Midnight's Children
The week before last, I attended a small q&a on campus with Salman Rushdie. His Midnight's Children was being performed at the Apollo in Harlem by the Royal Shakespeare Company and the University. (Incidentally, the novel was begun when he was 27. It was one of his first.)
It was inspiring to be in a room with the man that the Ayatollah Khomeini considered dangerous enough to issue a fatwa for in 1989. (Incidentally, the death sentence wasn't lifted until 1998.)
It was a very interesting evening, despite the fact that several questions taken from the audience offended him incredibly. In fact, he was so offended that when the hour was up, he just walked out.
Here are the great quotes I captured during the session. . .
“A number of my books have met an unforeseen fate.”
“You know, I really miss September the 10th.” – Gary Trudeau
"one of whose major processes is digression"
Question from the audience: What advice would you give beginning writers? Rushdie's answer: "If you need my advice, don’t do it."
"admiration of their tenacity, fortitude, confidence"
"that something is inside writers and will either make you do it..."
"finding their voices as writers"
"under the descending heel"
"the difficulty with a 50-50 problem is that when you enter a war, it becomes a 100-0 problem."
"America has a problem with follow through. We’ve been good at deconstruction..."
"Now I’m glad I wrote the book when I did. It captured a moment that is now gone. There is now an entirely different spirit of the city."
"it is like that because that’s what it’s like"
"cast one’s mind back to creative decisions made decades ago"
"pantheon of writers"
Posted by Amanda at April 07, 2003 11:05 PM
