A great man speaks...
And a poor typist fucks it up...
Went to see Salman Rushdie last night, and it was pretty friggin incredible! He is SO smart... and so articulate. He talked a lot about free speech, the war, France, and Israel, and I was intensely impressed with how well-informed, how sound his opinions were. A few choice quotes:
1. (On criticism) "The author is not dead. (applause) The author is very much alive. Most critics never were."
2. (On how/why writers write- a quote from Bellow, describing a chained dog barking incessently, translating what the barking dog is saying to the sky, to god) "Open the universe a little more?"
3. (On politics in America) "Up on Ashcroft Ridge there are people who work for the Ministry of False Alarms. They say, 'EEK! The Brooklyn Bridge!' And we all turn to look. While we're all looking they behave badly... but we don't notice."
4. (On India and Magic Realism) "People ignore the realism part. You have to understand that in India, there are literally 300 million Gods. That's one god for every 3.3 people. Private school numbers. Can you imagine that? Realism is different there." (I didn't get the exact quote for this one... but it was something like this.
The best thing about the evening was my personal conversation with Salman at the after-party. There were more than a thousand people at the lecture, but when he and I chatted at Paula's afterwards, there were only about 15 people present (and oddly, no faculty).
I'm not really a star-fucker, so I steered clear of the famous man, never having read a single one of his books (but I will, I will now!). So I was sitting on the couch, nibbling on celery sticks and Easter candy. Suddenly, he walked over TO ME and asked politely, "What's in that?" He pointed at the dip.
I said, "Spinach. It's not bad, actually."
He went for the salsa. It was inspiring. A moment. I'm sure he'll remember me forever.
And the other interesting bit of the evening was the closed captioning. They had a dumb blond (sorry, but you'll imagine it better if I say that) in a tight sweater typing into a laptop, the screen of which was displayed on a giant screen. The poor girl could type like a demon, but she had no idea how to spell many many many words. To her credit, she didn't flinch, just plowed on through the lecture.
Can you imagine how awful that would be, typing wrong in the middle of a giant people-sea, knowing you're misspelling every dang word, and with a pact of voracious poets (like me) ready to pounce on your every mistake?
The spellcheck corrected many of her blunders, but what it could not fix, it altered in amusing ways. A partial list:
Nabokov=Nobodier cough
references=remps
excrement=exkremt
revisionist=revan chist
satiric=Sa tir Rick
She didn't even try to spell Ceaucescu. Just quit typing until Rushdie had finished that part of the lecture, and started over.
When I got home, my huzband was in the basement, recording Pieta and Bo. Which makes for quite an eventful night here in Iowa.
Went to see Salman Rushdie last night, and it was pretty friggin incredible! He is SO smart... and so articulate. He talked a lot about free speech, the war, France, and Israel, and I was intensely impressed with how well-informed, how sound his opinions were. A few choice quotes:
1. (On criticism) "The author is not dead. (applause) The author is very much alive. Most critics never were."
2. (On how/why writers write- a quote from Bellow, describing a chained dog barking incessently, translating what the barking dog is saying to the sky, to god) "Open the universe a little more?"
3. (On politics in America) "Up on Ashcroft Ridge there are people who work for the Ministry of False Alarms. They say, 'EEK! The Brooklyn Bridge!' And we all turn to look. While we're all looking they behave badly... but we don't notice."
4. (On India and Magic Realism) "People ignore the realism part. You have to understand that in India, there are literally 300 million Gods. That's one god for every 3.3 people. Private school numbers. Can you imagine that? Realism is different there." (I didn't get the exact quote for this one... but it was something like this.
The best thing about the evening was my personal conversation with Salman at the after-party. There were more than a thousand people at the lecture, but when he and I chatted at Paula's afterwards, there were only about 15 people present (and oddly, no faculty).
I'm not really a star-fucker, so I steered clear of the famous man, never having read a single one of his books (but I will, I will now!). So I was sitting on the couch, nibbling on celery sticks and Easter candy. Suddenly, he walked over TO ME and asked politely, "What's in that?" He pointed at the dip.
I said, "Spinach. It's not bad, actually."
He went for the salsa. It was inspiring. A moment. I'm sure he'll remember me forever.
And the other interesting bit of the evening was the closed captioning. They had a dumb blond (sorry, but you'll imagine it better if I say that) in a tight sweater typing into a laptop, the screen of which was displayed on a giant screen. The poor girl could type like a demon, but she had no idea how to spell many many many words. To her credit, she didn't flinch, just plowed on through the lecture.
Can you imagine how awful that would be, typing wrong in the middle of a giant people-sea, knowing you're misspelling every dang word, and with a pact of voracious poets (like me) ready to pounce on your every mistake?
The spellcheck corrected many of her blunders, but what it could not fix, it altered in amusing ways. A partial list:
Nabokov=Nobodier cough
references=remps
excrement=exkremt
revisionist=revan chist
satiric=Sa tir Rick
She didn't even try to spell Ceaucescu. Just quit typing until Rushdie had finished that part of the lecture, and started over.
When I got home, my huzband was in the basement, recording Pieta and Bo. Which makes for quite an eventful night here in Iowa.
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