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