Original subtitles

[MUSIC PLAYING]

SALMAN RUSHDIE: "Lurching back until he

knelt with his head once more upright,

he found that the tears which had sprung to his eyes

had solidified, too.

And at that moment, as he brushed diamonds contemptuously

from his lashes, he resolved never again

to kiss earth for any God or man.

The decision, however, made a hole in him.

A vacancy in a vital inner chamber,

leaving him vulnerable to women and history."

leaving him vulnerable to women and history."

[MUSIC PLAYING]

There are many ways of telling the truth.

You can tell the truth by fantasy,

or you can tell the truth by social realism--

my kitchen sink realism.

The truth I'm talking about is the truth about human beings.

The truth I'm talking about is the truth about human beings.

About how we act towards each other, what kind of worlds

we build, what crimes do we commit against each other.

How do we mistreat each other, and how do we love each other.

That's what the novel is trying to do.

What we now think of as the realist novel

I think was based--

it emerged in a period of time when

there wasn't so much of an argument

about the nature of reality.

In the 18th and 19th centuries, writers

In the 18th and 19th centuries, writers

writing in England, and America, and France

could broadly speaking assume that their vision of the world

was shared by their readers.

That the idea of what the real world was

was something about which there wasn't an argument.

There was a kind of consensus about that.

Having said that, that realist novel--

that consensus we now can see was based

that consensus we now can see was based

on avoiding certain things.

It very often avoided questions like race,

it very often diminished the world view of poorer people,

or within it--

there were all kinds of things omitted from that consensus.

But it was solid, and it allowed people

to build these great edifices of realism on it.

to build these great edifices of realism on it.

Now we live in a world in which reality

is very, very contested.

You know, one man's ceiling is another man's floor.

One man's truth is another man's fake news.

And there's an argument about reality--

about what is true, what is untrue,

what is right, what is wrong.

Surrealism is a thing which begins with the premise

Surrealism is a thing which begins with the premise

that we know that this is all make believe.

We know that these people don't exist,

and these things never happened.

And, therefore, there's no reason

to confine ourselves to things that would happen in real life.

You know, because we're in the world of dreams.

We're in the world of imagination.

As I say, the thing about surrealism

is that it is not an escape from the real.

is that it is not an escape from the real.

It's another way of describing the real

and sometimes can have the effect

of being more powerful than that a naturalistic description

of the real.

It has had more emotional force, if you do it right.

Put it like this, if the carpet needs to fly,

then let the carpet fly.

Maybe that the flying carpet is the best way of getting

where you need to go.

Magic realism is a form of literature

that draws from both the real and the surreal.

The reason I slightly object to the term "magic realism,"

The reason I slightly object to the term "magic realism,"

I think it belongs to a certain group

of Latin American writers working from the late '50s

to the '70s.

And they had a sort of project.

And they had things in common that they were trying to do.

And I think the term is best left to them.

You could say that Kafka is a magic realist.

You know, people turn into bugs.

In Russian literature, you have Mikhail Bulgakov.

In Russian literature, you have Mikhail Bulgakov.

You know, "The Master and Margarita"

is a novel about the devil coming to Moscow

and wreaking havoc.

French surrealism, Latin American magic realism,

North American fabulism--

they're really all the same thing

with coming out of different cultural backgrounds.

This idea that you don't have to have imitative naturalism

This idea that you don't have to have imitative naturalism

as a way of telling a story.

What I think happens when people use the term "magic realism,"

is that they only hear the word "magic."

They don't hear the word "realism."

And so they think it's some kind of a fantasy novel.

But the way in which it works at its best

is when it has deep roots in reality.

When the author really understands

the truth of the world he's writing about

and then uses these techniques to heighten that truth

and then uses these techniques to heighten that truth

and intensify it.

And so sometimes it feels more truthful than realism,

because of that intensification that

can be achieved through the use of these surrealistic

techniques.

I mean, I remember, for example when "Midnight's Children" came

out, most people in the West praised it as a--

as a kind of fantastic novel.

It was a novel of using elements of the fantastic.

It was a novel of using elements of the fantastic.

When people read it in India, they read it almost

like a history book.

You know, because they knew that everything in that book

actually has its roots in things that actually have happened

and that do happen.

The fact that they understood what I was trying to do

and saw it as real, was important.

[MUSIC PLAYING]

If you're going to deviate from naturalistic realism,

If you're going to deviate from naturalistic realism,

that has to be a part of your initial concept of the story.

It doesn't just happen.

In a way, it's kind of central to the conception of the story.

Because it affects how you write it.

And it would be very strange to write

a novel which was realistic and then suddenly

a novel which was realistic and then suddenly

changed into something else.

So I think, yeah, you do have to make that decision

to begin with and think about the implications

of that decision.

How far are you going to go with it?

How fantastic is it going to be?

What rules, if you like-- what are the rules of realism

that you're going to break?

And why?

Because then that becomes a part of your agreement

Because then that becomes a part of your agreement

with the reader.

That you're saying to the reader,

it's going to be this kind of story.

And then people go, OK, then I'm ready for that kind of story.

If you know that you're going to tell a story about a boy who

finds a wonderful lamp, and rubs it, and the genie comes out,

you have to be, from the beginning,

you have to be, from the beginning,

telling a story in which that's possible.

So that there are--

I mean, in the story of "Aladdin," there are magicians

and so on before we get to the lamp, you know?

And the lamp just becomes the most magical thing

that happens.

But we know that we're in a world in which magic

is possible.

So, again, you're making an agreement with the reader

that you're going to tell them certain kind of story.

And I think that's best-- it is best done like straight off.

And I think that's best-- it is best done like straight off.

[MUSIC PLAYING]

So this is the opening of "The Satanic Verses,"

a long novel, but many things.

"'To be born again,' sang Gibreel Farishta tumbling from

the heavens.

'first you have to die.

Ho Ji!

Ho Ji!

To land upon the bosomy earth, first one needs to fly.

To land upon the bosomy earth, first one needs to fly.

Tat-taa!

Taka-thun!

How would you ever smile again if first you won't cry?

How to win the darling's love, mister, without a sigh?

Baba, if you want to get born again--' Just before dawn one

winter's morning, New Year's day or thereabouts, two real,

full-grown, living men fell from a great height,

29,002 feet towards the English Channel,

29,002 feet towards the English Channel,

without benefit of parachutes or wings out of a clear sky."

The opening sentence of this book arrived relatively late.

And I found myself writing the scene

about this terrorist attack on a plane.

And I suddenly thought, you know, this doesn't belong here

in the middle.

It belongs at the beginning.

And that sentence actually goes with this.

And then I had the idea that--

And then I had the idea that--

sort of surreal idea that Gibreel,

one of the two men falling from the sky,

would actually be singing as he falls

and that would be one of the lines of the song.

So it was a beginning that I found.

And I just thought it's such a big, dramatic scene.

And what follows from the explosion

is something impossible, which is

that these two men, who are the two

major characters of the novel, have

major characters of the novel, have

got to make a soft landing on a beach in the South of England.

And so I suppose it's my way of saying,

this is going to be a book which contains

this kind of fabulist element.

That people can fall 30,000 feet and land unharmed on the Earth.

That people can fall 30,000 feet and land unharmed on the Earth.

And we'll proceed from that starting point.

So it starts in a way with an impossible thing.

And if you buy that, if you accept that as the reader,

then you are ready for everything that follows.

[MUSIC PLAYING]

There are kinds of writing which move outside the human race.

There's science fiction, there's fantasy.

There are moments when a jinn--

There are moments when a jinn--

genie-- will appear in the lives of human beings.

And so the question is what do we do about little green men

from Mars?

How do we write about them?

And either you can decide that this--

you have to think in like species terms.

You have to start thinking that, OK, if there

is a world inhabited by the jinn, what

is a world inhabited by the jinn, what

are the characteristics of that world?

How does that world differ from our world?

And how do they live there amongst themselves?

And then what is their view about human beings?

Because you know they are immortal, they can fly,

they can grant wishes.

They're powerful.

Do they think of us as feeble?

Do they think of us as inferior?

Do they think of us as inferior?

Or do they envy us because we have capacities

that they don't have?

Such as emotion, the ability to feel.

There's very, very few books which are only about aliens,

but there's no human beings at all.

So you need to work that out.

You need to think how they will behave,

if they found themselves in a room with people.

if they found themselves in a room with people.

How would people react to them?

Are we afraid of them?

Are we prejudiced against them?

Is it a kind of racism--

interspecies racism?

I mean, one of the great forms of science fiction

is a thing called the First Contact story.

That story about the first time that human beings meet

an intelligence from elsewhere.

"Close Encounters of the Third Kind" is a first contact story.

How do we deal with the moment that the spaceship lands?

How do we deal with the moment that the spaceship lands?

And do they come in peace?

There are some absolutely brilliant first contact

stories, one of which I used in my recent book,

because it's about a spaceship that's arriving on Earth.

And it makes visual contact with kind of mission control down

on Earth.

And they look exactly like us.

But when they arrive on Earth, they drown in a puddle

because they're about this big.

And the whole story is about how on a television screen,

And the whole story is about how on a television screen,

you don't know what scale people are.

I mean, I'm all for aliens landing on the lawn.

I think if you have a sort of quiet suburban novel about life

in the suburbs, family--

somebody mowing the lawn and the children misbehave,

the teenage children misbehaving,

it becomes much more interesting if a spaceship

lands on the lawn.

So I recommend it.

[CHUCKLES]

[MUSIC PLAYING]

There's something that can go wrong with this highly imagined

writing.

There's a danger of what I would call silliness.

Sometimes it just sounds dumb.

And readers are very, very sharp about that.

And if what you're doing seems to be indulgent and foolish,

they will really notice that.

they will really notice that.

And the thing is always to try and keep close

to the emotional truth of the moments.

To give you an example, there's a moment in García

Márquez's novel, "100 Years of Solitude,"

where one of the characters shoots himself and kills

himself.

And what García Márquez tells us is that the blood flows down

And what García Márquez tells us is that the blood flows down

to the floor, flows out under the door into the street,

makes a turn, looks left and right before crossing the road,

makes its way through the town, and arrives in his

mother's kitchen at her feet.

And then she knows her son is dead.

Now, obviously, this is a completely surrealistic image.

Blood doesn't behave like that.

Blood doesn't behave like that.

But what he's doing is to use the metaphor of the blood

to tell us about the news of the son's death

reaching his mother.

And so we feel it as true.

Because, of course, that's emotionally very powerful thing

to happen.

So, again, there we completely go along

with the surrealism of it, because the emotional truth

with the surrealism of it, because the emotional truth

is right there.

So that's when it works.

But that's when it works.

When it doesn't work is when it's just whimsical and just

for the sake of it.

Somebody turns into a frog.

So what?

And you have to really look out for the "so what" response.

That if what you're doing doesn't in some way

That if what you're doing doesn't in some way

show you the truth of the characters, then it's just--

then it's just done for the sake of it.

And it's not interesting.

[MUSIC PLAYING]