Imaginary Homelands by Salman Rushdie

Author:Salman Rushdie [Rushdie, Salman]
Language: eng
Format: epub, pdf
ISBN: 9781623730123
Publisher: Penguin Books
Published: 2013-05-14T07:00:00+00:00

AT THE ADELAIDE FESTIVAL

The first time I went to an international literary festival, I was bullied into playing centre-forward for the World against Finland (our host nation) in a football match that began at midnight by the light of the midnight sun—that is, in semi-darkness. The Finnish writers took the game very seriously, rehearsing wall passes and bicycle kicks, and warning us casually that their goalkeeper was also the country’s harshest literary critic, so it might not be wholly advisable to make him cross. Meanwhile, the World, whose representatives did not have so much as a language in common, concentrated on trying to spot the ball through what Flann O’Brien would have called the accretions of black air. My own troubles were increased by my complete lack of footballing talent, by my decision not to wear my glasses in case they broke, and by D. M. Thomas, who convinced a gullible reporter that I had once won an Olympic medal at football for India. The final score—no thanks to the World’s Olympic Star—was Finland 1, the World 6, and the Finns never really forgave us. Such international encounters can be risky.

At literary festivals you can hear J. P. Donleavy lamenting the present shortage of women who can both cook and sew. You can be instructed by Ted Hughes in the use of vitamins. Scandinavian novelists will read translations of novels about father-daughter incest, or science-fiction tales in which eight Swedes are marooned in a space station for fifty years. At literary festivals there will be drink, and a rare opportunity for writers to feel important. There will be interminable speeches by the Russian delegate about how Art is much to do with the passions, and is not rationalistic or objectivist in process. An earnest Yugoslav woman will demand the floor and inform her colleagues that they are all the victims of Positivism, after which there will be a low, polyglot buzz of writers’ voices, asking in Dutch and Arabic and Gikuyu if anyone knows what this Positivism is. At literary festivals it is important not to be lured into sitting down to poker with Al Alvarez, unless you play approximately as well as Steve McQueen in The Cincinnati Kid.

What is valuable for audiences—for readers—about these rather strange events is that for some reason they find it interesting to look at and listen to authors as well as read their books. What is most valuable to the writers is, I think, the informal talk, the off-stage stuff. Writers know they will probably not meet each other very often and so, when they do, they tend to come directly to the point, and, usually, to talk a great deal. This aspect of literary gatherings is reminiscent of what I was told on my first night at university by the Provost of my college. ‘The most valuable part of your education,’ he said in an after-dinner speech to us freshmen, ‘will be what you do when you sit privately in each other’s rooms at night, fertilizing one another.

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