TTBOOK GEMS

Salman Rushdie (GEMS - from program # 02-11-10-A: HOUSEKEEPING)

The Yellow Brick Road and Salman Rushdie

The following is from an interview Salman Rushdie did with Steve Paulson on the Public Radio International program, "To The Best of Our Knowledge." He told Paulson that his life changed after first watching the "Wizard of Oz" as a boy in Bombay, India.

Rushdie: When I went home I wrote a short story, unoriginally called, "Over the Rainbow." (Laughs). Which wasn't about anything to do with the "Wizard of Oz." It was about a boy, like me, in a town like Bombay where I was growing up, walking down the sidewalk and finding the beginning, not the end, of the rainbow, arching up and away from him. The rainbow was rather usefully cut into steps, rainbow-colored steps. So the boy begins this journey over the rainbow and has magical adventures, which I've mostly forgotten. (Laughs).

Paulson: So, the "Wizard of Oz" really turned you into a writer?

Rushdie: Well that was the first time it had ever occurred to me to write a story. And I am told by my mother - although I don't remember it - that after this, when people asked what I wanted to do when I grew up, I would always say I wanted to be a writer.

Paulson: One of the great messages of the "Wizard of Oz" is the allure of escape. The joys of travel, the journey. Does that whole idea of escape hold much appeal to you personally.

Rushdie: I‘ve written about this in several of my novels,- I think most clearly in "The Ground Beneath Her Feet" and in the most recent novel "Fury." We have two pulls inside us, all of us. We have the pull of home, which is very powerful. Roots. Belonging. Community. Language. Family. Companionship. The place that you know deeply. That has a great hold on us all, a great pull on us. And then there is the opposite pull, which is the road. The dream of away, of leaving. I think it is also very powerful in us but gets a lot less air time. And yet, if you look at our literature, our movies, our songs - they're all about leaving. We like characters who become detached from home. We like bandits. We like outlaws. We like wanderers. We like all those figures. They're powerful in literature and art. They speak to that other dream, that dream of leaving. Most don't get to do it. We make a new life, we get stuff. We have jobs and children and so on. But it doesn't mean the fantasy is not still there.

Paulson: Do you feel at home in New York City now?

Rushdie: Oddly, I do. I have to admit that after a lifetime of writing about the impermanence of the idea of home I seem to have got stuck (Laughs). I really like it. Perhaps because New York is like the terminus of millions of roads. All sorts of roads of yellow brick and other surfaces end up in Manhattan. And I think because New York in a way is the sum total of all those journeys it becomes very attractive to somebody who's life has been shaped by journeying. And also it‘s very hospitable in that way. It lets you in. It allows you to believe that your story, your journey can very easily be added to the sum total of all those journeys and just become another New York story. It's not exactly that I feel normal in New York, it's that I think I am surrounded by people who are abnormal in the same way. (Laughs).

recent gems

return to current gem

our shows :: about us :: search :: home