the ground beneath her feet

There’s a moment in “Bridget Jones’s Diary”, at the book release where Bridget makes a fool of herself trying to introduce her boss, where you can just hear the character of Natasha (the snobby character trying to win Colin Firth) say to Salman Rushdie, “So how autobiographical is your work?” The audience doesn’t hear the answer, because the attention has shifted to the love triangle of Renee Zellweger, Hugh Grant and Colin Firth.

Well, tonight, I heard the answer to that question at a lecture by Salman Rushdie.

I was pretty excited to see Salman Rushdie, because I’ve never seen anyone in person who’s been sentenced to death by the Ayatollah, nor have I seen anyone who was involved in the making of “Bridget Jones’s Diary.” About a year ago, Rushdie gave his manuscripts, papers, drafts, etc. to Emory, and he’s in the midst of a five-year stint as Distinguished Writer in Residence, which includes a public lecture each year. Tonight’s topic was “Autobiography and the Novel.”

Rushdie began by reading the title pages to three great 18th century novels—Robinson Crusoe, Gulliver’s Travels and Tristam Shandy—pointing out that none of those novels feature the authors’ name on the title page. Rather, each book is purported to be written by the main character, and the author could remain in the shadows. No one asked Swift if his work was autobiographical, if he had spent a lot of time talking with little people. Rushdie traced the rise of the author as a celebrity to Charles Dickens, who gave readings where he acted out scenes from his books and stumped for this favorite political causes.

Nowadays, Rushdie says it’s impossible to have a conversation about his work without someone asking if his writing is autobiographical. The wrong way to answer such a query, according to Rushdie, is by saying, “well, some of it might reflect bits and pieces of people I knew or things that happened to me, and some of it I made up, so it’s actually a work of fiction.” The correct way to answer, because it’s what everyone wants to hear, is, “yes, it’s completely autobiographical.” Readers want to decode characters, events, and lines, until they think they have a person completely figured out, particularly in an age where memoirs and autobiographies are flying off the shelves. People are dying to expose themselves; why not fiction writers?

Obviously, Rushdie said, a writer’s life shapes his or her work, and in some cases it’s interesting or important to know something of the author’s life when reading a novel. He gave examples of how his own life had affected his work and gave some other examples—how seeing Oxford, Mississippi had informed his reading of Faulkner, how knowing that Atticus Finch was based on Harper Lee’s father might affect “To Kill a Mockingbird,” and how you sort of have to know that Vonnegut was present for the fire-bombing of Dresden. This is what Rushdie called the “higher gossip.”

But, he said, not everyone who saw the fire bombing of Dresden wrote a book, and not everyone who came from Oxford wrote a book. Knowing the higher gossip doesn’t enhance a reading of the book, because it’s not where it came from, it’s how it’s written and presented to the reader. All of these real places and faces have to book cooked up by the writer; Rushdie called it “the joy of cooking.”

In the middle of this very funny and entertaining speech, I thought, is Rushdie essentially telling me that people actually do make up things that go into their books? It seems so simplistic to think that it comes down to someone explaining that fiction is made-up. But I guess the more I think about it, the more examples I can name where I’ve wanted to figure out the back story of the art. Which songs are about Paul McCartney’s sheep dog and all that. It’s a waste of time to look for what we want to be in the book, as opposed to what’s actually there.

Rushdie talked of envying the 18th century writers who didn’t have to answer for their literary creations, and how perhaps it was wise for writers to just destroy everything, so that scholars wouldn’t have something to dig through. He thinks that Shakespeare’s reputation can only be enhanced by the fact that he left no drafts, notes, laundry lists, etc….all we can do is look at the texts themselves. Then, of course, Rushdie had to acknowledge that he had just given all of his papers to Emory. But at least he was able to recognize that they’ll be in good hands.