Salman Rushdie
Salman Rushdie Knighted by The Queen
According to the Associated Press, Queen Elizabeth II conferred knighthood on Salman Rushdie today, despite protests from Islamic countries.
In 1989, a fatwa was placed on Mr. Rushdie after his 1988 novel, The Satanic Verses, was deemed an insult to Islam. Mr. Rushdie spent the next decade in hiding.
When Mr. Rushdie's impending knighthood was announced last year at the Queen's 81st birthday, Muslims in Pakistan and Iran responded by burning effigies and protesting in the street. The first deputy speaker of Iran's parliament, Mohammad Reza Bahonar, announced, "Salman Rushdie has turned into a hated corpse which cannot be resurrected by any action. read more »
Morning Memo: Antonin Scalia Enjoys Sex; Jessica Alba Has a Girl
Supreme Court Justice Antonin Scalia loves Sex and the City; bums cigarettes from Sarah Jessica Parker. [Intelligencer]
Howard Stern and Beth Ostrosky are getting ready to wed in October. Marchesa's Georgina Chapman is reportedly designing the gown. [P6] read more »
Oh, Salman! Things Get a Little Blue at Rushdie Reading on Union Square
Last night, Salman Rushdie shared sex tips with a bulging, giddy crowd on the fourth floor of the Union Square Barnes & Noble, during a reading from his newest novel The Enchantress of Florence.
Rushdie began by reading a passage about the effete main character, who has an obsession with tulips; images of the flower are tattooed all over his body, including his “buttocks” and the “thick shaft of his penis.”
“I had to go speak recently at the Ottawa Tulip Festival,” Rushdie told the crowd, laughing and wiping his nose. “They liked this bit.” read more »
Rushdie and Johansson Video Revealed!
Perhaps you've seen Scarlett Johansson's new video and were impressed by the actress-turned-singer's dirge-like cover of Tom Waits' "Falling Down."
The Daily Mail was less impressed by her singing than her co-star: Salman Rushdie. The author has a blink-and-miss-it cameo in the video nuzzling Ms. Johansson's hair and neck. (Who said writers have it tough?) read more »
Lineup for April 30, 2008
If you remember this year's White House Correspondent's Dinner, you weren't there. Felix Gillette, John Koblin, and Choire Sicha flood the zone in D.C..
Janet Silver is moving from Houghton Mifflin to Nan Talese's imprint at Doubleday. Leon Neyfakh checks in with with Ms. Talese who says, "I called Janet and she sent us a list of the authors she had worked with and the ones who’d said they wanted to come with her, if not immediately then eventually." That list may include Philip Roth and Jonathan Safran Foer. Plus: Islam observers on Wieseltier's Amis review; James Frey's PR Dream Team; Spitzer's bio; Nabokov's unfinished novel. read more »
F**k You, I'm Mamet: Tough-Guy Writer Travels With Antic Entourage
On Friday, April 25, Redbelt, a riveting David Mamet cops-and-con-men drama set in the world of professional jujitsu, premiered at the Tribeca Film Festival. The cool table at the after-party, held at the Honey nightclub on West 14th Street, included Mr. read more »
Curse of the D.C. Swamp Creatures
“It’s not the best time in the world to be a White House correspondent,” said Bill Plante on the sultry afternoon of Saturday, April 26. This was at Tammy Haddad’s annual pre-White House Correspondents’ Association Dinner lawn party. The blooming wisteria was strangling the woods that surround her house.
These nearly-over final four years of George W. Bush are Mr. Plante’s third second-term presidency in his years as CBS White House correspondent. “I guess he could still drop a bomb somewhere—there are people who think he means to do it,” Mr. Plante said. read more »
Morning Memo: Elle 'Aufs' Nina Garcia; Elton John Gets a Big Whiff of Tom Ford
Nina Garcia, You. Are. Out. The Project Runway judge reportedly got fired from her post as fashion director at Elle magazine last week. [US Weekly]
Barry Diller who's recently triumphed in court over Liberty Media chairman, John Malone, has a brand new discrimination lawsuit on his hands. [P6] read more »
Salman Rushdie, Another Sucker Who Liked Juno, Supports Saffron Burrows at Bank Job Screening
“We’re really lucky, because we went to Socialista early in the week,” said the designer Nicole Miller at the Cinema Society’s screening of The Bank Job, a British heist flick starring Jason Statham and read more »
Man Booker Prize Celebrates 40th Birthday With 'Best of the Booker" Award
It was 1993 when Salman Rushdie’s Midnight’s Children was honored as the best novel to have ever won theMan Booker Prize for Fiction in the prestigious literary accolade’s 25-year history. Now, Booker has announced it will present a second one-off award, “The Best of the Booker,” to celebrate its 40th anniversary, the BBC reports. A panel of judges will select six eligible books before handing the final decision over to the public, which can vote for their favorite novel via the Booker’s Web site starting in May. Each year since 1969, the Booker Prize has rewarded what it deems the year’s best novel written by a citizen of the British Commonwealth or Ireland -- in addition to the acclaim and a boost in book sales, the winner also receives 50,000 GBP. Last year, the honor went to Anne Enright for her novel The Gathering, and in 2006, it went to Kiran Desai, author of The Inheritance of Loss. Both authors have been able to embark on worldwide book tours as a result.
What’s the Rush, Rushdie?
As the fall benefit season transitions into the holiday party season, few New Yorkers can lay claim to having attended as many events of late as Sir Salman Rushdie. read more »
The Paris Review Takes Its Young Literati Seriously
Last evening, the cozy Tribeca offices of The Paris Review were packed in celebration of the magazine's Fall issue, which features a photo dossier of the Colombian drug lord Pablo Escobar and an interview with the Israeli author David Grossman, who is working on his first novel in several years. New Yorker fact-checker Jonathan Shainin, who conducted the interview in and around Grossman's home outside Jerusalem, told Media Mob that he interviewed Grossman over the course of several days, resulting in around nine hours of tape. "Mercifully, Paris Review interns typed it," Mr. Shainin said. "It was a 50,000 word transcript! I definitely had my favorite bits that didn't make it in to the final version," which is around 11,000 words. Well, novelists are wordy!
Paris Review has a long tradition of throwing open its office parties to the greater literary community of New York, a tradition begun by the magazine's late founder George Plimpton, when the magazine was based in his Upper East Side townhouse. When the current editor-in-chief, New Yorker staff writer Philip Gourevitch, moved the magazine downtown after becoming editor in 2005, the tradition of the parties continued. And thus, at times it seemed that every editorial assistant in town (or at least, those at the better publishing houses) was there, swilling from the open bar and dipping their hands into the potato chips. read more »
Rushdie, Pamuk Kiss and Make Up After Tiny Tiff
On Friday night, Salman Rushdie was talking about Dorothy—that is, the Dorothy portrayed by Judy Garland in the 1939 film version of The Wizard of Oz.
Her mantra—“There’s noplace like home!”—is apparently not shared by the literary superstar whose 1988 novel, The Satanic Verses, was banned in his native India and resulted in a fatwa against him. read more »
Rushdie: Relax, Blogs Aren't Killing Book Criticism
The National Book Critics Circle (NBCC) hosted a series of doomsday discussions over the weekend on the future of book reviews -- do they have a function, why don’t people read them, what do we do about the blogs, etc. Everyone seemed pretty worried, particularly former Los Angeles Times Book Review editor Steve Wasserman, who spoke Friday night at the Housing Works Bookstore on Crosby Street as part of a panel called “Grub Street 2.0." read more »
Left-Wingers Listen: Rushdie, Ritter, Hersh Foresee Our Doom
The Thieves
In Today's Salmon Spread: Will Lloyd Grove Go Home?
Elsewhere:
Lloyd Grove, are ya leaving us? Contracts up, say the gossips!
South Williamsburg, will you look like Battery Park City? read more »
George Gurley's back in couples therapy, and the words "controlling" and "hung over" are used. Big Billy Clinton throws his weight around his sushi-fest confab. And finally: when girly book clubs go bad.Gourevitch Moves The Paris Review To Terra Tribeca
Gourevitch Moves The Paris Review To Terra Tribeca
Rushdie Returns to Form- But His Epic Falls Short
Rushdie Returns to Form— But His Epic Falls Short
The Ayatollah of Silence Foiled: Rushdie's Fable Now an Opera
Lit Crit as It Ought to Be: Open-Eyed, Recklessly Committed
September Calendar
Rage Ruins Rushdie's Day; His New York Novel Sputters
Salman Rushdie's 1001 Manhattan Nights
Salman Rushdie Rocks, and the Earth Moves-a Bit
Will Sex and the Single Girl Sell Again in America?
