spent. How?

[Salman Rushdie]

I'm trying to slowly get back to a writer's life, you know, so reading, trying to write.

[David Remnick]

And you can read.

[Salman Rushdie]

Oh, yeah. I mean, I find, I find it easier to read on an iPad because it's lit. Lit and because I can affect the size of the type of. So I've been reading more on an iPad than actual books.

[David Remnick]

And how is it, how's your endurance? How's your. Just your ability to get through the day?

[Salman Rushdie]

It's, you know, it's getting there. It's getting back. No, I mean, I've always had. My great gift is sleep. I can always sleep. I mean, there have been nightmares, but.

[David Remnick]

Not of the incident.

[Salman Rushdie]

Not exactly the incident, but just frightening. And those seem to be diminishing. I mean, we haven't really talked about it, but there is such a thing as ptsd, you know.

[David Remnick]

And how has that played out for you? What is it?

[Salman Rushdie]

Well, it's a number of things, but one of the things it is is that I've been found it very, very difficult to write. I sit there to write and nothing happens.

[David Remnick]

It terrors. It's blankness.

[Salman Rushdie]

Yeah, it's. It's a combination of blankness and junk. You know, stuff that I write that I delete the next day. There's been a lot of that. And I'm not out of that forest yet. Really.

[David Remnick]

You blame anybody?

[Salman Rushdie]

Blame him. I think, you know, I'm here now. I've always been. One of the ways in which I dealt with this whole thing is, is to look forward and not backwards. What happens tomorrow is more important than what happened yesterday. My main overwhelming feeling is gratitude.

[David Remnick]

Who saved your life?

[Salman Rushdie]

Well, a number of people. There were doctors in the audience who came and sort of did immediate stuff, waiting for the helicopter and then, I.

[David Remnick]

Mean, if you got stabbed in the neck that you didn't bleed out as.

[Salman Rushdie]

There were people putting thumbs over it.

[David Remnick]

So you were saved by a thumb.

[Salman Rushdie]

Yeah, somebody's thumb. And then the helicopter and then this extraordinary team of surgeons. You know, there was a seven, eight hour surgery. There's a lot of me that was just lucky because the amount of injuries were such that it was more probable that I would not survive. Well, it was a very close thing. It was a very close thing. But fortunately I came out the right side of the close thing. You know, it's. It's. I haven't. I haven't wanted to talk to a journalist for four months. It's just over four months, you know, and you can't imagine, or maybe you can imagine the amount of journalists that have.

[David Remnick]

I can.

[Salman Rushdie]

Wanted to.

[David Remnick]

I can.

[Salman Rushdie]

I just thought not ready. And, and to be able to come here to talk about books, to talk about this novel, Victory City, to be able to talk about the thing that most matters to me and that you're here to do. That I'm here to do, yeah. With this one, as you said, first of all, I get more and more interested in the pleasure principle, you know, that the purpose of art is to bring joy.

[David Remnick]

That's extremely evident here.

[Salman Rushdie]

Yeah. And I think it was a book that.

[David Remnick]

And you thought otherwise before you thought otherwise earlier in your life.

[Salman Rushdie]

Well, I thought so. That's not the heart of it. You know, when I started out, I was, I guess Midnight Children and Shame really were an attempt to deal with the world that I'd come from, you know, and to try and make it artistically mine. Satanic Verses was about. Was. It's. It's a novel about London, you know, it's novel thinking. Well, okay, now I've dealt with where I came from. Let's talk about where I came to, you know. And so I was thinking about that kind of thing. Now I'm just thinking about joy.

[David Remnick]

What are you less patient with? What do you feel yourself less able to do than when you were 32 at the page?

[Salman Rushdie]

I used to be faster. I used to write a lot more in a day, but it needed to be rewritten a lot. Now I write much less in a day, but it's closer to.

[David Remnick]

And that shift is a tribute to age in both senses and experience.

[Salman Rushdie]

I think so. I think so.

[David Remnick]

Or the processors work a little differently than they do.

[Salman Rushdie]

It's just happened over the years. When you're young, you have to fake wisdom, and when you're old, you have to fake energy.

[David Remnick]

Somewhere around your age, maybe younger. I remember Updike was asked, well, how do you. When you look down the rear view mirror of your work, even though knowing there's more ahead, how do you assess it in terms of what you think will last and what you think the best of it is? And writers hate this question for obvious reasons. He was very clinical about it. He said, well, it's very clear. It's the X number of stories. Rabbit, Rabbit. And I think he had an affection for some other. I forget the other title. Can you answer that question?

[Salman Rushdie]

I just hope something lasts. I mean, you don't know, do you? I remember there was a moment not long after the death of Anthony Burgess.

[David Remnick]

Who wrote how many books?

[Salman Rushdie]

Like a yard of books, you know, where every book he had written was out of print except for Clockwork Orange. So if something lasts, you should be grateful, you know, I think Harun in the Sea of Stories might last, you know, because when children love a book, they take it with them through their life. And that's been a book which has had the most wonderful life in the.

[David Remnick]

World because of its quality, but also because who it's pitched toward a little bit.

[Salman Rushdie]

I thought there must be a way of writing where you don't ask yourself if the book is for children or for grownups. Well, that's. There are movies like that. I said, if you can make the wizard of Oz, if you can make who Framed Roger Rabbit, if you can make the Princess Bride, you know, if you can make Star wars, you don't ask yourself who the audience is. The audience is everybody who likes it, you know, and that's everybody. And I thought there must be a voice where you can do that with a book where grown ups will read it in a grown up way and children will read it in another way. And that was the hardest thing about writing that book, was to find that I would write it and I would think that's too childish. I would write it and I think that's too grown up.

[David Remnick]

You were writing it at the.

[Salman Rushdie]

At the worst moment.

[David Remnick]

At the worst moment or in the second?

[Salman Rushdie]

Yeah, well, the. Yeah, the moment before the worst moment. But also I was helped by the fact that I was writing it for my son, whose middle name is Harun. And I thought, this is happening to him too. And so I have to keep. I had made him a promise that I'd write a book he would want to read.

[David Remnick]

Someone you once said some years ago, or maybe you wrote it, that the great wound in your life was how you and your work were treated in India. And yet your imagination is very much lodged there. What's changed on that front?

[Salman Rushdie]

I mean, it's still. What I can't do is I can't do anything about it either side of that. I can't do anything about what's happened with my work in India and I can't do anything about the fact that I still want to write about it.

[David Remnick]

What are the circumstances for your work in India? Well, I mean, I was at the Jaipur Literary Festival, I forget how many years ago. And you were going to come and couldn't. And then you were going to broadcast in and then you couldn't. It was horrible to witness.

[Salman Rushdie]

Well, look, there's been a. There's a. There's a double thing in India. One is that I have a lot of Indian readers, you know, and that's very nice. And a lot of those Indian readers are young. That's very nice.

[David Remnick]

And they can get all your books except one. Satanic Verses, obviously.

[Salman Rushdie]

Yeah, yeah. Which is a shame. But everything else is there. I know that when I've been told by Kashmiri journalists and writers that when Shalimar the Clown came out, the response to it in Kashmir was very positive. And it's the only book of mine which got any kind of an award in India, really. I mean, sold a lot of copies and was pirated, which is a better award. It was pirated and the pirates sold so many copies, I have no idea how much. But, you know, 10 rupees instead of $10, the pirates started sending me greetings cards so I would get like a birthday card.

[David Remnick]

God bless.

[Salman Rushdie]

I thought, you know, that really is rubbing salt in the wound.

[David Remnick]

But matters are getting worse there politically.

[Salman Rushdie]

Yes, they are terrible.

[David Remnick]

Are politics and events in India on a one way journey to worse and worse?

[Salman Rushdie]

Yeah, except that I never believe anything is permanent. You know, I think that one of the things about the study of history is that it shows you that history can make enormous changes at the last minute. To quote Grace Paley's title, you know, if we had been sitting here a couple of months ago in the year 1989 and I had said to you, the Soviet Union will not exist at Christmas, it would have seemed crazy. You know, this thing which looks permanent and immutable and powerful vanishes. I'm saying that the world.

[David Remnick]

Can you relate it to India?

[Salman Rushdie]

Well, I mean, the problem in India is this, that the current government, which to people of my way of thinking is alarming, is very popular. And it's the difference, for example, between India and Trump, that Trump was only just about popular and his level of unpopularity was at least as high as his level of popularity. That's not so in India because the Modi government is very popular, has huge support, and that makes it possible for them to get away with everything to create this very autocratic state, which is unkind to minorities, which is fantastically oppressive of journalists, where people are very afraid, which in a way, it's getting to be difficult to call it a democracy, because a democracy is not just who wins the election. It's whether you feel safe in the country, whether you voted for the government or not. India is a problem. The way in which this book tries to just marginally engages with it, only marginally, is that it takes on the subject of sectarianism and tries to say, this is not the history of India. The history of India is much more complicated than that. It's not that there was an ancient culture that another culture came in and destroyed. That's a false description of the past. And as we know, we live in a world in which false descriptions of the past are being used everywhere to justify terrible behavior in the present. You know, England pretending there's this golden age before any foreigners showed up and completely ignoring the fact that they were over foreigners in their countries in order to make possible their wealth and affluence at home. You know, America talking about being great again. I want to know when was that? What was the date? You know, was. Was obviously before the Civil Rights Act. Was it before women had the vote? Was it when there was still slavery? What are we harking back to A fantasy past becomes a way of justifying bad behavior today. I want to say that the history of India. I'm a historian by training.

[David Remnick]

You read history at Cambridge?

[Salman Rushdie]

Yeah, in the last year at Cambridge, you just choose three special subjects and that's all you do. And I did one on the early history of Islam where I heard about an incident called the Incident of the Satanic Verses. I thought, good story.

[David Remnick]

It is, yeah.

[Salman Rushdie]

I found out later how good. And I did American history from 1776 to the end of reconstruction, and I did Indian history from the Indian rebellion or uprising 1857, until independence in 1947. So that's three things I studied. And all three of them have featured very largely in everything I've written since.

[David Remnick]

That is for sure.

[Salman Rushdie]

So, yeah, I mean, India, look. I mean, I love India in a way that you can only love the country of your birth. And I always will. Did you feel loved back by enough people? You know, nobody gets loved by everybody.

[David Remnick]

No.

[Salman Rushdie]

You know, the. The things that I feel offended by are times when kind of cultural gatekeepers in India have described me as not being an Indian writer. There were people who felt that they didn't.

[David Remnick]

Authenticity versus not.

[Salman Rushdie]

Look, on the whole, I would have loved to spend more of my life in India. And there were. The year I used to go every year, you know, every year I would go after the fatwa for a very long time, I was not allowed to go.

[David Remnick]

Salman, you got visited by. It's still a lot that's unclear about this guy, but fanaticism certainly visited you in the most terrifying way. Same time in Iran, amazing things are happening. Amazing things are happening. So if you look at things, the granular almost killed you, and yet something is happening. Is happening.

[Salman Rushdie]

Yeah. I mean, I have nothing but huge admiration for those young women, and not all of them young. And for the men who have supported them. I worry about the Iranian soccer team because all of them stood up for the demonstrators, every single one of them. From the captain speaking at a press conference at the beginning of the World Cup. Now they're back in Iran. I don't know if they're okay. Has anybody followed the story? I haven't seen it. It's a very brutal regime. I'd like to feel it's a tipping point. You know, I don't know. I've become very hesitant to forecast. The world seems unforecastable.

[David Remnick]

Would you have forecast in any way, or did you think, was it out of mind what happened in August?

[Salman Rushdie]

I won't say that I hadn't thought about it over the years. I had. I had come to feel that it was a very long time ago and, and that the world moves on. That's. I guess what I had agreed with myself was the case and then it wasn't.

[David Remnick]

Yeah, go ahead.

[Salman Rushdie]

I mean, yeah, I have a lot to think about as a consequence of that and I haven't, I haven't, I'm not have finished with that thinking. I don't quite know where it comes out.

[David Remnick]

Thanks for listening to this week's midweek podcast on the big show this week. This week we're talking to director Daniel Rohr and the investigator supreme Christo Grozev about the Oscar nominated documentary about Russian opposition leader Victor Navalny, in which Christo plays quite a role. See you then. I'm Brooke Gladstone.

I'm Ira Plato, host of Science Friday. For over 30 years, our team has been reporting high quality news about science, technology and medicine. News you won't get anywhere else. And now that political news is 24 7, our audience is turning to us to know about the really important stuff in their lives. Cancer, climate change, genetic engineering, childhood diseases. Our sponsors know the value of science and health news. For more sponsorship information, visit sponsorship wnyc. Org.