All language subtitles for Masterclass Salman Rushdie Teaches Storytelling and Writing - 14.Researching the Novel

[MUSIC PLAYING]

SALMAN RUSHDIE: Try to learn.

You know, try to learn.

The more you learn,
the more will

be at your fingertips to use.

Writing books is like an
education that never ends.

It's always trying to
increase the sum of what you

know so that you can use it.

[EXOTIC MUSIC]

Probably the most
directly historical novel

that I've written is The
Enchantress of Florence,

in the sense that
a lot of my novels

deal with more or less
contemporary history.

But this deals
with 400 years ago.

And in the famous sentence
of L. P. Hartley, which

is the opening line of his
novel "The Go-Between," he says,

the past is another country.

They do things
differently there.

And that's a thing you
always have to remember.

And that's a thing you
always have to remember.

When you're going
into the past, people

don't behave like they behave
in the 21st century, you know.

And they don't think like that.

So to do the research about
the social circumstances

of the period, and the
political and cultural events

of the period, I mean,
that's hard work.

But it's relatively
straightforward.

The hard bit for an
imaginative writer

The hard bit for an
imaginative writer

is to imagine yourself into the
thought processes of people who

don't think like you, you know.

Not just pre-Freudian, but a
long way before that, you know.

People whose way of-- cast of
mind is very alien to you even.

You know, and then to
try and humanize them.

Try-- to try and
give them a life

on the page with which
readers can identify,

on the page with which
readers can identify,

rather than thinking,
those people

are too alien for me
to identify with them.

So I'm writing about the
court of the Mughal Emperor

Akbar, second half
of the 16th century.

And for me, yes, I
mean, there's a lot

of material about his reign.

Because he was a very
big historical figure.

But the thing that interested
me was a complexity in him,

which is that he had begun
to think what-- in a way

that we would now call humanist.

He had begun to think
about human individuals

He had begun to think
about human individuals

and their rights and
their sovereign powers

as individuals.

So on the one hand, he's
thinking some quite modern

thoughts.

On the other hand, he is
completely an absolute ruler.

Everybody does what
he says or else.

And he has no desire not to be
an absolute ruler, you know.

He wants to be that.

But he has these other thoughts.

And I thought that's--
that makes him, to me,

really interesting, that
there's a contradiction in him.

really interesting, that
there's a contradiction in him.

So that's what
you're looking for.

I mean, you can do the--

as I say, you can do
the research stuff.

That's fairly mechanical.

You can read the books and find
out what the world was like

and what-- how
people dressed and--

and how the court was
arranged and so on.

But to find the interior
truth, you know,

that's what-- that's
what took work.

The big problem of history
and writing about the past

is it's hard to find
a way of making that

accessible to readers
in the present because

of the alien nature of
thought in the past.

And yet, you-- and
yet, what you can't do

is make people in
the 16th century

think like people think today,
because that immediately

feels fake.

There were, for example, in
the court of Akbar, very, very

powerful women characters.

There were women who
were entrepreneurs,

There were women who
were entrepreneurs,

who owned fleets of ships
and traded with Arabia,

and even traveled the
world, you know, in a way

that you don't think--

you think of women
at that period

as being in a secondary role.

But not the case.

There were very,
very independent

and strong-minded women
in the court of Akbar.

But what you can't do
is impose upon them

a modern feminist sensibility.

Because they didn't have that.

Because they didn't have that.

I mean, at the heart of the
novel is this question of what

it is to be a strong woman
in a world entirely dominated

by men, you know.

How do you express
your selfhood,

and how do you achieve your
dreams and your visions,

you know?

Without my trying
to impose on them

a sensibility that belongs
to the-- to our time

and not to theirs.

You know, so you have to
always be aware of that,

that you're talking
about a different age

of the world in which
people's cast of mind was--

of the world in which
people's cast of mind was--

was different.

I think when you're talking
about a major historical

figure, obviously, you're not
the first person to do it,

you know?

And in the case of a
figure like the Emperor

Akbar, the so-called
great Mughal, you know,

there's an enormous amount.

Even in the movies--

the Indian film of the
1950s "Mughal-e-Azam,"

which means The Great Mughal,
is one of the most popular films

which means The Great Mughal,
is one of the most popular films

ever made in India and tells
a kind of version of the story

of Akbar with, you know,
fictional elements.

So you have to know about that.

But in the end, you
have to find your Akbar.

You know, you have to find
the one that speaks to you.

At least, I felt I had to
find the one that spoke to me.

And it's not the grandness.

For me, it's not the grandness.

But it was this
interior conflict

that I-- that-- which I'm
willing to admit, may be more

that I-- that-- which I'm
willing to admit, may be more

my invention than the
psychological reality

of the emperor himself.

But that invention
is what gave me,

if you like, the freedom to
write about it in a way that

didn't just feel borrowed
from earlier versions.

I think this is, in general,
one of the great things

that you should think about
as a writer, is how do you

write your thing, rather than
simply rewrite somebody else's

write your thing, rather than
simply rewrite somebody else's

thing?

You know, it's-- that's true
whether it's a historical novel

or a contemporary novel.

When you're trying to make
a character who is famous,

you know, there's
much written about,

try and find your entry
point into that character,

you know, which belongs
to you, because it

has something to do with
your needs as a writer,

you know, something you want
to write about, not just what

you know, something you want
to write about, not just what

the world has said about him.

And if you can get
there, then the chances

are you will write
something very good.

You know, research is--

it's hard to do.

Because it works best
when you're looking

for very specific things.

Although a Google search
will go very broadly,

it won't go very deep.

it won't go very deep.

I still think
libraries and books

are the places from which
you find the best stuff.

Because a lot of
things, especially

if you're writing about--

about history that isn't
very recent history--

you know, the internet is
not very good at old stuff.

If you want to write
about the 16th century,

you're not going to find a whole
lot of really interesting stuff

you're not going to find a whole
lot of really interesting stuff

on the internet.

So, like, when I was researching
The Enchantress of Florence,

the New York Public Library was
probably my biggest resource.

And just books I ordered to--

to get from whatever
source and to read them.

Because, see, the
thing about history

as a source material
for a novel is

that it's relatively easy to
find out historical events,

that it's relatively easy to
find out historical events,

and who was king and who was
president, and what battles

were fought, and-- so all that
stuff you can do quite easily.

What is much harder to find out
is how ordinary people lived.

You know, that requires digging.

And because that
material is really in--

in books and things that
have never been digitized,

you know--

they're not on the internet.

So you still have to go
back to the printed word.

So you still have to go
back to the printed word.

And that's, for me, always
been the most useful.

I would say about
imagination that, in the end,

that is what you
have to rely on.

No matter how much--
how exhaustively

you've done the
research, there's

a point at which you have to
put it aside and make it up.

You know, and sometimes you
can make up things the turn out

You know, and sometimes you
can make up things the turn out

afterwards to be true.

You know, because
the imagination

is a wonderful weapon,
you know, that can--

that can stumble on the
truth without you actually

having any expertise.

I mean, I have a case-- a
case of this from my friend,

the British novelist
Ian McEwan, who

wrote a novel in which
somebody had killed somebody

and wanted to chop up
the body and carry it

and wanted to chop up
the body and carry it

in a couple of suitcases
in order to get rid of it.

And Ian didn't know anything
about chopping up bodies.

So he was living in Oxford--

Oxford in England at the time.

And he asked a friend
of his who was a--

who lectured in medicine
at the University.

And his friend said,
well, I'm actually

going to be doing a dissection
on such and such date.

Do you want to come and watch?

So he thought, OK,
I'll come and watch.

And then on the day
he was going to go,

And then on the day
he was going to go,

some little voice in
his head said, don't go.

And so he didn't go.

And then he made up the
chopping up of the body.

And when his friend the
surgeon read the passage,

he said to Ian, how
did you know all that?

How did you know that
that's where you chop?

How did you know that that's the
place where you make the cut?

And Ian said, I just--

I just made it up.

I just imagined it.

So yeah, if you're lucky,
you can imagine the truth.

In the end, imagination is your
best and first and last weapon.

Because what we are doing
here is an imaginative act,

you know.

The whole-- whole act of
writing is an act which

depends on the imagination.

And no matter how
much research you

do, if you can't imagine
yourself into that world,

into the skin of that world,
then the book won't work.

into the skin of that world,
then the book won't work.