Reading with Rushdie
By Roopika Risam
POP QUIZ:
If you take a class with Professor Salman Rushdie, you might:
a) Learn lots of intriguing details about his literati friends.
b) Spend three hours a week doubled-over with laughter.
c) Find a dissertation topic.
d) All of the above.
This spring marked writer Salman Rushdie’s second graduate
seminar in Emory’s Department of English. As part of an
agreement with Emory, Professor Rushdie has donated his papers
to the Manuscript, Archives, and Rare Book Library and will teach
courses and visit classes for five years. In its first incarnation,
during the 2006-07 academic year, Professor Rushdie’s course,
“Contemporary World Writers,” featured short stories
and novels by authors whose work had influenced his own: Günter
Grass, Italo Calvino, Gabriel García Márquez, and
Jorge Luis Borges. On the first day of my class, Professor Rushdie
announced that the short story collection and novels he had chosen
for our syllabus this year had their own organizing principle:
authors that are friends of his. Predictably, this announcement
earned a chuckle from the class. For me, it elicited a bit of
nervousness as well. What if we simply did not like his friends’
texts? Would he be open to disagreements or to critique? These
worries were unfounded. Although Professor Rushdie was invested
in the literature he had chosen for our class, he seemed excited
about revisiting the books in our graduate seminar and hearing
our opinions – both positive and negative.
a) Learn lots of intriguing details about his literati
friends.
In other English seminars, students and professors approach our
reading material together, trying to make sense of the material
before us. While Professor Rushdie encouraged a similar cooperative
approach to literature, his course afforded something that not
every professor can offer: intimate knowledge about the authors
and long histories of friendship with them. At the beginning of
each course, Professor Rushdie spent some time contextualizing
our reading assignments. He offered details about their lives
and education, indicating influences on these writers such as
the importance of Hanif Kureishi’s relationship to his father
for his novel The Buddha of Suburbia. Greatly knowledgeable
about both literature and culture, Professor Rushdie could point
out important allusions that we might have missed like quotations
from the most marginal British poets in Anita Desai’s
In Custody. Additionally, Professor Rushdie spoke most generously
about his fellow writers, telling us, for example, of The
Remains of the Day author Kazuo Ishiguro’s –
or Ish, as he calls him – immense modesty about his own
talents.
b) Spend three hours a week doubled-over with laughter.
Most notable about Professor Rushdie’s seminar, however,
is the large percentage of time that we spent laughing at his
jokes, as well as at the anecdotes he shared about his friends.
In our first class, he shared stories about Angela Carter’s
cocktail party quirks, the details of which complemented our reading
of Burning Your Boats, her short story collection. And
this is precisely what is most enjoyable about Professor Rushdie’s
course; the high hilarity and entertainment value of the class
offered a new perspective on the authors and books we read, rather
than detracting from them.
c) Find a dissertation topic.
Lest you think that Professor Rushdie’s class was all giggles,
we read a novel or short story collection for each class and wrote
a paper as well. After Professor Rushdie’s introduction
to the text and author, he called on each of us in turn, asking
for our request as if he were deejaying our class discussion.
Because our class included English, comparative literature, anthropology,
and history PhD students, and even a student from the medical
school, our discussion interests were quite diverse. Conversation
flowed easily between Professor Rushdie and us students. He responded
to our comments, elaborated on them, and used them as springboards
to new topics of conversation. Because many courses that we otherwise
take are so focused on specific themes or theories, we do not
always have the chance to have the free-flowing class discussions
that Professor Rushdie facilitated. Also, because he is more of
a writer than a literary critic, Professor Rushdie’s approach
to literature is entirely different from those who are trained
primarily as literary scholars. As a result, the course focused
frequently on craft – how authors were shaping their stories
and why they made certain decisions about points of view or narrative
techniques. Professor Rushdie’s position as a writer also
made for some of the funnier moments in the course. He famously
dislikes the way theory has become so important in English departments,
particularly because he is a writer. Additionally, towards the
end of our course, Professor Rushdie criticized the class for
what he termed our Dickensian desire to find out what happens
to characters once a novel or story is over. From his perspective,
nothing keeps happening to his characters once his novels are
over, and he chastened us by saying with a laugh, “They’re
not real.”
When I signed up for Professor Rushdie’s class, I had not
expected that I would find ideas for a dissertation by taking
the class. While my specialization is in postcolonial literature
– yes, that includes Professor Rushdie’s work –
I have been trying to form an intellectually interesting and coherent
project, bridging postcolonial literature with other literatures
including African-American. After rereading Hanif Kureishi’s
The Buddha of Suburbia for Professor Rushdie’s
class, I was struck by Kureishi’s descriptions of England’s
Asian Youth Movement and the inclusion of elements of black power
– such as Angela Davis – in the narrative. I had the
opportunity to discuss my ideas with Professor Rushdie, who was
able to give me suggestions about other authors I should read
or people with whom I should speak. When I told Professor Rushdie
that I am specializing in postcolonial literature, I quickly said,
“Don’t worry – I’m not studying you.”
He replied, “Good! There are far too many people doing that
already.”
d) All of the above.
When I first began to pursue postcolonial literature, I never
could have imagined that I would have the opportunity to study
under Professor Rushdie. Doing so has offered new dimensions for
my own research and fresh perspectives on Professor Rushdie’s
own work. As I told him before he left, I hope that he will be
teaching a new set of novels next year, so I can have an excuse
to take his class again.
Roopika Risam is a first-year PhD student in English from Washington,
D.C.
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