A Salman Rushdie anecdote via Christopher Hitchens…
0 reactions
A Salman Rushdie anecdote via Christopher Hitchens...
Christopher Hitchens, writing in his memoir *Hitch-22,* relates a funny bit by Salman Rushdie (who is by all accounts a funny man):
*...there came a time when someone arrived late at a dinner party, complaining of having been stuck at an airport with nothing to read but a Robert Ludlum-style novel. This didn’t seem worth pursuing until the complaint was refined somewhat: “I mean it’s not just that the prose is so bloody awful but that the titles are so sodding pretentious…* The Bourne Inheritance*,* The Eiger Sanction*, all this portentous piffle.” Again, not a subject to set the table afire, until someone idly said they wondered what a Shakespeare play would be called if it were Ludlum who had the naming of it. At once Salman was engaged and began to smile. “All right, Salman: 'Hamlet' by Ludlum!” At once—and I mean with as much preparation as I have given you—*The Elsinore Vacillation. *Fluke? Not exactly. Challenged to do the same for 'Macbeth,' he produced* The Dunsinane Reforestation *with hardly a flourish and barely a beat. After this it was plain sailing through* The Kerchief Implication, The Rialto Sanction*, and one about Caliban and Prospero that I once knew but now can never remember.*
I particularly love *The Elsinore Vacillation*. That's brilliant.
Edited: Fixed (I hope) my egregious italicization and titling errors.
#entertainment
source
Christopher Hitchens, writing in his memoir *Hitch-22,* relates a funny bit by Salman Rushdie (who is by all accounts a funny man):
*...there came a time when someone arrived late at a dinner party, complaining of having been stuck at an airport with nothing to read but a Robert Ludlum-style novel. This didn’t seem worth pursuing until the complaint was refined somewhat: “I mean it’s not just that the prose is so bloody awful but that the titles are so sodding pretentious…* The Bourne Inheritance*,* The Eiger Sanction*, all this portentous piffle.” Again, not a subject to set the table afire, until someone idly said they wondered what a Shakespeare play would be called if it were Ludlum who had the naming of it. At once Salman was engaged and began to smile. “All right, Salman: 'Hamlet' by Ludlum!” At once—and I mean with as much preparation as I have given you—*The Elsinore Vacillation. *Fluke? Not exactly. Challenged to do the same for 'Macbeth,' he produced* The Dunsinane Reforestation *with hardly a flourish and barely a beat. After this it was plain sailing through* The Kerchief Implication, The Rialto Sanction*, and one about Caliban and Prospero that I once knew but now can never remember.*
I particularly love *The Elsinore Vacillation*. That's brilliant.
Edited: Fixed (I hope) my egregious italicization and titling errors.
#entertainment
source
| 3,000 mlx | |
| 4 | |
| 0 |