Clowning Around
Readers of this blog may have discerned a certain, um, predilection for Salman Rushdie and his doings. Keeping up the tradition, here's a link to another interview with the man, during the course of which he speaks of his forthcoming Shalimar The Clown:
"The simplest way to describe it, which is, of course, not necessarily the best way to describe it, is it's a murder story. I decided to murder an American ambassador (laughs)...The novel actually begins in California. He's a retired, very elderly, very distinguished gentleman who suddenly, out of the blue, gets knifed to death by his Indian-Kashmiri chauffeur on the doorstep of his grown-up illegitimate daughter. And the novel becomes the story of those three people, the story of the murderer, the man and his daughter."
One hopes -- sincerely, truly, deeply -- that the book is better than Mr Rushdie's past few efforts, which have left one somewhat underwhelmed.
Oh, and here's his advice to would-be novelists:
"I guess the best advice I can give has to do with perseverance. You know, my writing career did not begin easily. I graduated from college in 1968. The first time I really had any success as a writer was "Midnight's Children," which was in 1981. So there was like 12½ years of paying my dues. Some writers are lucky that they get there right away with their first book, like Joe Heller with "Catch-22" or whatever. But one of the things that I found was essential to the business of becoming a writer was to have that determination and perseverance to keep trying in the face of failure and without any guarantee of success. And if I look back at my young self, battling away for a dozen years, I'm very proud of that. And I'm not sure now, if somebody asked me would I start work in some field where it would take you 12½ years without any guarantee at the end of it that you would be any good at it, I mean I would not do that....You'd be crazy to do it. But I think writers, when starting out, are crazy in exactly that way (laughs)."
Sigh. I guess one has to hold on to one's day job, after all.
"The simplest way to describe it, which is, of course, not necessarily the best way to describe it, is it's a murder story. I decided to murder an American ambassador (laughs)...The novel actually begins in California. He's a retired, very elderly, very distinguished gentleman who suddenly, out of the blue, gets knifed to death by his Indian-Kashmiri chauffeur on the doorstep of his grown-up illegitimate daughter. And the novel becomes the story of those three people, the story of the murderer, the man and his daughter."
One hopes -- sincerely, truly, deeply -- that the book is better than Mr Rushdie's past few efforts, which have left one somewhat underwhelmed.
Oh, and here's his advice to would-be novelists:
"I guess the best advice I can give has to do with perseverance. You know, my writing career did not begin easily. I graduated from college in 1968. The first time I really had any success as a writer was "Midnight's Children," which was in 1981. So there was like 12½ years of paying my dues. Some writers are lucky that they get there right away with their first book, like Joe Heller with "Catch-22" or whatever. But one of the things that I found was essential to the business of becoming a writer was to have that determination and perseverance to keep trying in the face of failure and without any guarantee of success. And if I look back at my young self, battling away for a dozen years, I'm very proud of that. And I'm not sure now, if somebody asked me would I start work in some field where it would take you 12½ years without any guarantee at the end of it that you would be any good at it, I mean I would not do that....You'd be crazy to do it. But I think writers, when starting out, are crazy in exactly that way (laughs)."
Sigh. I guess one has to hold on to one's day job, after all.
posted by PrufrockTwo at
6.5.05
1 Comments:
NOW you tell me. Darn!
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Anonymous, at 2:52 AM
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