Salman Rushdie on what he's learned about media after a lifetime of being trapped by it

19:02Ben Smith:You can hear more of Josh's conversations with marketers on his new show, Frontier CMO.

19:15One thing that watching the documentary that comes through is you retrace the steps of the attack. It seems like you wrestled with the need to do this to be able to write this book and kind of make this documentary in order to move on. How do you balance the desire, the need to revisit some obviously unbelievably painful moments in the past in your life with, how do you how do you revisit those moments without you know becoming too kind of sucked in without allowing them to kind of uh fester and become bitter i just i i guess i the reason i ask is because i was shocked that you would want to go back i if something like that i i thought to myself oh my god i can't even imagine what it would be like to go back to that stage even before

20:10Salman Rushdie:we were making the documentary you know when i was just thinking about life and when i was beginning to think about writing about it. Quite early on, I thought, if I'm going to recover from this thing,

20:27Salman Rushdie:emotionally, not just physically, I have to put myself back in the place, show myself that I'm standing up in the place that I fell down. Show myself that the thing failed and that I succeeded. So I had that. And initially, Eliza thought it was a terrible idea. She said, oh, we're definitely not doing that.

20:54Salman Rushdie:And then she came around to understand why it was important to me. And I said, you know, which is true, that even on the day that we went, I said, I really don't know what the effect of going there is going to be. You know, it could be re-traumatizing. That's definitely that possibility. it could be kind of liberating in the sense of showing myself that I got past it. And it could be like nothing. It could be like, okay, we're here. That was then. This is now. And it could have no effect. So I thought it could either have a positive, negative, or nothing effect. And I didn't know which it would be, but I wanted to find out.

21:31Salman Rushdie:And then what happened was, because, of course, Eliza had not been there on the day of the attack. So for her, the venue was, she was seeing it for the first time. So I was trying to show her that we were sitting here and he came from there and this is how it happened. And I think because I was in a way explaining it to her, it became a story I was telling rather than a trauma I was going through. And in telling that story, I felt in some way set free from it. And quite unexpectedly. I think what Alex did in the film, which is brilliant, I think, is to use that very positive moment to intercut it with the worst moment, which is the footage of the attack itself.

22:25Salman Rushdie:And it, in a way, makes the attack watchable, because what you're seeing is intercut with a much better ending. At least I thought so. I don't know. I mean, I saw that footage for the first time in the final cut. Oh my God. Which was about three days before we went to Sundance. So I had just seen it for the first time. And it was not easy to watch. What was that experience like? Well, one of the things that it showed me was that memory plays tricks on you, and that there's a way in which I remembered what had happened, which was not what the camera saw. For instance, I remembered that I had seen him approaching from the auditorium, but actually, as we see from the film, I only saw him when he was right here, right at my shoulder, and actually behind me.

23:22Salman Rushdie:Yeah. So, I saw him an instant before the first attack. And I didn't see him approach. But I thought that I remembered that I did. False moment. Yeah.

23:34Ben Smith:And you read it.

23:35Salman Rushdie:Yeah. And so, also, I remembered and wrote that I just stood there and didn't do anything. Whereas actually what the film shows is I'm trying to get away from him. Yeah. and so it was just apart from anything else interesting to show how the memory of an intense experience like that can differ from the facts you know and uh so i was actually quite interested to see the film because i thought oh i see now i see what actually happened which which i had been a little distracted you know i wasn't focusing in in the you know section of the movie devoted to

24:14Ben Smith:the release of Satanic Verses and the street protests and the effigy burnings, this kind of insane reaction in London, but also in Karachi and in New York and people threatening your life. And it also, I mean, I think this is a, I don't want to kind of diminish the horrific kind of impact of the violence, but it's actually hard to imagine people getting that upset about a book in the year 2026.

24:38Salman Rushdie:Well, yeah. I mean, what it showed, I think, is how people, how easily led people are. You know, if you say to somebody, because I don't think anybody...

24:48Ben Smith:These weren't readers of literary fiction then either, you think?

24:50Salman Rushdie:I don't think anybody in those crowds had even looked at a copy of the book. Or even looked at the passages that were alleged to be blasphemous. You know, and they were just being told. They were being pointed in a certain direction, saying, bad person over there, go get in. and thousands of them were willing to be led. And I think one of the things it showed me is how easy it is to lead people in a direction that they don't even understand. There were people who were bringing their children to demonstrations wearing placards saying, I am ready to kill him. Little sort of six-year-old kids. And they had no sense that what they were doing might be problematic or ethically wrong.

25:42Ben Smith:Yeah.

25:43Salman Rushdie:Because they had been, the priest had spoken and they did what the priest told them to do.

25:48Ben Smith:So it wasn't really a statement about the power of fiction either way then. That's what I was fishing for.

25:53Salman Rushdie:I don't think it was. I wish I could say that it was because that would be optimistic, if you like.

25:59Ben Smith:Yeah.

26:00Salman Rushdie:Do you think? One of the characteristics of the attack was almost everybody involved in it had not read the book.

26:07Ben Smith:Yeah. Do you think not just sort of crazed assassins and extremists, but in general, there's this idea that we're becoming, that even the rest of us are really becoming like a much less literate or maybe kind of post -literate video-centric society. Do you buy that?

26:26Salman Rushdie:I don't join in the kind of the death of the novel story. I think the novel is, literature has always been a niche interest, if you like. Even a very successful book doesn't have an audience that compares to a hit television program. It just doesn't, it never has, it never would. But the people for whom literature is important are very loyal to it. and I don't think that number has diminished that much there are obviously many other things fighting for people's attention but you know everything was supposed to kill literature radio was supposed to kill literature television, movies all these things were supposed to kill literature and now I suppose the internet is supposed to kill literature and things like this program that we're doing you should buy the book

27:24Ben Smith:Yes, exactly. This is a very thoughtful, yes, yes, this is additive. A lot of readers. Yes. You know, what I'm saying is that books refuse to die.

27:35Salman Rushdie:You know, I mean, I had a very enjoyable flug years ago. I went to the headquarters of Google to speak to a lunchtime crowd of Googlers. and I tried to amuse myself by pointing out to them the sophistication of the technology of the book. I said, you know, if you drop a book in water, it does not lose its data. If you are reading a book on the beach and you get sand in your laptop, it does not cease to function. And I said, also, it doesn't become obsolete. I said, what's a floppy disk? you know you have this technology which is supposed to be brilliant and cutting edge and for and for the future and yet five years later it's obsolete whereas this thing that exists ever since you know gutenberg developed the printing press still works the same way they were very puzzled that's uh you know i will say it is true um when i get water on my laptop it doesn't enhance the experience.

28:43Whereas if I take a book to the beach, I can see where it's, you know, I look at the book and I think, ah, I read that, you know, this place in the south of France and it's, I have the water stains to prove it.

28:53Salman Rushdie:And it still works, the book. It still works. Yes, exactly. But speaking of another thing that's supposed to destroy literature, you were, I saw you were asked in Variety recent interview with Variety recently about, I think the headline had to do with your, your thoughts about artificial intelligence. And I was curious, does it upset you that AI, some of the AI models have, you know, ingested your books and have, you know, there are learning and training off of those? Do you think that's theft or are you happy or maybe happy that it's learning from your books? No, no. I mean, this story that I read about these data centers ordering thousands and thousands of books and literally destroying them in order to allow the artificial intelligence.

29:41Salman Rushdie:Yeah. To end up.

29:43Ben Smith:Exentropic, I think.

29:43Salman Rushdie:Yeah. Amazon.

29:45Ben Smith:Amazon. Amazon. 404. Friend of the show, Jason Kebler, I think, reported that story. Yeah.

29:51Salman Rushdie:Yeah. I just thought that's a kind of obscenity. And I still think that. And I'm trying very hard not to learn anything about AI. I don't have any of the apps. and I tried to believe that it doesn't exist. One of the things I do think is interesting is how there's beginning to be such a strong negative reaction to things like data centers and their environmental problems and so on. And I read in the paper, I think yesterday, that even Republicans running for re-election are beginning to step away from supporting data centers because there's such a public reaction against them. So it may be that people are smarter than we think.

30:37Ben Smith:Possibly. I don't know.

30:41Ben Smith:You've also, you've been like a very, you've used traditional media and other media very effectively at times. I think you've talked about how when you wanted to reassert your sort of public safety, you were in the tabloids all the time. You were out and about getting photographed. And then when you and Eliza got married, you were able to stay. It sounds like even though it was a public event and your friends all knew, just by not posting on social media, you kept yourself, in some sense, private.

31:07Salman Rushdie:Yeah, for over a year. And I would have gone on doing so had it not been for the attack.

31:12Ben Smith:That must have been sort of a changed world in which just by not being on social media, you were almost kind of hiding out. Is that what it felt like?

31:18Salman Rushdie:I thought it was so simple that you don't have to have every step you take in the world being viewed by other people. So we did nothing. I mean, we invited people. It was a little bit restrained because it was towards the tail end of COVID, you know. So there were limitations on how many people you could have, and everybody had to have tests and vaccines and all of that stuff. And numbers involved were not huge. but just by saying don't put anything on instagram don't put anything on on x or whatever the hell it's called now two people made a mistake one one british friend of mine and one american friend of mine and i saw the mistake and yelled at them and they immediately took it down and it was quick enough for it not to spread.

32:14Salman Rushdie:So, we were 95%, 98 % successful. And the 2 % that failed, we managed to save it. And really, we weren't living a private life. You know, we were going out together, we were seeing our friends, we were eating dinner in restaurants, we were leading a perfectly ordinary New York life. We just weren't liking each other on Instagram. And as a result, privacy returned. And I do think one of the weird things is how the idea of privacy has changed so much. And that actually, particularly for younger people, privacy is in fact something you don't want. Because if something isn't seen and reported on and discussed, it didn't happen.

33:00That strange idea, the loss of the belief in the value of privacy,

33:06Salman Rushdie:is something new. And where I come from, originally, India, privacy is something which only well-off people can have because the masses who live in very cramped and crowded and often slum conditions, they're never alone. They're sleeping in rooms with 10 other people. There's great problems in doing simple things like going to the bathroom because there aren't any bathrooms. And so privacy becomes an incredibly desirable luxury. The idea that you have a room of your own where you can shut the door. Most people in the world don't have that. And so for me, it's always been very important that you have your public life and you have your private life.

33:55Salman Rushdie:And to not be able to maintain that separation would be awful. One thing that we like to do when we're talking to people who've done a lot of media is to ask them what they've learned about media. You have savvily used the tabloids kind of as a strategy, like a press strategy in some ways to free yourself in some ways from the fatwa to regain some of your safety. But what have you learned about us in the news media from your time being a subject of coverage and occasionally guiding it yourself? No matter how difficult the line of questioning coming at you might be, you have to remain calm and you have to seem to be in a good mood.

34:43Ben Smith:Well, thank you so much for pretending to be in a good mood for this interview, Salman. We really, really appreciate it. Thank you. It was an honor.

34:51Salman Rushdie:I've enjoyed it. Thank you. Thank you.

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35:39so ben you're a fan of solomon uh you've read his books uh you a fan of sir solomon as he said not for us not to call him before we began uh taping very modest um like and i don't mean that in a joking way what did you think about this documentary and what did you think about his thoughts on the difference between making the documentary and writing the books and how media has shaped his life in really profound and, I think, frankly, in many ways, painful ways.

36:13Ben Smith:Yeah. I mean, again, if you read his work, and I guess I would like, if you haven't, I would start with Midnight's Children, but he's an incredible writer, but he's a really funny, self-deprecating writer. His characters are kind of nebbishy and kind of bumbling in a certain way, And he projects the same kind of, you know, he's the butt of his own jokes a lot. And I think the film was just something totally different. It was just this just extremely raw, terrifying experience of just being at the receiving end of terrorism. I mean, that's what it was about. And played over and over in really horrific detail.

36:50Ben Smith:And then, you know, just much of it is the aftermath. Is seeing him with his eyes swollen, it's really hard to look at, with these sutures in his neck. And in the pain, you know, his wife is sort of just suffering with him. And in a way, that's a register that his books really don't really capture. Like he's not a – there's this kind of like directness and earnestness that isn't really what makes Salman Rushdie as a writer great. And I thought it was just so interesting that – he said – I asked him what documentaries were for. He's like, well, that's what they're for. They were just for showing you the thing.

37:24Ben Smith:And I don't know. I found that very compelling. I would, you know, I've obviously, you know, I'm very partial here, but he's thought a lot about this stuff and been thinking about it and wrestling with it and really uncomfortable with it for a long time, uncomfortable with having been turned into this martyr when he's really like, you know, he's the Christopher Hitchens, Martin Amos generation of like really, really funny British novelists. And so it's kind of, he's so miscast as this serious kind of dour figure. And I don't know, in a way, this was him like embracing that part of his public identity.

37:55Yeah, absolutely. It's a really powerful documentary and it's definitely something worth watching whether you're a fan or not. I think it actually has a lot to say about this particular strange moment that we're in right now, particular with the United States and its relationship with Iran. I found it to be weirdly topical in a kind of a sideways way. But when we're thinking about this through a media context, what really stuck out to me was just the ways in which the media has in some ways imprisoned him at various points in his life. The ability for Iran to declare a fatwa of him, just as cable television is emerging and just the era of mass media was truly in full swing, meant that he was trapped for years and years.

38:49And the only way to get out of that perversely for a long time was to use the media to project strength and freedom and kind of fool himself and other people, normalize him being out in the world once Iran and the British government reached an agreement to kind of not be subject to murder from their kind of regime. Then 22 years later, there's this guy who watches some YouTube videos and realizes that, you know, he wants to take this incredible step, you know, against him. And I just, I was struck by how much media has kind of shaped his whole experience in some ways in quite painful ways.

39:30Ben Smith:Yeah, I mean, there's also just maybe to end it here, there's a real mystery that I think he sort of, you know, I think also doesn't really know, which is was this guy a lone wolf? Was he being handled out of Lebanon or out of Iran? It's not clear. The prosecutors kind of hint at it. Reshda clearly doesn't know either. That's a reporting challenge for our old colleague Jay Solomon or somebody else. Absolutely. But also, Ben, it reminded me, and I didn't really know how to kind of ask him the question, so I'll just leave it here, which is we, a few weeks ago, had on Vivek Murthy, the former U.S.

40:04Surgeon General who was on here talking about the ways in which modern life, and in particular modern life lived online, was contributing to loneliness. And when you read about this guy, this person who assaulted him, this is a person who lived and spent much of his life online and got his cues from his life online and took this kind of terrible step. And so I was reminded, sadly, of that episode when we were talking with Salman. Not a great place to end the episode, not a particularly uplifting place, but also really just a great documentary and something that people should watch if they have any interest in this stuff at all.

40:41Ben Smith:They should apparently watch it through the credits. Yeah, I guess. I didn't really think they were going to have a funny gag at the end of that. It feels tonally a little strange, but I guess worth watching if you want a little out of it. And in keeping with Salman's general outlook. Yes, exactly.

41:01Well, that is it for us this week. Thank you so much for listening to another episode of the Mixed Signals podcast from us here at Semaphore Media. Our show is produced expertly, as always, by Manny Fidel, with special thanks to Josh Billinson, Amber Olley, Rachel Oppenheim, Anna Pizzino, Daniel Hafe, Garrett Wiley, Jules Zern, and Tori Kaur. Our engineer is Rick Kwan, and our theme music, of course, is by Steve Bone. If you like Mixed Signals, please follow us wherever you get your podcasts, and feel free to leave us a five-star review. And if you want more, you can always sign up for Semaphore's media newsletter, which is out every Sunday night.

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