Host the tv coverage of the National Book festival continues with novelist Salman Rushdie with novelist salman rue hello i am Salman Rushdie the author most recently of a book that i am here to talk about as the title suggest a novel inspired and i guess it is a version of that story will and his sidekick making his way across america on the absurd quest for love. Because i found as i was thinking about the book the characters became their own creatures rather than his. I started off with the idea to writing a novel more or less entirely set in new york city even with the previous novel i said next time you have to get out of town so i have this idea of a novel that would somehow range widely across the country. And try to do two things and to take america at this particular moment. And the other aspect with teachers you not to do thats a dangerous thing because then the novel begins to read like yesterdays papers if you do it right thats available for. And then the easiest way to describe it as a drive on traveling salesman and in chapter one gets tired and obsessed with reality tv and realizes he is fallen in love and then to go on this journey across america. By deeds as well as words. The childless but desperately wants to have a child so he conjures up a child out of his imagination and his deep need for a child in a child appears but as a indicates was to do with another character born out of his fathers need for a child and then becomes obsessed with the business of being real is reality and the breakdown the contested nature what is real and what is fake i thought it was a nice thing those that was dreamed up by one of the other characters that is the most anxious to behavior and have an idea of the real. So this odd couple travel across america in search of the lady of his dreams and then they encounter america and all sorts of aspects including racial prejudice. As a reader i like reading books or dont have a sense of humor. But humor is a way, if you do it well its getting past peoples defenses if you can tell them anything then its much harder to make people laugh and cry. Making them cry is not difficult at all but laughing is dangerous and difficult if you thank you are being funny and you are not to that is awful. But if you are they warm to the way of talking and can enter into the world you are creating for them. Heroes of various kinds enticing audiences and readers into a dark world and there is one chapter in this novel to the idea of the absurd specifically to the playwright rhinoceros is the play that in the french term that they turn into a rhinoceros. And in my novel a town in new jersey is fictional that people turn into mastodons i dont believe this is actually happening in new jersey but maybe. And the point about that is when he will unit on when a service he was writing what could happen in a society with the rift is so deep the neighbors began to see monstrous whose children played with our children but they seem to be monsters and i had the feeling maybe were living in that kind of the time. So i borrowed most of the unesco idea i had mastodons instead of rhinoceros but to take the real world and magnify that or make it surreal is a way to attract a lot of readers i like the russian critic in the idea of the novel in which we have all kinds of acts competing for your attention but in the midst of the carnival character figures can emerge not the spoke one of the others, yes. Its a way of creating, i believe very strongly one of the first things you want to do as a writer is provide your readers with pleasure it could be simply the pleasure of language war story and i guess in this book i tried to do all that and others can tell me if it works but america scientific ingenuity plays a part to play with the idea of a parallel universe and a character might remind a few people of one or two existing entrepreneurs but trying to build a bridge and as weve seen very recently is extraordinary and things he wouldve thought of a Science Fiction and then to use it again thought of as a fairytale until recently. And then that seems like its getting closer so to incorporate some part of that into the novel. So american writers by physically where i am at is in my work room in manhattan. Theres a few books over there. I changed as a writer used to be a planner and a needed a lot of architecture but now ive become more willing to see what the story needs than i used to be so to discover that the last few books i have written have been written in that way on this new thing i fully understand yet but something showing up on a page i hope it turns into a book at some point. Right now that ingenuity we need most is medical and scientific because it brings this awful episode to a close is the discovery of a vaccine in the way so many Brilliant Minds apply themselves to that right now i hope that will bear fruit in times of upheaval and turmoil literature has always done is give readers new ways to frame the world to respond to readers lets look at it this way or another way. And then to think about things in different ways. One way to look at this with reality in the greater age of the novel. But on the agreement if you like the foundation of which this novel was built but we dont live in that world we live in the world one mans truth is another mans fake news and going on about the nature of reality and not as much as a dispute for that but we have to recognize that between ourselves and her readers it would be an easy agreement. So that contested fragmented nature has to become a part of the show the world. May be showing the world that allows readers to think about what kind of world they want to make out of this presently fractured world. My earliest days was important to me from arabian nights my father had a translation partly because it is full of sex but also those extended footnotes were also about sex so young reader would find that interesting. In the pyrotechnic feet of storytelling anybody whos interested in telling stories would do well to have a look at it because part of that like aladdin has been made into feature films it is a very adult but not just because of the sex but very deep ideas of philosophy. A world encompassing book in my instinct as a writer i think the two good ways the writing and nothing much in between i also try to write books and then to try to include that. And then tell the whole world and very inspiring to look at. Just as a way to remind myself as a writer the process story there have been writers that storytelling narrative is a less significant part of what they are doing man character and language and all the other tools a writer has. So if you want to build a big car a big engine in it. So books and compendium like 1001 nights is helpful from the beginning of my writing life until the present if ever in your life had to do with the time of great stress and uncertainty which i did at one point it teaches you things about yourself that you have the ability to resist and live in the time of which you live. Very often until the difficult question is asked, we dont know if we have a much strength so when human beings are asked difficult questions they find resources in themselves they didnt suspect that they had and they come out of the experience with that knowledge and strengthened to do with the world in a better way. Here is important it paralyzes the mind. The only way of dealing with it is not to pretend life isnt scary because it can be as it is right now but the way i think of that is putting my fear in a box in the corner of the room to get on with your day. If you allow it out of the box it takes away your day and you cannot do anything else learning not to ignore fear pretending theres nothing to be afraid of but set it aside to be the people you want to be. I do think imagination is something that can help with that process overcoming tough times in your life. I remember listening to the stories of american and the hostages of lebanon back in the day they survived is incredibly rough lives that they would imagine themselves in other settings into farms looking after the animals and build sheds living in the imaginary world and hopefully they have a part to play to help them deal in this rough time. Host 20 years the National Book festival has attracted large crowds and hundreds of authors to whatever it is being held the mall, the convention center, this year of course it is virtual. The next panel how you run a book fair were Book Discussion run a book fair were Book Discussion run a book fair were Book Discussion