Matt Rees's Blog - Posts Tagged "salman-rushdie"

Cairo is a place we all know to some degree, even if only the image of the pyramids and the Sphinx. A short visit there is enough to make you wonder about how much of this teeming metropolis you really don’t know. No writer gets so deep as Sanna Negus under the skin of this ancient city, which remains key to the future of the benighted Middle East. Sanna’s the Middle East correspondent for Finnish radio and television. Her new book “Hold onto Your Veil, Fatima! And Other Snapshots of Life in Contemporary Egypt” is a stunning portrayal of Egypt that’s both homage and expose. Pulitzer winner Lawrence Wright calls her “one of the most informed and well-connected reporters in the region.” She’s also one of the best writers. Here she talks about the decade she spent in Cairo (before moving to Jerusalem) and how she wrote her book.

How long did it take you to get published?

The initial Finnish version (2005) came out quite smoothly. I first got a writing grant from the biggest publishing house in Finland, WSOY, which allowed me to work on three sample chapters. Less than a year later we signed a contract. The English version took longer to publish, mainly because I got distracted by other things. One UK publishing house was at first interested, but then withdrew and I guess it depressed me and I buried the project for a while. After some friends kicked my behind and told me to get my act together, I took a look at my bookshelf’s Middle Eastern books. So I wrote to Garnet on Monday, they answered on Tuesday and on Friday I got a contract!

Would you recommend any books on writing?

This being my first book, I figured I should probably look into some writing guides. So I read a couple of books in Finnish. While these books gave a boost to my confidence, they still didn’t solve the problem of the blank page. When I was taking my first steps as a journalist (and I never studied journalism or literature), I found Jon Franklin’s Writing For Story useful. But at the end of the day, it’s better to read what other people have written in your genre.

What’s a typical writing day?

The morning starts with some form of exercise, followed by breakfast and several hours of futzing around (checking my email every five minutes, making yet another cup of coffee, doing laundry, going to a supermarket to buy a single item…) Typically I would do research or write down interviews during the day and write late into the night. My creative powers unfold after sunset.

Read the rest of this post on my blog The Man of Twists and Turns.

I have observed in this space before that author bios tend to be short on interesting detail and overfull of prize lists. Philip Roth, for example, doesn’t seem to exist, according to his bio. He doesn’t live anywhere, nor was he born. He simply receives prizes. This week I’m reading a very good historical novel by a writer who shall remain nameless. Perhaps it’s best that she remain nameless, because her name exists, according to her bio, only as a receptacle for prizes. Seven prizes are listed, plus four for which she was shortlisted. I note that she was a nominee for the Frank O’Connor International Short Story Award (I’m told this is a big deal, but the name just smacks of a pub quiz in honor of an old boy who’s always in the snug nursing a pint of bitter and looking half dead). It occurred to me that writers might set up such a prize and award it to themselves. I’ve already won a couple of literary prizes, but had I not done so, I’d invent a prize and bestow it upon myself so that I could refer to myself as a prize-winning author. Now I’ve decided to do the same thing for my colleagues by handing out prizes and, more importantly, incorporating the word “Prestigious” into the name of the prize, assuming that most readers will think this is an adjective to describe the prize rather than part of the prize title itself. This is genuinely more and more important in an age when it’s difficult for many authors to get attention, because newspapers and magazines review fewer books, if any, and conventional media publicity avenues are swallowed whole by the Patricia Cornwells and Salman Rushdies. Over the next couple of weeks, I’ll be accepting your nominations for the following prize categories. (Note, authors are welcome to nominate themselves. Because that’s the irreverent point. But readers can participate, too.) Please add your nominations to the comments section of the blog and note that I won’t mind if you nominate books that weren’t written in the last year, because most of the books you think are new are really a few years old; who can pay attention to all the new releases, right?

The Prestigious Matt Rees International Prize for a Book I Bought Because It Had a Nice Cover (Kindle readers, please ignore.)

The Prestigious Matt Rees International Prize for a Book I Bought Because It Was Nominated for Prizes But Ended up Wondering What the Judges Were Thinking

The Extremely Prestigious Matt Rees International Prize for the Best Book by Matt Rees This Year

The Prestigious Matt Rees International Prize for the Best Book That’s Kind of Like “The Kite Runner”

Read the rest of this post on my blog The Man of Twists and Turns.

(Readers often write to ask me how I came to be an author. Over the coming weeks, I shall be writing a series of autobiographical vignettes which shall, I believe, demonstrate the mélange of neuroses, ambition, talent, chance, mischance, place, and alcohol that goes toward the creation of a writer. This one, at least. The tales may be instructive or proscriptive.)

Writers ought not to think identically with most of the people around them.
It usually comes quite easily to me. For example, when Ayatollah Khomeini
announced his fatwa on Salman Rushdie, I thought: “Serves you right for
looking down your nose at me, you smug sod.”

Ordinarily I’d have very little in common with the unlamented (by me, anyway) Ayatollah. However, in this case, he happened to catch me at the
right time. The previous night I had experienced Rushdie’s disdain. I wouldn’t blame Salman, because I was drunk at the time and a bit rude. Except that I was at an age when I blamed other people for everything. So, yes, I blamed him.

It was February 1989 and I was in my first reporting job at United Press
International, a once-mighty newswire which now has considerably less
influence than even a dead Khomeini. I had written a few stories about the
growing controversy around Rushdie’s novel “The Satanic Verses.” British
Muslims had burned the book for its supposedly blasphemous portrayal of
Muhammad. The novel was up for the Whitbread Book Award, one of Britain’s
premier prizes. My bureau chief suggested I attend the awards dinner.

Having written a story in which Rushdie won (as everyone expected) and left
it at the newsdesk, I went off to the Barbican for the dinner. I needed only to gather a couple of quotes from Rushdie when he won, so that I might phone them in and have an editor plug them into my story. So I decided I was free to otherwise enjoy the evening.

Imagine a 22-year-old youth from a less than sumptuously endowed background who finds himself placed at a press-table laden with better food than his mother cooks for him and free red wine. He is seated between two lovely and solicitous public relations ladies who laugh at his jokes, wear low-cut evening dresses, and who, he imagines, appear to find him sexually
irresistible. What would you have done?

Well, I acted unprofessionally. I became quite drunk and raucous. This failed to impress the BBC correspondent across the table, or the other bored hacks waiting to file their “Rushdie triumphs in face of controversy” stories.

Late in the evening when the judges arose to pronounce the winner, I was
giggling into the neck of one of the patient p.r. girls.

“And the winner is…”

I nuzzled. She giggled. Patiently.

“…Paul Sayer, for ‘The Comforts of Madness.’”

“Oh, fuck!” The applause was rapturous, so people more than two tables away probably didn’t hear me curse.

Paul Sayer spoke engagingly of his joy at winning. At least I gather he did. I was occupied, telling the p.r. ladies I couldn’t believe “fucking Rushdie didn’t fucking win.” As Sayer left the podium, I leaned across to the BBC man and said, “What did that fucker say?” He recited a quick quote for me.

I stumbled down the stairs to the press room. (Why would you serve journalists free wine and then put the press room down two flights of stairs?) I phoned my bureau chief. “Karin, fucking Rushdie didn’t fucking win. Fuck it.” She inquired, with considerable amusement in her voice, if I had obtained a quote from “fucking Rushdie” or from the judges.

I labored up the stairs to the hall and barreled to the front tables, where I ignored the ebullient Paul Sayer and headed for Rushdie. He lingered beside his table, standing with his second wife, an author whose work I had not then read, Marianne Wiggins. (I still haven’t read it.)

Rushdie was otherwise alone. I assume all the sober or less drunk hacks had
by now obtained their quotes and were filing their stories. As I reached
Rushdie, I noted that I appeared to be unable to stand straight. Or to talk.

I managed to ask him, “Are you happy about the fuss over your book, because it’ll help sales?” (I was 22. If you weren’t crass at 22, then I pity you.)

Rushdie looked at me with amused contempt –– amused, because he saw that he would be afforded an opportunity for a bon mot. I didn’t manage to write down the bon mot and I don’t remember what it was. It amounted to: “I’d prefer to have lower sales and not to have the controversy.” He turned to his wife and gave her a little hiccup of smug amusement which went like this: “Hah-hnh.” I remember that. Word for word.

“Hah-hnh-hnh,” said Marianne Wiggins. (From what I know of her novels, she
sometimes writes like that, too.)

In that moment I conceived a great hatred of Rushdie. An unwarranted
hatred, much like my mother’s aversion to mustachioed men. But a hatred
nonetheless.

I shuffled to the next table. Two of the judges stood there. I approached them. They were both Conservative cabinet members. Douglas Hurd was Foreign Secretary (He later became Lord Westwall, which sounds to me like a frozen foods conglomerate). Kenneth Baker was Education Minister (He’s now Baron Baker of Dorking, which is surely a title concocted by unimaginative satirists). Both appeared to be extremely tall. Or I was getting closer to the ground as Rushdie’s “hah-hnh” rang in my ears.

“Why’d you vote for Rushdie to win?” I slurred.

The two ministers shared a look they must have picked up from studying Mrs.
Thatcher in a bad mood. “Actually I rather preferred the Tolstoy book,” said Hurd. (A.N. Wilson’s excellent biography of Tolstoy was also shortlisted for the prize.)

I tripped to the press room. By the time I had managed to decipher my meager notes and dictate them to the newsdesk, the Underground had stopped running. I spent the night on a bench outside the Barbican tube station. Without a coat. My shirt sweaty from the alcohol and the humiliation. In London. In February.

The next day, as I sat at the newsdesk, a story came through about Khomeini’s fatwa. Grimacing through my hangover at the ticking newswire, I pondered the notion of karma, developed in Rushdie’s ancestral land. It had struck. “Don’t mess with me,” I thought. “Hah-hnh.”