Be here tonight to introduce almond rushdie who was probably doesnt need an introduction. Well, give them a short one. Anyway, who the author of so many acclaimed novels the the nice children, of course the satanic verses which we can talk about these new book is the most important thing and languages of truth a collection of wonderful. Wonderful essays. Im going to ask about some of those that he had public between 2003 and 2020. So it was quite a political and cultural span there and again, im really honored to be here and and happy to see you. Again. Thank you carla. Hes so great of you to do it. I always remember. Meeting you in in miami a million years ago. And listening to you. Give me the inside story on everything that happens in, florida. Ive kind of tempted to ask you to do that again now, im surprised you youve ever come back since that conversation. I usually scare people away. Whats happening now as well, you know as well known we have Governor Desantis and our covid battle going on and you you even write about the pandemic, which is cool that the publishing public publishing times from the time one turns in a manuscript to when its done are usually can be a year nine months. But yeah, this is very very current. So i hats off. I dont know how they did it. But like, you know, i got my pandemic in early because i i actually got i got the illness. I mean i got covid right right at the beginning when when none of us really fully understood. What it was or what or what it was going to be. I mean in in march of 2020, i guess, you know, i i got i got second. I was very lucky. I mean i didnt i didnt have to go to hospital. I just had to stick it out at home for a couple of weeks and and then i was in this strange situation of being of having immunities, you know and in a way in a way felt almost fortunate to have got it over with. And Walking Around new york city, which was like a ghost town. And that had to be so surreal. And were you were you able you were well enough during that period right after you got it to write i mean at in real time or no, it was actually for a while. I didnt write anything at all, you know, and and even when i did get back to writing i initially i didnt i didnt think i didnt i wasnt sure that i wanted to write about the pandemic because i thought this is something which all of us are experiencing at the same time, you know, and and so what do i have to say that everybody doesnt know already, you know, and and actually was my publisher about editor at random house who said, you know, maybe just write a personal view because people can can make their own connection with that, you know, and and i thought it was good advice so that thats what i did. No and it its important because it is it is a current and what the one thing that can and my experience was sort of book. Essays and sort of telescope time and get the sense that you know, its at some point the way headlines move. Yeah what you wrote gets lost in the rear view period feels like feels like yesterdays papers. Oh all these hold up so well, and and so theres and in almost a harrowing way. Theres foreshadowing in these about politically has happened in this country and actually around the world since trump became president. I mean that you there is an ominous tone. Its its wise and its smart, but i looked at the date of some of these to make sure what to see when you were written because it it some of it came true. I dont know. I mean i i really dislike the way in which sometimes things i write. Kind of happened later. Yeah, thats a novelist worse Worst Nightmare really because you think youve created something so extraordinary and special and then youre reading about it happening. And yeah exactly. I have a friend right now and jamaican writer who wrote a novel a long time ago about a crazy cult leader in jamaica and then last week in the news. Theres his novel in the news headlines. So exactly he wrote about. Actually in your i think i have a friend of mine who it writes, you know the sort of detective murder mysteries and and kind of serial killer stuff and its very successful and it his Worst Nightmare came true. There was a series of crimes and when they arrested the suspect and went into his room he had a he had a copy of that particular novel and oh my god some of the actual crimes resembled. A methodology what it occurred in the novel. Its every i think that that is the kind of absolutely most terrifying thing that you could discover about your work. Um you we have to start i think to talk about the fatwa and just the your extraordinary resilience but also for most of us. Writers are deep in our hearts the ones i know are cowardly and and would have disappeared or gone away, and i dont say that harshly. Its just a heavy heavy thing when youre trying to create anything to know that someones out to kill you and i dont know how productive i could have ever been in that situation and yet um you not only persevered but you triumph. Well, thank you, but you know, i mean, were fortunate. I think that living in the united states, i think maybe the worst problem we have is that nobody gives a about what were writing job and there are plenty of parts of the world in which actually people do give a about what people are writing and sometimes those writers are endangered as a result, you know, and and they all keep going. I mean, i remember years ago meeting a wonderful. Somali writing farah who has spent a lot of his life in exile because back in somalia the dictator of the moment wanted to kill him because of something he wrote so so he and hes had that happen more than once more than one dictator has as wanted to kill him and so hes had a life of wandering, you know, and yet he carries somalia in his heart so much that every book hes ever written has been set there as if he never left. I mean thats its its not only courageous but its a i mean its a form of an integrity that you dont youre just not going to youre not going to give up and youre not going to try Something Else or do something more innocuous and together, but i i think i think a lot of us are really quite stubborn, you know. And somebody tries to shut you up it it actually has a kind of it has a kind of opposite reaction you what you want to you know, somebody wants to shut you up. You want to shout louder . Well, i mean it just from years in the newspaper business that you occasionally got these kind of you especially writing a column occasionally got sort of random threats or goofball, you know they can and theres credit they come with crayon on the written and crayon and on the envelope, you know, and you you said im a side but its part of he doesnt really want to take it seriously and then things happen that that change the change your mind about that but i one of the best moments for me and this is not a literary moment regarding you is when i was sitting there with my wife watching curb your enthusiasm and there and then and you and when larry david had the five top and youre in and you were terrific you were saying you great and i thought this i mean this may be the one of the only countries where where you could do that and come and just come with flying colors come through and put you i mean, actually, i didnt know id really didnt know larry david. Id met him like briefly once. And and out of the blue he kind of got in touch and and and said would i what i do this and and and my initial response was you know, is this really funny or is this kind of not funny . And and then i thought about it and i thought you know, there was obviously a point in my life, but it would have been not funny. No, no, and i thought if weve actually reached the point where we can make fun of it. Then that feels like a kind of victory. And and so i thought i said yeah, ill do it and then i got i said can i see the script and he said well, you know, you cant because theres no script because its all improv. And so then i show up. I mean i was there for two days and here are these people who are geniuses of improv . You know. And i thought i dont want to be the only person on curb your enthusiasm whos no good. But that was very scary, but i got away with it. I think you did and can i ask what . What the reaction was because no i mean i mean, i i loved the work that larry david does not you know, but he is hes a little prickly and im just wondering i dont know. What would did you get a positive reaction overall was . Yeah. No everybody. Everybody liked it. Yeah when i should it was great. I wanted to ask you what some of the things some of these essays that and this is almost selfish for me, but you have some great lines in here about writing. Yeah and and some of the contexts also the it applies very well to writing satirical now, theres a novels with with the satirical tone which are very very tricky, its easy to its easy to miss the mark and its easy and a lot of people have no sense of humor also, and as youre aware, actually true, theres a theres a line that describes writing. I i hope i can do it justice its its about its about fiction and the contract that writers have with their readers in fiction and and it says it the fictionality of fiction as an important matter lies at the heart of the transaction. Um the contract between the work and its audience the work confessing its untruth while promising to uncover truth. Its one of the descriptions of what at least youre trying to do or trying to what writers try to achieve and connecting with their audience. Yeah. Well, thank you. I mean, i remember you know in the aftermath of trump when when lies became, you know, like something that happened every five minutes. I remember people began to ask novelists. Why do you go on making things up, arent you just adding to the mountain of lies, you know and and i think Margaret Atwood said something which i mean ive paraphrased a few times where she tried to have a difference between fiction and lies and and what she said, is that fiction what essentially im paraphrasing but whatever techniques fiction uses whether theyre naturalistic or fantasticated or whatever. The purpose is to tell some kind of truth. The purpose is to some kind of truth about human nature or Human Society or you know, the purpose is truth. Whereas the purpose of allies to obscure the truth. So that even though they even though they look on the surface as if they might be doing the same thing. Theyre actually doing opposite things. And and i thought that was a very helpful distinction. Its its absolutely true. I i mean i i remember i had friend of mine. In she wasnt trying to be mean or anything. She just said well the these folks are funny, but when it when youre gonna write something serious, and i said you dont understand. Yeah, this is scary. Its serious exactly, but but you get what im saying, and especially i mean the the characters that you have to get to know yourself before you can share them with readers and everythings got to be just right and every line of dialogue and and the meticulousness it and if you really doing it, well, it doesnt really show it reads easily, but your home ready to put knitting needles in your scope, you know you agonizing over that adjective and you you capture some some of that process so so well and its so so rare and yet at the same time, youre youre maddeningly prolific, which is aggravating the right. I think i am not sure which of us is more prolific actually carl, but its a its a close thing. I mean, i just think you know, its its what i do for a living. I mean, what would i do if i wasnt writing a book . I have no. I have no i have no other skill. Absolutely. Yes, exactly. I couldnt i couldnt run like a landscaping. Service, right. I couldnt i couldnt run a post office. I mean i could you know, i mean, i remember being very envious. Once i was in germany, and i was introduced to the great german writer gunter grass. And he had he was living in a village outside hamburg at the time and he had two houses in the village and in one he lived and he did his writing. And the other one he walked down the road in the evening after hed done his writing and he had an artist studio. And he used to make dry point etchings and bronzes and terracotta pieces and and and they all used exactly the same iconography as his novels. So there were pictures of little boys with tin drums or they were eels or they were rats or flounders or all these characters who cropped up in his novels, but i thought how wonderful at the end of a days writing to be able to walk a hundred yards down the road. And be another kind of artist. You know, thats i unfathomable, you know in a way. Yeah, i mean because with your writing you can get wrung out. Yeah, and and i would rather head for a pub and then you know, and so some days are like that. Im seven days like that. There are fortunately one or two days. When you think oh, this is easy. Yeah, its again. Its its all self delusion and its its almost like a cruel trap because then you go in the third day and its not easy at all turns to right in front of you, but the other thing that i found that i talk about envious of the amount of reading that youre able to do the breadth of it in in the languages of truth, theres i mean, its just extraordinary and it almost daunting how much youve read and what the and what you read . And i look pretty i mean you can see theres a few books here, and im sure you have a room like this too because for me reading is is just one of the great pleasures, you know, and and im lucky in that i can read pretty fast, but when i but i can always tell how much im enjoying the book because the more i enjoy the book the more slowly i read. Do you find ask because i mean you you have a very unique style, but do you ever find yourself worried about if youre in the middle of a particularly good book on cautiously absorbing. Yes a rhythm a rhythm. Well, id worry about its why when im writing fiction, i really dont read much. Of it. Thats what i was getting at or if i do i try to if im reading anything. Its nonfiction and its yeah, i mean i read around what im writing thats exactly what i was saying because i feel like i told somebody asked and they said that you like i said, i love to read i said, but theres if you pick up. A really bad novel and you probably get sent a few of those and yeah, do i and you i dont start in the beginning. I i turn to a middle page and start to read and because i think the beginning can be edited to looking great and then its getting there and its great. Its good. Its not good. The really bad ones make you feel like you know. Im hemingway and then you read a really good novel and you want to just tear up everything youre working on. No, and then theres the problem with you said earlier over the problem of being infected. Yes by somebodys style. I mean, i mean hemingway for example is very infectious. I think so because the simplicity i think draws is attractive if youre in the middle of a complicated. Yes story. Actually you cant do anyway, i mean, no nobody could actually in the end of his life. He couldnt do anything. Its true. But no, so i i really i dont read a lot of fiction when im writing fiction that i tried. Make up for that when i finish that when i finish writing a book. The other wonderful thing about this book is the variety of different subjects and you have a wonderful story about the late. Carrie fisher. Oh, yeah. I mean you you have that you have the most interesting friendships that are written about and many of them are completely accidental. I mean carrie. I met my accident because i was i was publishing some book and i was invited on to a british late night talk show. And she was the other guest. And so we were there the two of us and the host. Sitting around a table pretending to have dinner when actually being on tv to have a talk show. And and she was so funny and so smart. That i thought i really want to. Get to know this person and unfortunately, she thought the same about me so so we became very close friends, you know, even though she was living in hollywood and i was living in first in london and then new york, so we didnt see each other all the time, but it became a very very close friendship my favorite moment. I think all i cant remember if i put it in the essay was given that its about to be halloween. There was a there was a time when we were together on halloween in new york and neither of us felt at all halloweenie neither of us wanted to find a costume or put on weird face paint or anything. So we went out to dinner together. Deciding that we would tell people that we were there as each other. And thats what it was like me with carrie. You know that the world just became. Funny became funny. Theres a wonderful anecdote. I wont give it away because its probably the only anecdote and i dont know how ive missed this about Napoleon Bonapartes. We wont give it away, but its not its worth the investigated. Yeah it no. I mean i could just do the beginning of it, which is that i found my chance an obituary in the new york times. Of a gentleman in new jersey who just passed away who had a habit of collecting strange memorabilia. And so one of the things he had for example was the bloodstained shirt that that president lincoln was wearing at the theater that night. If and he also claimed to have in a box with an excellent provenance. The of Napoleon Bonaparte so i was having dinner with carrie. And Peter Farrelly of the farrelly brothers that night and i told them this story. And they became very excited of course, but what we could do with this said and for the rest of it, you have to read the book. Yeah, you have to yeah it is it is it is quite a story. I i one time in a novel i made reference to the wildly repeated urban rumor that John Dillingers. Is it the Smithsonian Museum . I just made it past a character in the book made it passing reference. I had got a letter from the smoke smithsonian that i saved to this day and i dont have in front of me, but it a wonderful straight straight face tone the curator of whatever department that would be said no contrary to rumors a week. We do not have that and have never had John Dillinger death. And so i think i was on smithsonian letterhead. I thought this this is pretty good. Well, yeah. Well there thats thats two feet. This is out with the um, youre a great aficionado of art and are you a collector as well . You know, what happened is when i was quite young. I fell in where they got to know quite well quite substantial number of brilliant indian artists and and and i began to collect bits of their stuff, you know, really because i knew them and in those days. Indian art was just obscenely cheap. Nobody nobody had discovered it, you know the in the International Art market. Wasnt aware of the fact that there was actually some very remarkable work being done in india. And so i have i have quite a bunch of of contemporary indian artists and and actually even the other artists i have stuff off is mostly to do with some kind of personal connections. So so, you know, i became friendly with the italian painter francesco clemente, so i have some of his stuff and i became i got to know a wonderful africanamerican artist kara walker. So i have i have one of her amazing cutouts. And so yeah, a lot of it is to do with with friendship in french and a personal connection, but one of the things you write about in your essays is also the process that the artist the painter would go through and it in its very close relation to the process that are a writer goes through. Its not the its not the same muscle, but its its the same. I mean, i remember but when i first met karaoke, for example, she had written a sort of text about about this, know about process. And when i read it i thought well, thats kind of almost exactly what i would say. You know except that shes talking about visual arts, and ive talked about writing and and one of the reasons we got to know each other is that she felt that she felt that in her in my writing. She recognized something of her process. And i felt that in her visual art. I recognized something of mine, you know, and and so we became friends. I mean the you know you i think when youre in the middle of the novel, i dont know. This is what im going to ask you do you feel at times and i you never use the word block but you feel at times like you youve wandered down the wrong order as the right water past. The the cars are headlights would show yeah. I dont know. I dont know how much of a planner you are. You know, i mean i i used to be its one of the things thats really changed in my writing is it when i started out but like wrote midline childrens or that i needed a great big piece of architecture. Before i could start putting you know putting flesh on those bones, i really had to know. The structure in considerable detail and and whats happened to me is ive got older is that thats less and less the case, you know, and and i feel its as if ive gone. From being a composer of symphonies to being a to being a composer of jazz. Okay, and because jazz has a kind of structure, but it but its a loose structure and it allows discovery all the time, you know, and and i feel more and more that for me writing has become an active discovery, you know, and and of course the problem with that is that you can go down blind alleys. Yeah, and that is dont you do you . Youre youre fine your character surprise you more. Yeah, i mean i in fact i get disappointed. I think i think theres something wrong if they dont. You know because i feel that theyre not. Somehow not fully imagined if they if they dont have that capacity to have their own life. When you wrote anyway, when many of you know, but when you especially the satanic verses when it was clear as i mentioned before that, you know some there are some things or theres some people who are are never going to have any sense of humor about some things. Yeah, but and that was to such an alarming the response. Its such an alarming degree. Did you spend a lot of time . Trying to explain sort of point in satire. Yeah, i mean there was point just off to the trouble started when i mistakenly thought oh, this is just a terrible misunderstanding. They just they just they just they dont get it and if i can just explain it to them, then theyll see. That theyre wrong. You know and and that theres actually no problem here. And i quite rapidly discovered that there was no way of explaining. Because in order to explain you to somebody that person has to be prepared to listen to the explanation. Exactly, and its and then if the other person is is simply closed then theres nothing you can say to them that will change their mind. And also then you find yourself youre walking this line of you dont want to insult them by suggesting that they dont get a joke or that they dont see whats obvious satire. But at the same time if theyre hypersensitive to it, theres no really other way to explain it except to say you dont understand. Its supposed to be i mean, theres another thing i feel too, which is i dont want to explain my book. Yeah, you know, you dont want to be that right to who tells his reader how to read his book, you know, because one of the great joys of reading is that you discover how youre going to read that book, you know, and and one of the great joys of being the writer is to discover how differently different readers respond to a book. Know and and then you dont want to order them that youve got to just read it this way because all other ways are wrong, you know, but when you get into this situation where somebody has read your book in such a way that they want to kill you then explanation becomes something you think you to do. But of course one of the things that happened one of the things i discovered was that. 90 or more of the people who attacked the book had never picked it up never picked up a coffee course. Yeah, but never read ascensions of it and i have had i cant tell you. I mean its now a long time, you know, the book came out. In 1988 where its a long time ago. Oh my goodness. Yeah, and i cant tell you how many letters ive received from people who have read the book. Either saying one of two things saying which is the bit. That was the problem because i cant find it. Thats one and the other is who knew it was funny. You know, i mean, nobody told me it was funny. That it does so many ways to take that as is it right. Well, i in a way its wonderful that they went back to it. And oh, yeah that i dont think its good about now, you know now that the temperature is lower and and that people can just read it as a novel on a bookshelf. They pick up and read it. Is that people are beginning to see the book that was actually written as opposed to the book that was made all the noise was made about. That it that it endures is encouraging. Yeah. I mean im kind of proud of that because that really was a destruction test. No, i mean in more ways than one it was and but the idea that its that its still there and being read and will be read and and its not even from a writer from a vainglory is point of view. Its just that its stands up. Yeah and what you want to do, isnt it . You want leave books behind . That people will read you know, and i mean i remember who was it friend of of mine. I think martin amis said that what hed like what he hoped to do was just leave behind a shelf of books. You know, you could say, you know from here to here, its me. You know, and i think thats thats what you hope for, you know to leave behind a shelf of books when when you send a manuscript to off. Hmm. Is it . Are you are use editing to the bitter end or are you when youre done, you know, youre done. No, im editing until they take my my cold dead hands off the manuscript. I mean basically until they say its going to the printers today. Its about im still reading it and removing a comma here or an adjective exactly. I tried to explain that to other writers because i have friends who are very successful. Who are i mean literally every six months or once or twice a year. Theyre theyre putting out books and theyre honest a very strict schedule with their publisher and i that would be torture for me because i can do that because it would be to me. No, no how it cannot possibly be done because i know later when i pick it up and look at it. And yeah this experience. I dont know if you can go back and read or you have gone back in read your own work, but for me, it tends to be a little painful because on every page that i let that get by i know thats it is and theres a my one of my favorite lines of literary criticism is the american critic randall jarreau. Said something he said a novel is a long piece of writing that has something wrong with it. Because when youre writing 100,150,200,000 words, i dont care who you are. I dont care if your shakespeare or tolstoy. They cant all be perfect that theres no perfection is a kind of dream, you know and so you have to accept that no matter how hard you work no matter how much you keep going till the last day when theyre putting putting it into the printer. There will still be shut the stuff that when you look at it two years later you go. Oh my god. I wish i hadnt said that. Yeah, just it can be one piece of dialogue. It could be anything we but we both had a deer mutual friend sunny matter who yes, i was blessed enough, you know to have as my editor and i know there were times when i would be begging. Can i just have one more crack it just one and he any would just say no. It really has to go now you well sunny, you know once i mean i had the experience of being edited but by him on a Nonfiction Book i wrote this this reputage book about the contra war in nicaragua. And it had to be brought out very fast because it was kind of reportage book, you know say we couldnt bring it out a year later. It would be meaningless. And sunny and i sat in a room, but while he line edited it and and almost everything he said was to ask for more because one of the things that i very hard to judge with that kind of book is how much knowledge. Can you expect that the reader has about a news event, you know and and he would say i dont know who is sandino. You know, what is the frente, sandinista . He just every every page. He said i need to know more here. I need to know more here. And so the book ended up being. Maybe 50 longer that it was when when i gave it to him and and much much better for his intervention. Its its interesting because ive had i had that same experience with kind of several times where he would. You know i get i like all of this. But anyway and one time he raised the issue of one character. It was in the book and because i like her very much. Um, i dont think she belongs in this book and i said what he said give me more so i went back and which and i but it was out of my imagination. It wasnt right and i did all that and i sent it to him and said i still think i still think she belongs somewhere else and i had such respect from that i went and i removed that character and reassigned all the plot points that that character was involved and it was i totally it was like taking a palm tree in a racing your footprints on the desert behind behind you because it could be no trace and and manuscript was essentially completed but i he was he was always he i never knew him to be wrong when i was he writing that the character was useful to you in some other place. I think i throw nothing away i learned. Yeah, yours and journalism. You start nothing nothing away like but i had a little when when i handed in midnights children to my british editor is called a up. There was a game one character of a woman. Ive been pretty secondary character, but one that recurred at various points in the in the book. And she said i just dont think you need this character. I dont know what shes doing here. And an initially i was defensive and i said, you know. Thats my book and dont take your hands off it and then somebody else read it. And without conferring said the same thing. And then i thought okay well. Let me see. If its very difficult to remove the character. I will tend to think im right in there wrong. And i sat that and i took the character out of the book in 24 hours. Thats amazing. It just fell out of the fill out on the floor. Thats it. And i thought okay. Well, then theyre right and im wrong. So now im incredibly grateful to have removed her. Yeah, i i and back on. You know feel how lucky i am to to have had him guiding me as i think though. I dont know what happens in a writers mind, but sometimes something will just trigger that sounds like it seems like a good idea at the time, but its good just it just runs off the page somewhere. Well, thats that. I mean we came back to hemingway, but hemingway has that line about needing to have a very good detector. Yes, and and i think that is absolutely right you if you dont know when its bad, you dont know when its good. You know when you when youre working on a manuscript or when you more or less finish the manuscript do you have do you have a core of people that you let read it ahead or just a few or how do you do . I dont i dont let anybody. I dont let anybody see it while im writing it. Yeah, i mean there are people who hand out chapters. You know, i know i know those. Yeah that thats terrifying to me friend. Yeah, but when its finished, yeah, i do have i mean theyre not particularly people in the book world, you know, and theyre just the theyre just readers that i first of all i trust their taste and secondly, i trust their honesty. Thats thats yeah because i always say to them i dont need to tell me. I dont need you to flatter me, you know, i need you to tell me here i get bored or here i get confused or i dont understand this bit or i want to know the problem. Im much more than i want to know how good it is, you know, so and i have two or three people who will who will who will read it that way . That thats very valuable. I think. You know many writers are i think maybe most are deep down insecure. I mean you think you know what youre doing, but you want to get some validation for this before it. Yeah publication. I dont know about you. I i find publication more and more terrifying as i get older. No, instead of being exciting and fun. Its now scary. It it is and i think the pen. I dont know how much of that is. The pandemic that that sort of neutralized a lot of interaction that you normally have at book events or just meeting actual real people, you know pleasure pleasure. Yeah, or is it just that you know in my case and am i just getting a older and and do i . Here did the stakes of the whole thing scare me more than it used to. Yeah. I mean, i think its that i would certainly its that for me. I mean i had what i one or two. I mean i had some nice reviews for this for this book of essays, but i had i did have one or two, which said hes over the hill. Hes irrelevant. Its pointless. Theres nothing here that need interest anybody. I had i had i had one or two. Theres very very unpleasant. Oh, i mean, you know, we all get those and and i and i thought are they right . And that thats a terrible thing not to be able to just turn the page and move on. Well, i i always dealt with it by being so cowardly that i just didnt didnt look at the reviews and i and i told like my agent and sunny would be great. He wouldnt ever dont send them. Send me any the bad ones because you it would probably paralyze me even if it was from some crackpot who or some some somebody reviewing the book who couldnt write a postcard if their life depended on it, but it didnt matter, you know, like you i just felt it. Heres what i thought it would be counterproductive to whatever i was working on then, you know, freeze me because i and i just didnt have enough faith in myself to be able to roll through it. No, i mean, i think its its very difficult. You know, i mean, i i also i think you get to a point. In the literary world, which is not very big you get to a point where you know who your enemies are. Okay, and you know that if your book falls into the hands of one of those people then youre screwed. You could you could have written anything you could have written madame bovary and it would be would be trashed. Oh, yeah, but i know youve done this one sometimes to sort of rejuvenate myself out go back and read accounts of some of the great books of all time and the reviews that yeah that books of those those that their little books. Theyre called theyre called rotten reviews. And and its all like, you know, Virginia Woolf trashing james joyce. You know, i look back not everybody loved catch 22 when it came up. I mean, i mean, theres books that have become iconic that i mean, not everybody loved the great gatsby. No, no, so it you know, i might have never put myself in that category, but it makes me okay, you know everybody you feel the probably probably the iliad got mad reviews. It speaking with im gonna paraphrase. Theres a great line. I read your the your address to Emory University because i actually went to emory for the first couple years. I was an english major there. Oh wait. Yeah before i before i switched to the journalism at university of florida, but but im paraphrasing was line that you were talking to the graduates where you said, go basically go out there and dont be smaller than life. Be larger than life. Yeah, that is the coolest thing. I i you know, i mean, its such a great and so important for free kids, but you want to say to them something which isnt just sentimental yeah. Oh cliche, like tell you everything will work out fine. It doesnt necessarily and tell them something. That maybe they havent thought. You know one or two people got annoyed about my that that speech at emory, which was a commencement speech. Because i said 102 things disobliging about religion. You did and there were some emory parents who . Didnt like that. Okay, i can imagine but and thats its its a theme i mean in in your in your writing and in some of the essays, i mean theres we and all i i cant imagine being a writer a novelist or even a nonfiction not having some in a suspicion. Hmm of religion based on history and what weve seen and even even what were seeing now based on the history of the world. Its a yeah, ive always felt you know, because i grew up in india with surrounded by religions. Of which the two are in my family was an Indian Muslim family, although pretty much nonpracticing. But all around you is is hinduism and and i always felt more. Sympathetic to polytheism than to monotheism you know many gods rather than one god because the stories are better, you know you get into the greek gods you do a great job. And i mean the stories are the stories are wonderful, you know, and so i ive always been drawn to those those pantheons, you know, whether its valhalla or olympus or wherever it maybe those are more interesting to me than than one one old bearded dude up there. Telling us out of behave. Yes one one old vengeful guy isnt isnt really all that interesting. I mean and but youre right there was theres a creative component to to the others. Yeah, its like why i like the Old Testament more than the new testament because because the Old Testament is full of wonderful people are swallowed by whales for Goodness Sake well you i mean this the book is delightful. Its called languages of truth if you havent gotten it and i have to say i because i have been obviously primarily familiar with your novels. The essays are delightful. I it seems to me like you you have fun doing those, you know every so often. I mean, i dont you know that book as you said its written over a period of 60 or 17 years, you know so so i dont write these things that often but when i do, yeah when i do i have some fun with them and also, i mean, theyre just such incredible variety you do a great essay on about random spoke about Muhammad Ali Muhammad ali well also because i was very impressed because David Remnick is is younger than me and i realized that hes too young to have seen those fights live. So no it could list in fights. He could you youd have been like three and so hes had to do it all. Retrospectively, you know about watching videotape and the fact that he could write a book which made you feel so much that immediate that you were actually there ringside, you know, when in fact he would not have been able to do that at the time because of his age. I thought that was very impressive that he could actually recreate a world that he that was that he had had to experience at one remove the cool thing about your review or essay about those it made me. I mean it also brought ali back to life. Yeah for me because i was i was just old enough. I was i think probably nine or ten but the our whole Elementary School was obsessed with the idea of sonny liston beating that loud mouth. Yeah cash is clay to a pulp. Yeah, and but its brought all that. I thought remnix book is wonderful about listen. You know and it actually brings listen to life in a way that i havent seen anybody do before. Well, its terrific. The book is terrific, and im so honored to been able to talk to you. I wish we were doing this in person in front of an audience in miami well soon i hope hopefully soon and im glad you weathered the your pandemic adventure. Well, you know, im glad you in good shape, too. So yeah, im good. I just i got the booster and everything now if you probably im not but you know, so, okay, lets tell ourselves. Were fine were fine and thank you again. And this is ive got to hold this up. I know this probably there you go. Oh, theres all my notes on it. But anyway, it was so great to see you again and great to talk and next time. Lets do it in person. Yeah. Thank you colin for official. Thats a date. Pioneers was published in 2019. And now im book tv for highlighting programs from our archives with pulitzer prizewinning historian david mccullough. Over the past 20 years he has appeared on book tv more than 50