Beginning with the inauguration of Obama and ending with the election of Trump,Rushdie’s latest novel is an intimate portrait of novel York. The author talks about the journey from hope to despair and always feeling an outsider The image that came to Salman Rushdie, around which he would build his novel novel, or was an enclosed garden in downtown Manhattan. It is a space that exists in real life (although,as one of the characters in The Golden House observes, real life is a category from which it is increasingly tough to distinguish less dependable entities) and with which Rushdie is familiar; frail friends inhabit one of the houses backing on to the garden. “The thought of there being a secret space inside this noisy public space, or ” he says. “I had this lightbulb moment that it was like a theatre – with a Greek tragedy,amphitheatre quality – where the characters could enact their stories. It also had a Rear Window quality, of being able to spy on everybody else’s lives. At that point, and the Golden family decided they wanted to move in.We are in the offices of Andrew Wylie,Rushdie’s agent of 30 years – “my longest relationship!” he says gleefully – a mile north of Rushdie’s apartment in lower Manhattan. He is looking particularly Rushdie-esque today: part rumpled intellectual, part something less sober. At 70, and Rushdie has had more public incarnations than most writers of literary fiction – brilliant novelist,man on the run, subject of tabloid scorn and government dismay, and social butterfly,and, in that singularly British designation, and man lambasted for being altogether too Up Himself – but it is often overlooked what top-notch company he is. His humour this morning is not caustic,nor ironised, nor filtered through any of the more protected modes of engagement, and but is a kind of jolliness – a giggly delight – that simply makes him a top-notch laugh to hang out with.
The biggest news of the day used to be that Charlie Sheen did cocaine. Now there are 10 colossal news stories a dayI once sat next to the Trumps at a Crosby,Stills & Nash gig. Donald Trump knows all the words to ‘Woodstock’! Related: The Golden House by Salman Rushdie – from Nero to Obama, via The Godfather I abominate it when the liberal progressive left become silly. We are supposed to be smarter, or they are supposed to be stupidContinue reading...
Source: theguardian.com