AUTHOR PENS GOLDEN SATIRE REFLECTING TRUMP ERA
To say that Salman Rushdie’s epic new novel The Golden House contains allusions to U.S. President Donald Trump would be sort of like calling The Satanic Verses “a little controversial.”
Though the bellicose commander-inchief is never mentioned by name, his presence looms as loudly in Rushdie’s ambitious tome as the signage on one of Trump’s hotels.
Set in present-day New York, Rushdie’s tale concerns brutish billionaire realestate magnate Nero Golden, his three eccentric sons and cunning new wife, and the young filmmaker determined to uncover the mysterious circumstances around their move from India to an imposing New York mansion.
Meanwhile, a “con man” supervillain Rushdie refers to only as the Joker slithers into the presidency riding bigotry and border walls.
This crooked character boasts of his business acumen despite multiple bankruptcies, colludes with Russian oligarchs, runs a crooked university, and, Rushdie writes, lusts after one daughter while never mentioning the other.
“I would just say that the Joker and the Trump are the two most unusual kinds of playing cards,” Rushdie said with a coy chuckle recently from New York.
Of course, Rushdie wrote much of this scathing satire before the November election — meaning he made a cynical bet that proved wise.
“I obviously guessed right, I’m sorry to say,” he said.
Still, The Golden House is about so much more than the person currently occupying the White House. Rushdie talked to the Star about his boldly modern new book that, despite its complexity, came to the legendary author “like a flood.”
When did you first start thinking about this story?
What happens with me characteristically is that bits of a book just stick in my head for quite a long time before I know what to do with them. In this case, the character of Nero Golden — I had more or less all of him, several years ago, without quite knowing what this book was or what this story was about.
One of the characters works at the Museum of Identity, and it seemed as if you had a lot of fun with that concept?
Given how much the subject of identity has been in people’s minds and lips lately, I’m sort of amazed there isn’t one. I was very pleased with the Museum of Identity. I feel like next week there’s probably going to be one.
One of Nero’s children struggles with gender confusion and, without spoiling the plot, it’s a thread you follow thoroughly. Was there any trepidation on your part about trying to tackle a topic of such sensitivity, or the criticism you might receive?
Not exactly that, but I was worried about getting it wrong. I don’t want to write something stupid about it. So the two issues in the book — one of which is high-functioning autism, and the other of which is these transgender issues — the reason they got into the book is that I have some personal knowledge. I have people close to me who are autistic and people who actually have transitioned, both male to female and female to male. So I’ve had that knowledge amongst my circle, people that I care about a lot.
Also, a couple years ago in India I became involved in a project with the Gates Foundation addressing the AIDS problem. I went to my old hometown of Bombay and spent a substantial amount of time in the transgender community there, the Hijra community, amongst whom the problem of AIDS is very extreme because of their involvement in sex work. That gave me another point of entry.
I was worried more about getting it wrong than people not liking what I did. People have not liked what I did before. (laughs)
Your narrator, Rene, speaks in a language of film references. I know you’re a film buff, but I didn’t expect to read a reference to, say, Mars Attacks!
I’m not elitist about film. I really liked Wonder Woman, for example. That’s so far my favourite movie of the year.
Comedy is mined from Rene’s frustration trying to make a movie. I wondered if you’d gone through anything similar?
Not in movies, but in television, yes. I did have a flirtation with trying to develop a 60-minute drama series with Showtime. They spent a year saying, “This is the best thing we’ve ever seen, this is more original than anything that’s ever been done, and we are so 1001 per cent committed to it.” And a year later you get a text message saying, “We’ve decided not to go in this direction.” That was drawn from real life.
More seriously, a major theme seems to be the shift in the meaning of “truth.”
The deliberate attempt to destroy the idea of the truth is one of the most alarming aspects of what’s going on right now. We now live in a world in which if you want to believe in evolution, you can. If you want to say the world was created in six days by an entity that rested on the seventh day, that’s equally valid. If you want to believe the world is flat, fine. And if you want to believe the world is round, well, that’s just your opinion.
Truth is not based on anything. Truth is whatever you say it is. And that’s terrifying.
You stopped tweeting the day Donald Trump was elected. Why?
I just got sick of it. I had actually got quite tired of it before but it was the election and I got into it. But once that day passed, I deleted the app from my phone. I haven’t missed it for a nanosecond.
I remember a couple years ago, Jonathan Franzen — who’s against all this social media nonsense — said he disliked Twitter and couldn’t understand why I would use it, because he thought I was smarter than that. Now I actually have come around to basically agreeing with him. It’s a noise that I don’t need in my head. I don’t like the tone of voice on Twitter. It’s a bad-mannered thing. And I’m happy to have backed away from it.
I figure that in all of your years mutually living in New York and attending events, you and Trump must have crossed paths at some point. Did you ever meet?
A long time ago I did, yes. I met him at a Crosby, Stills and Nash concert at Madison Square Garden. And I was really surprised by the fact that he knew all the words. I thought, really? Donald Trump singing “Teach Your Children” and, you know, “Woodstock”? Seemed very strange.
I thought it was just a complete coincidence that we happened to be sitting near each other at the concert, but it’s as if he thought we had somehow bonded at Crosby, Stills and Nash. Years later, I ran into him somewhere in a theatre. And he pointed both his small index fingers at me and he shouted: “You’re the man!” I looked behind me in case there was somebody behind me but apparently, it was me. So according to Mr. Trump then, I was the man. I had no idea why I was the man, because he surged on past me without elaborating.
But I suspect if he ever comes across this book or somebody tells him about it, I will no longer be the man.