Joy, a Podcast. Hosted by Craig Ferguson - Salmon Rushdie

Episode Date: November 4, 2025

On this week's episode of The Joy Podcast, Craig sits down for a pleasant chat with his old friend and acclaimed author, Salmon Rushdie. The friends catch up and talk about Salmon's new book, The Eleventh Hour: A Quintet of Stories which is available today wherever you get your books. The conversation is not only about Salmon's new book, but the two discuss art, philosophy, religion, and even the art of humor. It's a breezy hour of two friends and book fans catching up and we're just hanging out watching it.  Have a question for Craig? Drop him an email at [e-mail], send him a message on social media, or drop a comment below. _______________________________________________ Craig is also on the road. Dates and tickets can be found here https://www.thecraigfergusonshow.com/tour _________________________________________________ Find Craig: Website - https://www.thecraigfergusonshow.com Instagram - https://www.instagram.com/craigyferg TikTok - https://www.tiktok.com/@craigy_ferg X - https://www.x.com/craigyferg Facebook - https://www.facebook.com/thecraigfergusonshow WATCH THE PODCAST: https://www.youtube.com/@thecraigfergusonshow  About the Joy Podcast Storied late-night talk host Craig Ferguson brings his interview talents and singular world view to a discussion of the modern state of JOY, sitting down with notable guests from the worlds of entertainment, science, government, and more. How's our Joy doing? Bridled? On life support? Where do we find joy in a world that seems by any rational measure to be collapsing around us?

This is me, Craig Ferguson. I'm inviting you to come and see my brand new comedy hour. Well, actually, it's about an hour and a half, and I don't have an opener because these guys cost money. But what I'm saying is I'll be on stage for a while. Anyway, come and see me live on the Pants on Fire Tour in your region. Tickets are on sale now and we'll be adding more as the tour continues throughout 2025 and beyond.

For a full list of dates, go to the Craigfergersonshow.com. See you on the road, my dears. Hello, welcome to the Joy podcast. My name is Craig Ferguson. I am your host today. I've just finished reading this book. Well, not this one. This is a fancy show-off version,

but I've read the same book inside bits. But this is the new cover. It's by a gentleman called Salman Rushdie, who is one of the greatest writers of our generation, and you're going to talk to him right now with me. You're not going to talk. I'm going to talk, and he's going to talk. You're going to listen.

so let me just say this before we go any further I just finished reading the 11th hour this morning which is a little late for me to talk to you about it because I like to kind of get a little cynical and have a bit of distance from the book so that I'm not like fawning and fanboy but I'm going to fawn and fanboy a little bit I don't know though because sometimes

you're a seasoned professional sometimes flattery sounds like manipulation doesn't it? No, it just sounds like that good. I'll go for it. So here's what I thought. I think that this book, because I've read, I don't know if you know this, but you've written a few books and I've read them. This one, I feel, is the most accessible thing. Either I'm getting smarter or you're kinder. It feels like a very affable book to me in a weird way. It was, you know, it was very enjoyable to write. Yeah, it's very enjoyable to read. isn't always necessarily the same thing.

Right. But this one, it was like, you know, because I wrote this non-fiction memoir about the attack, etc. Right. And somehow the moment I finished it, like this door in my head opened and I was able to go back into fiction. Yeah, it's funny, though.

There's a real meta feeling about it. I wanted to talk to you about it because some of it feels like classic, you're in a fictional environment, it somehow feels fictional, then someone will turn up. Like I think, or the event, even from the first story

with junior and senior and arguing on the balcony and I'm thinking I'm settling into this lovely almost like subcontinent odd couple thing going on and then it gets very dark and strange and then a very real thing I don't want to do too many spoilers

for the book but a very real thing happens and and it kind of I wonder there's later on in the book in the story Oklahoma you get into an argument with the wife of the writer

or you, I don't even know if it's you. I don't know if you're narrating or not, but she says, you steal people and put them in books. Do you do that? Do you steal? We all do that. Right. But actually the character in Oklahoma is he's not as nice as me. Right.

I thought, because I thought you were a bit tough with yourself. He's a bit of a fraud. Right. You know, and I hope I'm not. But, no, what happened was I remember when I had been in South

India once, I mean the story's called in the South. Right. And I'd been in the city which I still call Madras because I'm old-fashioned. Right. You know, I have to call it Chennai. Right. Anyway, I met this very sweetly grumpy old guy.

Right. It was very old, very cantiprous, hated being old, kept saying he wanted to die, but he was full of life. I kind of really liked him. Yeah, I liked him in the book if it's the same way. So what they did, I kind of

doubled him. I got to say, let's have two of him. And let's have them disagree all the time. Right. And that became the story. It's a lovely story. There's a lot of aging in the book. I mean, I'm guessing that's because

like as all, your age. Not getting younger. Yeah, right. I mean, the stuff later on, though, there's feels like, like the second story in the book, the musician of, how do I pronounce? Ghani. See, I definitely, I'm glad you said it because I'm,

yeah. That to me, like, there's a lot of revenge in that. There's revenge in a couple of the stories, actually, in the, in the third story, what's the story about, what's the name of it again, about the Oxford Dawn,

the ghost? Oh, late. Late, yes. The, both of these are quite, they're almost books in themselves these stories, don't you think? They're long. Yeah. They're novellas, really.

Right. And, yeah, they both ended up being revenge stories. Yeah. How much of that is... No. Yeah. Because I wasn't planning to write, you know, let's sit down and write some revenge stories. Yeah.

But that's just the way the stories went. So when you write fiction then, you don't have, you don't outline, it's going to go this way, it's going to go that way. I used to. Right. You know, when I was a kid, I had to have quite a detailed structure. before I could actually get going. Right. And what's happened is, as I've gone on,

is I've become a little looser about that. And, I mean, of course, you have to have some kind of general sense of what it is you're writing about. But I like the process to be discovery, you know, that you find out what you're writing by writing it. It feels like that as a reader, actually. I think, I wonder if that's how, when I was reading, through the book,

I felt like I was, I was surprised often by the way things went. Yeah, I think you've got to take some unexpected left turns. Yeah. Well, when the sitar music becomes a source of, I mean, it was interesting

me, the sitar music had the power to cause all the magical problems, but the piano doesn't, is that how you? The piano doesn't really? Right. But is that an East-West thing, you think, as well? Yes, I just thought that the Tatar is superior. Is that like your personal taste?

Do you prefer the... It depends what day of the week it is. Right. I mean, I actually have a niece who is a brilliant concert pianist, and so she's a little bit the germ of the story as well. Right. Only in her talent, because the character in the story is not at all like her. But that story fascinated me, though.

because of the mathematician, the atheist mathematician who gets drawn into a cult. A religious cult. And I wonder, because I always think of you as being, in your own words, actually, a hardline atheist. And I wonder if you're being drawn as, like all of us, you're getting older, if you're beginning to soften on it. No, I'm hardening. Good. I always loved the way that Hitchens, even when he was dying, was like, no, no, no. No, there was

Who is it the story They're asked on their deathbed If they will renounce Satan And they said This is no time to be making enemies Yeah, that was that I remember it with that Oh, we'll figure out

We'll find out and we'll put it up here On the little thing But yeah, it's great Because I always, it's one of the things And I noticed in this book It's very funny in places I hope so No, it really is, though, but I think I've always been a bit funny.

Yeah, I've always thought that. You never get credit for it. It's like Evelyn Waugh, who also very funny. Very funny. Yeah. Yeah, but I always thought that it's the thing that when I was starting out, people used to say it about my writing. Yeah. Midnight's children, people used to say, oh, it's funny.

Yeah. But as time has gone on, that's not what they say. But actually, I've gone on being the same writer. I think it's because you're clever. I think it's because you're clever. And people want to feel clever and they don't feel clever when they're laughing. Oh, I don't know. I think there's some very clever funny people.

Oh, so do I. But I think that, but I think that, but I think that the idea of, I mean, like, comedy's never went to Oscars and that's true. You know, it's like, it's because I think you can say about comedy, where you can't say about great literature or drama, you run the risk of someone saying, well, you don't get it. You don't understand it. But with comedy, you can say, I don't get it.

And then the person who doesn't get it has the kind of upper hand to say... Because it's always the writer's fault. Right. If you're trying to be funny and not being funny, that's terrible. That's awful. That's why when you see a movie and they're trying to be funny, so they have a guy walking down the street or just doing something not funny, but they put...

Middi-de-de-de-de-de-d-d-le music on it. It really drives me crazy because I know I'm like, you don't have to do that. Yeah, there's a wonderful story about Buster Keaton. shooting one of his films and like a locked-off camera on a street corner, a man comes around the corner, eating a banana,

tosses the banana skin over his shoulder, walks out of frame, Buster Keaton walks around the corner, everybody thinks he's going to slip on the banana, but he steps over the banana skin, he looks at a camera, he makes a high side with his nose.

And he said when you shot it, nobody laughed. So they reshot it. Same thing happens. Buster Keaton steps over the banana, makes the high sign with his nose, walks on a step, and slips over a banana skinny as he seen.

And that's funny. That is funny. That is funny. But that's the surprise. Exactly. But that's, I mean, it came to mind when I was reading the second story, which I feel like the musician of, say the name of the town again. Kahani. Kahani.

I felt like the, like that particular story was like a Bollywood music. It felt like you're almost like you're kind of like, that could be as, you know, it's my hometown. Right. And it's obsessed with the movies. Right. So a little bit of movies, when I've written about Bombay, a little bit of movie stuff always creeps in. Right. But you cannot, but that one, though, not just movie references, like, I think if no one's optioned that to be a Bollywood musical, they should be working on it right now. Would you ever allow that? Yes, so we have people for that.

Yeah, yeah. Look, this may come as a shock to you. I'm not involved in Bollywood, but if I was, I'd be like this. You'd be snapping it up. This is the new RRR. This is amazing. Well, let's see. Yeah, I know. I mean, I think actually the second story, the ghost story, late, I think that's a kind of natural move. I thought so too, but more a kind of bride's head revisited sort of or it has a more kind of meditative.

Merchantiree film. Yes, exactly. Yeah, yeah. It's almost like you know the story. Do you know what I laughed out loud in that, though, is when you use the ghost. go to work on an egg thing? Oh, yes. Because that was the advertising slogan that you wrote, right?

No, no, Fay Weldon Group. Oh, I thought it was you. I wrote Adora bubble. A dora bubble. And I wrote naughty bubble. Why didn't you get the Booker Prize for that? That is adorable. And I wrote naughty but nice.

Nauty but nice is good. But you even, even in that story, I thought, I wonder if he did that in purpose. When the, when the professor realizes he's dead, but it's not that bad, And he says, if this was death, it was something he could live with. And I thought, that's a fucking advertising craze, right? That's like almost advertising death. It was very funny. It's a gag.

Yeah, it is. But it was great, you know. And I think that one of the things, because I think of you, and look, I try not to be fawning, but I honestly believe that you are in the pantheon of great writers, not just, well, he can write a thing or two, like great writers. And what interests me about great writers in the field that I would put you in, which is Evelyn Waugh, which is Vonnegut, is the idea of, or even Dickens, if you like, although Dickens, I think is a little sentimental for my taste. Well, he stops, he gets less sentimental as he gets older. Right. Have you, I don't, you haven't gone sentimental, but I think you've softened a bit.

Well, that's all right there, isn't it? It's all right. It's only the New York, I thought, it's a New York owl. It's like, move out the way. Right. But the, but you seem to be, like, even although the stories were revenge-based, but not revenge-based, they had contained elements of revenge. Yes. That in general, I got from the reading of the book that you were quite, you were in quite a good place, I think.

Yeah, I mean, one of the things, one of the things the book asks is when you reach this kind of later act in your life. Right. When you reach Act 5. Right. Is how do you approach them? Yeah. You know, and it seems to me that there's, in the book, there's two ways of approaching it. One is with serenity, you know, where you think, okay, here we are.

You know, Henry James' last words are supposed to have been here. It is at last the distinguished thing. Right. That's, I wouldn't have the presence of mine for that, but I have no Henry James. Nor knows anyone else. You're a bit closer than I. You know, so either you're that, you can, okay, here I am, I've been there, and I'm here, and it's all okay. And you write out of that sense of serenity.

Right. Or you're angry. And you write out of rage, you know, Dylan Thomas saying, do not go gentle into that good night. Yeah, I didn't get any rage from you. No, in my view is that it doesn't have to be either all. Right. You can be serene on Tuesday and angry or when. Well, I see, somebody even says that.

So I wanted the book to be a bit about that, about how do you approach age and mortality in general? What's your take on it? How do you go for it? And I did feel quite kindly towards the characters. Yeah, it comes across like that. I mean, one of the things that I really loved about the story late was it felt like you were writing a historical wrong.

Was that the intention? Well, you know, I, the college in this story is not named, but it's, that is pretty obviously the college that I was at, which was King's College, Cambridge. Right. And the two of the grand old figures of that college, one is the M. Foster, who I did briefly meet.

Wow. Okay. I mean, I was 19 and he was pushing 90. That's incredible that we think of that connection. That's amazing. Yeah. And the other is a great figure of World War II, Alan Turing, who was the leader of the group that broke all the German codes, et cetera. But both of them suffered terribly in that time because they were both gay and it was illegal. And they were very badly treated because of their sexuality. Right. I mean, Forster, after writing passage to India, never wrote another novel for the rest of his life.

Right. And Turing was, you know, he was offered this choice of chemical castration. Yeah. And I just thought, here are two of the greatest figures who ever went to the church, yeah. And they were both treated in the same way, and it crippled them both. And so I thought, I'm going to make a character that's kind of both of them and a bit of myself as well and talk about how great people can be crippled

by the prejudices of their time. Yeah. And now, of course, now there's a statue to Alan Turing at King's College, Cambridge, the same place where he was treated horrifically. Yeah, there is a, it's horrific the story of adventuring. And it's the, what I liked about it as well was the kind of Arthurian ledge had woven in as well.

I wanted to write a King Arthur story all my life. Right. Because I was very attracted to the body of stories surrounding King Arthur. Yeah. Lights of the round table, Holy Grail, all of that. And I thought,

if I was trying to write a modern version of that, what would it be like? And I tried various things, and I always discarded them because they were always no good. And then oddly, having this story

which has nothing to do with knights and round tables, et cetera, about this old fellow in a Cambridge college, who turned out to be called which he wasn't when I started writing the story. Right, okay. I suddenly thought, oh, maybe this is

and he oddly became my way into the Arthurian stuff. Well, and also the magical Maryland world of it as well and the idea that you know, the, well, I don't want to spoil the end of the story for people who haven't read it, but it is a wonderful kind of,

it was almost like, you know, I loved Tarantino's once upon a time in Holly Was he taking the Tate Labyanka murderers and rewrite in the end of it? He did it in the Glorious Bastards about it. He's right in the end of the second. Well, I just thought, I'm going to take this very well-known history. Right. And just turn it in the light and make it something a little different.

It was, and kind of beautiful. It was kind of, over and over and over again, even in the saddest moments of the, And there are some very sad moments in the book, which I want to talk to you about the construction of it as well, by the way. But before, I just want to mention that even in the saddest moments, there is great beauty in this. Well, I think beauty is the job, you know. Like, why do we read books? You know, we read books for beauty. Well, you certainly have contributed with us.

What I thought was fascinating as well, it says that these are five stories. And they're laid out, they are five separate stories, clearly. But I got a sense that the order was in purpose, and there was necessarily a written narrative, but almost like an album that a musician. I think it's a concept album. Right. Yeah, but not a Rick Wakeman concept album.

Oh, like Sergeant Pepper. Right. It's pet sounds. It has that. that feeling about it, that everything kind of joined. I hope that when people read it, it would feel like a work. Yes. You know, often collections of stories are just a bunch of bits.

Right. You know, and I didn't want it to read like that. It doesn't read like that. I wanted to feel like this is a work. You know, even though the five stories are very unlike each other. Yeah, but I would say that the last story, the old man in the piazza, is impossible to read without reading the four of the procedure. you wouldn't, it wouldn't resonate in the same way.

It would be, it would be like an essay or a comment on language and speech. It requires a kind of weight because of all the characters before. I think it's just changed, as you probably should be, by a book. You know, that we all kind of changed going through the process. No, I was very, you know, because the sequence in which the book, in which the stories are placed is not the sequence in which they were written. Okay. I mean, actually, the first and last stories were the first ones of error.

That's interesting to me, especially in the last one, because the last one feels like the, like the culmination of the four previous stories. Yeah, but actually five or six years before the others. That's really fascinating. So do you think the book was? I went over it. I mean, I revised everything. Sure. So the form that they're in now is shaped all at one time.

But actually, yes, the old man of the piazza is one of the older stories. The first story I wrote was the, well, I wrote the two shorter stories before the longer stories, but of the longer stories, the first one that I wrote was the ghost story. Right. And then I wrote the musician, and then I wrote Oklahoma was the last one I wrote. Oklahoma is an interesting story as well because it, it, when the Stone of Madness, the the concept of the idea of madness being a stone. Madness being a stone in the head and having it removed.

But I kind of, in the, there is a passage in there where you write as mad. And it is very unsettling to read. If I fear madness, I feel like I've touched up against it a couple of times. It worries me. I don't like it. I was so struck. I mean, I was in the Prado Museum in Madrid. And I went to look at the famous Bosch paintings.

the Garden of Godbeth, I'd like. But in that room, there's this very small painting. It's about 12 inches by 8 inches is all. About this man being held down by a couple of other guys, while some kind of monkish figure with a long pair of pincers is pulling something out of his forehead. And the painting is called The Extraction of the Stone of Madness. And I thought, part to any else, great title.

Yeah, that's very good. That is great. And it just stuck in my head, and I thought, I want to do something with this. And then I discovered that this Argentine poet had already used that as a title for a collection of poetry. And she had committed suicide. It is an odd thing. Do you think you've ever rubbed up against it yourself? No, I don't think so.

I think one of the things I've not done, I've done a few things. Right. But one of the things I've not done is consider ending my own life now. Well, listen, to be fair, there's so many people willing to do it for you. Exactly. Yeah, take a number. Yeah, it's like, it's why you don't need to. Good Lord.

But it fascinated me, though, that to write in that, in that style, I feel would be disconcerting. Do you feel a strong emotional pool, not just affection for the characters, but actually being in sight, like you are the stone. No, I get very, I get very worked up by writing. But the thing that I can do, which I think some writers can and some can't, is I can leave it behind. You know, so when I finish a day's work, and I get up from the desk and I leave the room,

it stays behind. Yeah, I've always been struck by you about that. You communicate like a human being, which is not always. Yeah, and I actually like it. I think it's good for me as a writer. to be able to leave it behind and go and do ordinary life things. Yeah. You know, go see a movie, go out to dinner.

Consicipate in the world. Hang out with a friend. Yeah. You know, I like to do that because what it does is it refreshes me. And when I get back to the desk the next day, I'm fresh again. Do you think that comes from copyrighting when you were a kid? I don't know. I don't want to give that any credit at all. I don't know.

Adora bubble should be remembered. Perhaps not with the satanic verses or the 11,000. but it's not very often remember, but just occasionally. Because I remember the day I walked out of the ad agency for the last time. Yeah. It felt like getting out of jail. Really? You know, it felt like freedom.

Did you know you were going to be okay? Did you know you were going to? Yeah, well, I mean, Midnight Children came out and... That was the second book of Midnight's Children, right? But when it came... The way I wrote Midnight Children was I had a part-time job in advertising. Right. And so I had half the week to write my own stuff and the other half to write...

you know, dog food commercials. Literally. You never get them mixed up. But what I did do advertising is it gave me discipline. Yeah. You know, when you know that you've got a meeting 2.30 on Friday. Yeah. And you've got to have it done and it's got to be good.

It gives you discipline. And I've always retained that. I have very strong writing discipline. Clearly. I can sit down and do a day's work. I heard the Irish writer May have been she used to, she would drink a carafe of wine and write

2,000 words every day. And then after that, she would drink the carafe of white sangria, I think it was. Do you drink? No, I don't, I mean, I don't think you can write particularly well if she would, if you're back. I couldn't agree more, but there are

those. I mean, there's famous stories. Yeah. Hemingway Fitzgerald. Yeah. I wonder if they would have been better if they were sober, though. Of course they were. I think so, right? It's almost sacrilegious to say that. Then the people, it's the

Hemingway, I think, was lying. I don't think he drank very much when he was writing. Yeah, he stood up, so how could he have been drinking? At my world, you can't stand up, I think, did drink. Fitzgerald, I think, did drink. Yeah. He kind of, yeah, he left the game early, didn't he? Yeah, and felt like a failure. Did he? Yeah.

That way he believed? When you know, it's on the record. I mean, when he died, he thought he had failed. It's a physical rising There's a couple of things like Herman Melville thought that Moby Dick was a disaster

It was in the fishing sections of bookstores Well it got very bad reviews Yeah really did What are the reviews like for this? I haven't looked yet Are they good? Yeah

Well it's only had the preview I mean it's had starred review and publishers weekly There you are that's fine If you get publishers weekly And Kirkus that's all you need Everyone else will follow that Got them

Yeah well there you You're a starred boxed I think you've got a future In the game You're going to be our age. You should maybe stick at it. I have to tell you that I think this is one of the best. It's too early to tell.

This one, it feels to me like... I'm very bad to think so. What I think is that it's a very good introduction to my work. That's what I was going to say. It's almost like the starter. If you want to get into some, which is, it's ridiculous. Because if you look at the canon of your work, this is the easiest way in this book. Well, also because, you know, we live in an age where people don't want to read a lot.

Right. They could read 75 pages. It's better than reading 500. Is it affected the way you write? No, I, you know, I actually really found myself enjoying the novella length. Right. You know, the kind of 75 pages. It feels natural in the story.

I think, you know, some of the best things ever written are written at that length, you know, death in Venice. That was a novella, that's right. You know, no one writes to the colonel. I haven't read that. Arcia Marquez. Yeah, best stuff. and, you know, metamorphosis. Yeah, that's right.

Mammorphosis is not... Mammorphosis appears in... Yeah, Kafka makes a guest appearance. And I was kind of fascinated by the idea of the protagonist in the unfinished novel starting a journey into America which he never finished.

He never finishes. It's true. The novel of Kafka is that even people who love Kafka often don't read. I haven't read America, which is weird because I do love Kafka and it's the one I haven't read. It's very common. that people who read everything else don't read that unfinished first novel. And it has such a strange ending where his character, Carl, gets hired by this very mysterious thing called the Nature Theater of Oklahoma.

Nobody knows what he does or why he's been hired and what he's been hired to do. But he gets a job and he gets on a train going to Oklahoma. And he never gets there because Kafka stops writing him. You get stuck in this railway carriage full of cigar smoke. And people have had a crack right in the end of it? Nobody, I don't think nobody's ever tried to finish it.

Yeah. I think you're trying to finish a story by Kafka. It's a little bit. It's like trying to write a last scene of a Shakespeare play. Yeah. I mean, the walk down wherever he takes the power.

That's it. He gets the end and there's no smoking carriage and he gets out. Yeah. The idea of the writers that you're talking about, who are the people that resonate with you now in your... No, I mean, one of the reasons why the two great artists

who appear in that story, Kafka and Goya... Right. And they're huge for me in my imagination. Yeah. I mean, when I was young, the first time I ever was in Spain, I was in the Prado, and I thought there's three rooms that Goya, black Goyers,

and the Velasquez Las Beninas, and the Valesca stuff is crazy. Incident. It's insane, yeah. And the Bosch. You know, I just thought these are the three greatest rooms in any gallery in the world. And I've always, all my life, every time I've been able to be in Madrid,

I've gone back. I think I just need to see those three rooms. It's funny. What's the Velasquez one with a mirror? Last minute. That's the one? That's one of the strangest paintings I've ever seen. Yes, because the game with the sight lines is,

It's so profound. It's nuts. Yeah, I mean, it's really kind of hard. You can look at it and look at it and look at it and look at it. I wonder if I can see how that would attract to your mind. Yeah, it's always just, it's one of the, you know, there are works of art would just stick in your head forever. Right.

And that's one. Talk to me about the Bosch ones a little bit because Bosch is, the Bosch art I've always thought is, you know, I've always associated with. And I know this is an apocryphal story about the idea that, that Bosch would paint in bursts and he would eat the rye bread and the rye bread had mould on it

and the mould was hallucinogenic. The mould was elucidogenic. I remember finding out when I was writing the Enchantress of Florence that poor people in Florence who were too poor to buy fresh bread would buy the bread that was stale in which the baker was about to throw out.

And it had mould in it and the mould had hallucinogenic properties and so everybody saw visions of the Virgin Mary. And I wonder if that's, it feels plausible to me. I mean, if you look at Bosch, nobody was painting anything. Nothing like that. I like the idea that the Virgin Mary appeared because you ate moldy bread. You're trying to piss off the Catholics as well.

It's just a comedy line. Let me ask you about the spirituality that is evidentiality that is evidently. particularly in this new collection, right, that you are a hardline atheist, but it feels to me that there is a, not a cracking a little on the idea of when you talk about not an immortal soul, but a mortal soul, which is a phrase I've never heard before,

well, love. Aristotle did it. Did he? Well, there you go. He had this idea that, which I think many of us would agree with, that when we consider ourselves, the thing that we call I is not just the flesh and blood and bones.

There's an eye which is not just the physical self. Right. And we all think that about ourselves. So what the hell is that? The mortals. So Aristotle had this idea that there could be such a thing as a spirit, you know, what the philosopher called the ghost in the machine,

but that it doesn't outlive the body. That seems to make more sense to me. I'm not an atheist because I feel like it's too kind of hard, to use your word a hard line. I can't tow it because I feel like there's no, there's clearly no proof in the existence. No, all I can say is having come really quite close to the exit door. Yeah.

One of the things that there wasn't was anything like a spirit leaving the body. Right. I thought, well, I'm dying in this, at least my best. body's dying and I'm dying with it. There was no tunnel of light. Did you feel feet or sanguine? I just felt here it is. I just thought that I was quite calm.

That's interesting. I wonder, whenever I've been in any dangerous situation, it's usually afterwards I experience fear as later on, did you get that? Yeah, no, you get all kinds of stuff. I mean, because stress and his post-trauma is rich. Yeah, sure. Trauma is real, and the consequences of trauma are real. Sure. But at the time, no heavenly choir. Right. No lights, no sense of going somewhere. But what's interesting is about you saying that, and then having just read the story about the ghost, the dead man. I've never written a ghost story. Who's surrounded by fog and isn't quite sure what's going on. I feel like having this conversation with you now, I'm like, well, that's. seems to be connected in some way. Well, I just thought he wasn't supposed to be dead. Right. I mean, I thought initially that I was going to write a story about this old gent and this young Indian woman student. Which is a lovely story. And how they have their love of India in common and it would make them friends. And so they would have this friendship of a very old person with a very young person. And I thought that would be the story, you know. And I sat down to write it and I wrote

the sentence, which came out of nowhere, which said, you know, when he woke up that morning, he was dead. And I thought, excuse me? Where did that come from? That's an interesting surprise twist in the beginning of your story. Yeah. Are you an advocate, or do you in any way attracted to Young and the collective unconscious and all that kind of? There was a moment in my life when I did read some of that. Yeah. It doesn't stick with me very much. But I just thought, I left it on my computer for a day or two, just sitting there. And I thought, well, you know, I've never written a ghost story. How would that go if I wrote it?

And so the story changed. It's still about the old gent and the young girl, you know, but with this twisted it. It's an interesting thing that you, you didn't connect with the Jungian aspect of it. Because I felt a little bit of that in the two rings stories. I mean, you know, readers bring their own things. Well, that's true. That's the thing. It's not yours anymore.

It's ours. Exactly. I mean, do you get a sense of loss when it's published? No, I, when it's finished, I'm really done with it. With anything I write, once it's finished, once it's finished. I don't have to hang on to it. Let it go. Do you ever go back and look at it?

Not very often. I mean, sometimes, for example, when we made the film of Midnight Children and I ended up writing the screenplay, which originally I wasn't going to, but that's how it worked out. You're a right, you're a control freak. Then I had to, no, it was all suddenly. Oh, it was my... Well, you certainly don't have to apologize about that.

No, I mean, it was clear that we were not going to... You've got to be able to... We're not going to get the money to make a film unless I wrote the screen. So I... And then I had to do a deep dive back into this novel, which I wrote when I was so much younger. And you know what happens when you read your old stuff is some of it, you think, yeah, it's quite good. And some of it you think, well, maybe that bit could have been left out. Yeah.

I've experienced that a bit with my own. I mean, if you do even, like a lot of younger comedians right now as they get a little older are starting to realize that some of the stuff that you say when you're young doesn't go away. Yeah. And people get into trouble, you know. Everything's visible right away. But I also think with the book that's out there and published and has had its life in the world, is that you shouldn't go back. You can't go back in. You can't go back

and fix it. Well, I think it's interesting, though, as a reader of yours and of other great writers, is that when it belongs to the world, as the books that you write now do, and this one will join them, is that they do stand up to, and I mean that by going back and reading them again, perhaps, obviously, is the writer that's a different experience? But is there a book that you return to and it's do you, are you a voracious reader? A book of mine? No, another book, not your, not, you know.

It used to be, it used to be that I would read Ulysses once every 10 years. Okay. I don't know. I think I've read it enough. You know what Peter Cook used to say about Ulysses when people said they're reading it.

He said, neither am I. That's very good. Yeah. Well, I mean, if I was to read Joyce now, I'd be more likely to read Dubliners or portrait of the artists. Ulysses is a hard, it's a hard book, but it's got funny in it. Yeah. There's funny stuff in it. And there is that incredible soliloquite there.

Yeah. You know, Molly, plume, letting grip. Yeah, it's a long way to get to that. I mean, I've never successfully completed that. Well, it's still waiting. Well, I'll go back to it, but... There are books that I... This novel of Saul Bellows, The Adventures of Woggy Marsh,

that I do pick up and look at every sort of. I'm not familiar with the book at all. Well, it's... When Martin Amos wrote about it, he said, this is the Great American novel. Really? Okay. He could write a bit, Martin Amos.

Were you friendly? I would imagine you were probably coming... You were around at the same time. There was a bunch of us, Martin and Ian McEwen and me and a few others. Ishiguro. That's a bit of a push crew, isn't it? I'm hanging around. Carter.

Yeah. You know, Julian Barnes, etc. There's a bunch of us. Are you social with writers now? Do you still like... A few friends. Yeah. You know, I mean, a lot of my friends are not writers.

Right. But, I mean, I was very close friends to Paul Oster. So that's a real loss. Yeah. I'm friendly with Dondolillo. And some of the younger people, you know, I'm friendly with Zadie Smith. Right.

It's funny that because are you, are writers competitive in the way that should business people? I'm not. I mean, I think, I guess some people are. I think there's room for everybody, you know. I think also, to be fair, you're fucking Salman Rushdie, so why would you care?

You know, I mean, you, like you made your bones. Well, thank you for saying so. So eloquently, I think you were probably going to add. Very well. I couldn't have said it better myself. But I do think that there is room for everyone. Yeah. And one of the, I mean, the great thing about, you know, you walk into a bookstore, there's all those books.

A lot of books. And there's room for all of them. Do you know what I've noticed that a lot of people would do now as well. I don't know if you know this, they will say they've read a book when they haven't read it. They've listened to it. Yeah. And I don't mind that. I don't mind how people consume the stuff.

Right. You know, if they want, if it's easier to listen, if it's easier to read on, I mean, I now read on an iPad in a way that I never used to. Yeah. Do you have that setting, though, so that the... Well, what I could do is, first of all, it's lit. Right. And secondly, I can adjust the type size. Right.

And it's easier, thanks to my eye problem to do that. But I never used to read. I used to be scornful of iPads, and now I use them every day. Yeah, no, I don't mind the, I just feel like the, the process of the, like when I was reading the 11th hour, it's not, there's no audio form of it available to me right now. So I'm, I'm looking at the galleys of this book and I'm reading it and as I read it, I'm thinking to myself, I'm so glad I'm doing this and not having us done for me. We made a decision with the audio book, which is to have five different people reading the five different stories. That's great. Do you know who they are? Yeah, they're all good people.

Yeah, good. I mean, I feel like I would have been fine for maybe one of them. Well, you would have. Yeah, let's just say that. When you write the great Scottish novel, then we do it. Scotland does get a mention, though. I noticed that at one point, where was it? It's in late when they're talking about the homosexuality laws. when you're talking about that and the fact that Scotland was late in adopting.

Exactly. When it became legal in England, it was still illegal. Still illegal in Scotland, which it's so bizarre. You try to explain that to my own children now with the idea that being gay was against the law. You could go to jail. They're like, it's crazy. I know.

It's like being blue-eyed. Yeah, I know. It's such an insane thing to me. But it was there for a long time. It was for a long time. But it was funny that I remember when it passed in the House of Lords the legalisation it passed very quickly

and I remember some very clever theatrical person in London saying was because of the interest of the people involved in the House of Lords but there used to be all these euphemisms for it in British society

are you musical was one confirmed Bachelor confirmed Bachelor was one they oh do you know what I loved by the way I meant to tell you in the book

when you referenced the rise and fall of Reginald Perrin. Oh, yes. The BBC. The BBC TV. That was a great... Fascinated me as the idea that you could fake your own death. Your own death. And disappear into...

I still think about that a little bit. Yeah, because it was so beautifully acted as well. Yeah. It was the Leonard Rossiter. Yeah, he was a fabulous actor. And the idea that you can disappear into the world, there's a line in a U-2 song somewhere about disappearing into the arms of America.

Yeah, well, you see, the title that Kafka almost used for his unfinished first novel, because America was a title that was put on it. He didn't write that one, that's right, I learned that from this. Yeah, but he was thinking of calling it the man who disappeared.

Right. And so that's what gave me the clue for my story, because it becomes actually about two men who disappeared. Was it ever a temptation for you back in the fact what I did, it's to, like, I mean, because you had, in fact, you kind of had to decide.

I had to be very, Yeah, it had to be very low key for a while, but it prompted in me the opposite desire, which is to get my life back. That's interesting, yeah. I guess that makes sense as well. I mean, I was out in the American West, like, last week, and we were filming something out in the desert.

Have you ever been out there? A little bit, yeah. We were filming out in the desert, and everything had to be turned off for a minute, and I was on my own in the middle of the desert. And it was the first time in a long time that I'd heard the enormity of the silence. And it feels to me, this is one of the reasons why I can't underscore atheist in a kind of description for myself. Because there's something about the enormity of that silence that feels like divine to me all.

Well, the place where I felt it, years ago now, I went on a safari in the Serengeti. Okay. And if you're in the middle of the Serengeti in the middle of the night. with these unbelievable stars where you can actually see the whole galaxy. It's astonishing and that you can't hear anything. It's fascinating to me the sense of wonder and the sense of mysticism and oddness in your writing that you say atheism, Is that an anti-religious stance or a definite...

I just don't need it to explain what I'm trying to explain. Yeah, yeah, yeah. But I think the idea of... I mean, the idea of not knowing. Yeah, I don't like religions. Yeah. I don't like... I can see why that would...

Actually, the religions I like most are the polytheistic ones. Right. I like that. I mean, this is the river god for this river. More stories, better stories. And after all, if you think about what we now think of as mythology, I mean, the Greek myths were originally the religion of Greece, you know, and the Nordic myths were the religion of the North countries.

So religions, which have pantheons, have wonderful stories. I think, I think. My personal belief is that's why the Catholics got all the saints to come in, because it wasn't exciting enough just to have God. Just to broaden the canvas. Yeah, just like, well, let's have, you know, saints. And then they can, you know, and then you can pray to a saint. Yes.

Which it feels a little bit, you know, like, you know, like a little bit like you're having a polytheist environment, the pantheon of the saints. I'm going to leave it to you to say that. You know what? We can cut it out if it looks like trouble. But I don't blame you. But it does seem to me like it's like a little bit like that. You know how that's fast, do you ever read? I suppose you probably knew him.

I met him briefly myself as Gore Vidal. I met him a few times. Right. Apparently not an easy customer to get along with, but I don't know. I mean, my personally... He got crust here as he got old. Yeah, well, no, it can happen. But his book on Julian the Apostate, I particularly enjoyed.

He was the best as a historical novel. That's what I think, too, right. I mean, Verre is a wonderful book. us about creation is a great book Lincoln is a book yeah the narratives of empire yes creation is a very good that's the one where

Buddha and Socrates and Alexander yeah and Cerces the great and Darius the great and the Hellenic Wars and that's fantastic and I and it makes it very livable and if I can fanboy out a little bit on your stuff particularly in this book right now

is the idea that everything in the book that I have just finished reading is plausible within the world which is weird because there's a lot of miracles and strange things and magic. But this is what you know what you try and do as a writer is to create a world that is believable to the reader at least for the length of time that they're reading it. Right.

Well, achievement unlocked move to the next level because the idea of, like, the family that was pulled apart in what I now think of as the Bollywood movie, the musician. The musician, where the mathematician is taken into the cult and the baby that grows up to be the piano player that takes her revenge with the sitar music is so, you know, I was thinking for, long before I had knew what the story was,

I just had this idea of music giving the musician a kind of superpower. And I didn't even know what that might be, superpower. And then I remember reading the poem, The Pied Piper of Hamelin. Oh, yeah. You know, and of course, Robert Browning's poem. Of course, in that case, the power of the music is used first for good, getting rid of rats and then for evil, getting rid of children.

But I'm just thinking that there was something I wanted to do about music and the magical power of music. And I finally found the story. Do you listen to music for inspiration? I can't listen to anything when I'm actually writing. Right.

I know people who write with music playing all the time. Right. I can't do that. What about the idea of the before you, you're actually physically right. Yeah, I mean, sometimes just to get in the mood. Yeah. Depending what I think about a story you're working on.

Because it feels to me like, you know that lovely Basquea quote? Art is how we decorate space, music is how we decorate time. Which I wonder in the thinking process of thinking about, because clearly you don't sit down and write something like the musician or late in a day. No. So there has to be, you know, a process of mulling the story over. Yeah, yes. No, I mean, I'd listen to music when I'm not writing.

Right. And what do you listen to? Is it, I imagine, an eclectic? I don't know everything, you know, everything. I listen to Prince. I love. I love it. I was into the Rolling Stones.

Yeah. I mean, I went to see the Dylan movie. and I've seen it three times Okay, so I didn't like that Or you really hate it No, I really liked it What I really liked was the music That's that's stressed

Watching watching that great music Being as it were dramatized Yeah, and he did I believe Shalami did his own singing He did his own singing And also Monica Barbaro Playing Joan Byers, she did I thought nobody could sing like Joan Baias

Although hardly they can There's all these people coming up They're pretty impressive do you look at any young writers now and think that's somebody very important on the way? Is there anyone that you'd? I mean, I don't know. I'm not as well read in very, in the, you know, first novelists and so on. Right. As I should be.

But there's a lot of younger writers that I admire very much. I mean, I very much like the African-American writer, Jasmine Ward. I have nothing. No. Well, she's, you know, won the National Book Award twice before she was 30. I should probably. You're a publisher. Yeah, yeah.

And I'm not that young, but James McBride's last couple of novels. Right. And it means astonishing. There's a novel called The Heaven and Earth Grocery Store, which is about a very interesting Jewish-slash-black community in Pittsburgh. Brilliant novel. And the novel before that, which is called... I keep confusing its name with the Murakami title. The Good Lord Bird, which is about the Harper's Ferry, John Brown, Uprising.

Oh, okay. Right. And they're very, very good. So you're immersed in literature all the time, that? Yeah. Yeah. I mean, when I'm writing fiction, I really don't read very much fiction. That would probably be, yeah.

I don't want to be infected. Yeah. No, I know what you mean. Like somebody else's voice. Yeah. And there are, I mean, good rises are infectious. Yeah. I think that you, because you respond to it,

it's almost like it's an emotional connection. But, you know, when I'm trying to make my own music, I don't need somebody else's music. I think that makes sense. Let me ask you a little bit about, because we're going to have to wind up in a minute because we're being yakking for a while. But let me ask you a little bit about the,

I want to take you back to late for a minute. And then the, the, the Cambridge dawn story. I say Oxford, my head is because it's, because it's wrong. And because it's, because it's my head. But, um, but the idea of,

I, I'm fascinated by the idea of people like H.G. Wells. and C.S. Lewis corresponding, the idea of these great differing opinions from kind of the same world clashing in this very elegant letter-right way. Is there anyone in your life that you have that kind of...

No, unfortunately, nobody writes letters anymore. Right. Emails don't... They don't do it the same. Not the same thing. So, I mean, I do think that there is, even in American literature, if you look just to that generation we were talking about, that generation before mine, they all wrote to each other letters about their books. Yeah. And they weren't even nice.

Yeah. They said, I admire you so much. Your new book is really dreadful. Well, people still review other people. No, but the point is what was interesting about those interactions is that it didn't create hostility. Right, right. It was like, yeah, it was a... They were able to have that conversation.

Yeah. There's something about the nature of the letter that allows that to happen. I think also there were there, I would agree with that, but I think it was also there's a fashion to be right or wrong. Yeah, I don't know.

I mean, I feel very out of the loop sometimes about what's happening in what we call now. Yeah. I don't think I live in now. Yeah, I don't blame you. I don't like I do anymore either. I mean, it doesn't look like an attractive loop to me. No, it's like Twitter. Yeah, I mean, which is gone. It's just like a room you don't want to be in.

Yeah. Well, I remember back in the days when the internet started around about sometime in the 1940s, perhaps, that I remember people used to be in chat rooms. Yes. And I was like, why would I want to be in a chat room? A virtual room. room with people that I don't know. But apparently that's the thing that took off. Well, I prefer what we call friends. Yes. Yes. That you can be in actual. Yeah, yeah. I think so. Well, listen, it's a pleasure to be in an actual room with you. Always is. And congratulations on the 11th hour because I honestly, honestly believe right now is one of your best. But I've only just finished it. Thank you. Tell your friends.

Well, I don't have any. They're all in this. room that's it all right get out of here thank you that was that's good lovely and I