welcome to the program. we begin this evening with an extraordinary book called apollo's angels, a history of ballet. the author is jennifer holman. >> there were times and places across the history when ballet mattered. it was really at the heart of culture and very of on people's minds. and then it fades and it's picked up by other people, other places, and reimagined in a new form. if you look at where we are now, i think we're in one of the dips. it's not clear what is going to happen. this book is very much a dispense of the art form. i think it's one of the great parts of our civilization. >> you want to provide am nation for its survival. >> that's right e i think we need to really think about where

we are now and how to make it relevant and how to make it important in our lives. >> rose: we conclude with salmon rushguy die. he has written his second childrens book, for children and adults. there's something very liberating about the purity of story telling, if you can reduce everything to the pure lie of the narrative. it's a wonderful freedom for a writer. one of the things that happens, in an adult novel, an enormous amount of what happens can be interior. in this kind of book you have to show who people are, what they're feeling, what they're thinking, and why. and you have to show it through what they say and what they do. so everything is exterior rised. hollman and rushdie next.

funding for charlie rose was provided by the following: or maybe you want to help when the unexpected happens. whatever you want to do, members project from american express can help you take the first step. vote, volunteer, or donate for the causes you believe in at membersproject.com. take charge of making a difference. captioning sponsored by

rose communications from our studios in new york city, this is charlie rose. >> classical, modern and intellect sexual physical ballet is an art form that has no written text. former dancer, critic and historian, jennifer homan has written the first ever cultural history of ballet called "apollo's angels" and it calls on a lifetime dedicated to dance. i'm pleased to have her here on the program for the first time. welcome. >> thank you, charlie. >> why did you choose to write this book now? >> well, when i started dancing, i was a kid from the midwest, and i came to new york, and i landed at balance ensheen's -- at balanshine's school.

>> not a bad place to land. >> it's not. >> but here is this russian world where ballet mattered so much and i became engrossed anytime. and as i was learning it, i was also kind of asking, you know, what is this art form that makes us stand in these strange ways, who are these russians. who are these russians, you know, that come to class in elaborate theatrical costumes and demand obedience and precision. it was sort of all extremely fascinating but i really didn't understand it. so those are really the questions that started -- >> so what did you find out? >> well, the answer is that, in part anyway, that this art form began as an etiquette. it began as a form of noble comportment, as a way of

carrying your body, one of the 17th century ballet masters called it "the science of behavior towards others." so you know, it had to do with how you held yourself, how you might pass someone in the street if you were wearing one of those big 17th century dresses. how you would bow, how low you would bow, the ways that you would show civility, politeness. so i found all of these gracious manners were right there in the steps. >> i'm often struck as to how, when you want to define grace of motion, you always say the word ballet in the sentence. even if it's a wide receiver catching a football, a kind of a dance. >> you know, there is a very threatic and almost sportsman-like quality to ballet. >> it's so physical. >> because it's so physical. and yet it's also very

different. i was very interested in that connection when i was training myself because, you know, you encounter some of these issues with injuries and pushing your body to very extreme points and how are you going to cope with that. but you know, ballet has that athletic side but it also has an almost -- it's a devotion. and that makes it a bit different. >> what calls out that devotion? >> you know, it has rituals and practices that bring them out in you. every day, dancers go to class. every day they stand in first position. the music begins. they're all there together, like a congregation, joined in a common practice. it's silent, even though it's to music but the dancer herself or himself is silent, so there's a kind of calm and peace, even when you're also struggling

physically to master very difficult moves and steps. i mean, it means really that you have to shut out some other sides of your life or of yourself even and that can be both -- you know, you find that you can strengthen certain areas but others can be left undeveloped. >> is the prism that you see that through as a dancer or historian? >> i try to go with the history from the point of view of the dancer so i was interested in technique of step and of getting inside the dance: some of the 19th century notations and scribblings of ballet masters are available to us. you know, they exist. they're in the archives in paris. so ballet itself doesn't have a written notation that is widely accepted there are these little

nuggets and fragments, so i took some of those. i put on my ballet shoes, went back in the studio and really tried to understand, you know, what kinds of steps they were doing, how did it feel, were those steps that they were doing, for example in the early 19th century, were those easier than we are doing now? it turns out, no, they're not. >> they're actually incredibly difficult. so any idea of the progress of the art form moving towards a more and more different u. difficult athletic kind of prowess is just not true. there are different moments where that is valued, and the 19th century was one of them. but then the other side was i was trying to take these sort of narrow and technical developments to a much larger cultural and political picture. so what did it mean for ballet, which was an aristocratic art form at its origins to pass through the french revolution?

what happened to it? how did people -- how did it survive? these were the questions you were asking. >> these were the questions i was asking. how did it get through the russian revolution. how did it pass through america and become sort of the cutting edge of modernism. >> see, listen to this though. this is what is interesting about your accomplishment. if somebody had come to me before i knew this book and said, is there a book on the history of ballet. i would have said, of course there is, are you silly? ballet has been with us for a long time. clearly there have been people that looked at ballet and said it deserve's history. this is what the "the new york times" book review said, by tony bentley, november 28, 2010, so not long ago. quote, it has never been done what jennifer has done in apollo's angels. she has written the only history of the art form ballet -- and then he goes on here. in the making of this did you

have any idea this book was going to resonate? i don't think i did. i spent a decade or more really, in my study, in the archives, working away, you know, for me it was personal orb session. i was absolutely taken with trying to unravel this art form and to sort of have thesis conversations with these ghosts of the past because ballet is really -- it doesn't have a written notation so it is difficult to write its history. you have to put it together like a mosaic from a variety of sources, you know, from little fragments here, from a discussion of it in the press, from an image that you might find. so, you know, to me it was -- i was quite surprised when people were so taken with trying to

understand the history, as i was. >> it must be extraordinarily gratifying. >> of course. >> sew it began where? >> ballet began in the course of europe. it was an aristocratic social dance, performed by noblemen, performed by kings. but the steps were really first codified and the five positions, which are the basic grammar of ballet, the abc's that any child taking ballet today would learn the moment they go to class, those were codified at the court of luis xiv. and there was a reason for that. that's because he was absolutely fixated on etiquette, the etiquette of the court, the rules, the symmetries, the ways -- you know if you think of the formal gardens at versailles and the grammar and structure, the dancers are a bit like that and they are imprinted imprintet

aesthetic. so the women in the large, you know, hooped dresses and the men, and it was male form primarily at its origins, a privileged man and the king, and luis himself was a fantastic dancer. you know there's a wonderful story of him in 1653 when he stars in the ballet called "the ballet of the night" and this is just after the time where the authority of the french state has been questioned and he trowrns paris and he performs this ballet. he is 15 years old. and it begins at night and is performed through the night and into the morning. he faces obstacles, nightmares, difficulties, overcomes them all of course. and as the sun is rising, you can see luis as apollo, the sun king, you know, dressed in gold

and diamonds shooting from his head and shoulders and arms. and then performing what were, i think, very low and graceful movements that demonstrated his control and his sense of grandeur so these are the kind of spectacles that first gave ballet it's place. and it was only later that it post-secondaried into sort of a theatrical art. >> what is the next turn of the evolution? >> the next turn is probably how to you take that aristocratic art and turn it through the french revolution in which the aristocracy is targeted and is bitterly hate, right, so you would think ballet would die. but in fact it doesn't. and this is the point at which the male dancer is discredited as the aristocrat is discredited and the art form passes to its

emnights and comes to bagtioni and others and people see a sweet picture of her, but it becomes this world of dreams and yearning and love. >> rose: and who, as we go g. through this journey are the people we want to get to know that have played a pivotal role? you mentioned balance ensheen but go back. >> marie bagtionni is a pivotal figure. there are dancers in russia. the french ballet masser kortica that wrote "swan lake," sleeping beauty years, the nutcracker, and there were other

coreiographers as well. and then there are the colorful figures in the 20th sent true, galanaga, eloquent, took ballet by storm once bolshoi came to the west. people were in the eyes screameling. it was an extraordinary exent very much during the cold war. the next one was perhaps ma dr. a absetskia who was part of the bowl -- the bolshoi and had the aesthetic and the brashness and the vulgarity of the soviet state, and also won over audiences in the west.

not to mention in her own country. >> where did people like nuria fit there this? >> nuria is a pivotal figure because he fits between east and west. he was trained in russia -- well in the soviet union, and then in 1962 -- 1961, when he comes to paris on tour he defects. and it was a great humiliation for the soviets and a triumph. for the west. >> their star wanted to lead them. >> their star wanted to lead and make his life in the west. i don't think it was very easy for nareyev. his life was pulled between worlds.

but it was front page headlines and his detection followed by makavia. and then baryshnikov but hall lay at the center of culture. >> when did ballenshine come? >> blil ballenshine has the history in him. he is born in 1904 in imperial russia so he lives his childhood in czarist russia. he understands all of that glamour and the decadence of that world. and then he sees the whole thing fall apart during the revolution and lives through the modernist moment when everybody is trying to remake culture in the w world, in the image of this new emergi socialist world.

he leaves russia in the early 20's and comes to paris where he joins others and he is the center of everything, by virtue of his biography. he works with diogalev and work together in disprans in england and then lincoln kir steen brings him to the united states in 1933. you would think this would be -- now that we know how wonderful ballenshine is that he would have been welcome in open arms but at the time no one knew who he was here. and it took a long time before he was able to really establish himself and to -- >> rose: what is a long time. >> new york city ballet was founded in 1948 so he spent over 10 years, you know, working in broadway, in hollywood, admired

fred astaire enormously and, you know, bringing together all of these experiences with his own past into a sort of new kind of ballet which he really invented and he did it here. so in the course of the '50's and the '60's, he created some of the most important ballets of our time. >> and there's been no one like him since. >> there's been no one like him since. certainly not of his -- >> what was it that he did and had? >> ballenshine had a very deep sense of ballet's past. this is something i realized doing the histories. i had performed his ballets and they had bits of the history of ballet in them, straight back to lous xiv. he was really able to incorporate the graciousness,

the sense of etiquette and form that lay at the origin of classical ballet and then tie that to sort of an american spirit that had to do with speed and energy and vitality and a kind of untheatrical clarity. so the dancers that he worked with in america were not people usually with deep theatrical training or backgrounds. they were just themselves. and he allowed them to be themselves on stage. so there was this kind of collision of this old-world tradition and a very 20th century new world openness. >> what did he contribute to the rise of the ballerina. >> of course he loved his ballerinas and married many of

them. and he created works of tremendous and lasting value for women. he said, ballet is woman. and i think what he meant by that was, for him, it was a kind of expression of femininity and love and emotion which he was able to put in his ballets. often his ballets have a love story at that heart. it's a love story of some kind. >> is there a political dimension to all of this is. >> i think there is. because at the very beginning it was political art because it was part of the speckle of the french state. >> so that never left it. and it traveled from court to court across europe. you know, especially to the russian court. so it had a political dimension

at every moment but there are even other ways which it always did. for example, take agon, 1957, one of balance enshine's great ballets, and it's a ballet that is a stripped down modernist work in black leotards and pink tights, no sets. a partially atonal score with movements that are both classical and also toe shoes digging into the ground, off balance, angular movements, a kind of extraordinarily exciting cinco pated movement. one of the central pas de deuxes is danced by arthur mitchell and diana adams. diana adams was white and had a cool icy technique. mitchell was black, one of the first black dancers in the company, with, as one ballerina

explained it to me, with fire in his limbs. so there was a sharp contrast. not only was the ballet a black and white costumed ballet but it was black and white in this pas de deux where it was almost sexual moves in it and we're talking 1957 in new york. people at the time were amazed he was able to do this right in the middle of the civil rights movement. so there's always -- there are these resonances everywhere. it wasn't about civil rights. but it has that, you know -- dancers are people on the streets and they bring to ballet a kind of contemporary culture that makes the art form even when it has this kind of old world roots very much of its time. >> in your epilogue, you raised

the question: is ballet dying? >> you know, i raised the question because, here i was, at the end of this 10-year, 400 years of history, 10 years of work, trying to understand where we are now. and what i'm really trying do in the epilogue is open a conversation about ballet and say, you know, there were times and places across the history when ballet matter, usually with some of them that we talked about and it was at the heart of culture and very much on people's minds, and then it fades and it's picked up by other people, other places, and reimagined in a new form. if you look where we are now, i think we're in one of the dips. it's not clear what is going to happen. and this book is very much in

defense of the art form. i think it's one of the great parts of our civilization. >> you want to provide ammunition for its survival? >> that's right. i think we really need to think about where we are now and how to make it relevant and how to make it important in our lives. >> rose: some of the book, people say -- obviously here is the last paragraph. the fab ra jay egg has fallen, the ballet use twitter and the new film black swan indicate a vintage white tutu oozing blood. what is one to do having seen something of such beauty facing eminent extinct? jennifer has written its history and lasting el agee to an

lasting art. this a eulogy: we hope not. >> we do hope not. >> and i didn't see it that way as a eulogy. the epilogue is, you know, the book begins on a personal note and ends on a personal note. so these are sort of feelings about where we are, about where i came from, about how i experience things now, and about the state of the art today, which is an open question. you know, the idea is to open the discussion, not close it. >> apollo's ainge sell a history of ballet. thank you. >> thank you. >> salman rushdie is here. his latest, a childrens book called "luka and the fire of life." it was written for one of his

sons. i am pleased to have him here at this table again. welcome. >> it's always great to be back. >> i thought, when you were coming, this wag to be a conversation about writing novels about the memoir that you're working on, which i will do a little bit but we will save that. because suddenly i got fascinated by childrens books. >> it's a great age for childrenos books for a start and there are an enormous amount of gifted writers working in that field. in my case it was just a consequence of having children. until i had children i wasn't that interested in them. and my older son -- >> he is now 31. >> he is now 31. when he was a kid, he said why don't you ever write books that i want to read? what do you say to that? and i thought, you know, there's so much in other forms where people write for their children, and i thought about john lennon's song "beautiful boy" that he wrote for his son and

paul simon wrote for his son. so i thought if i'm any kind of father you should write for your child's sake and out of that came the stories. and he actually helped me with. i got one of the best pieces i ever had. i showed him one of the first few chapters and i wanted to check it was going ok. >> he was about nine. >> he was 11. i said what do you think of it? he said good dad. he was a little unenthusiastic. i said good? he said, yes, some people might be bored. >> which character did he like? >> he liked the relationship between the father and the son which is at the heart of the book. >> it was the story of a boy who travels to the magic rome to find his father. >> in the first one, he is trying -- his father has lost the gift of telling stories and he has to go back to the source with a sea of stories to try to

restore. but in this one, the younger brother, in both cases the children have to save the father. the father is pretty useless. >> that's true of both books. the theory of children trying to save their parents. >> they're not trying to kill their father. maybe if you were 15 it would be a different story. in this one the father is older because this is the child of his old age and at certain points she fading out. the fire of life, as you speak, and his son knows, because his father has always told him, just like one step to the right of the world we live in is this other world of magic and enchantment, that if you can get into that world one of the great treasures is the fire of life itself. and if you can steal it's, it's an ancient story of the theft of fire, if you can bring it back you can save your father's life. and he is trying to do that, while being playground by an attendant spirit would looks like his father but who is

actually the angel of death, death coming to suck the life out of his father, and his father's life becomes less and less translucent and expresses the urgency. >> what was the name? >> nobo daddy. that was not a name used by me. william blake used that as a name for god. blake wrote poems where he complains about god as being the absent father who is never there, what help are you? and i used it more as a figure of death than god. >> what did your son think of that character? >> i thought that it might be too scary and i was worried. but it turned out to be his favorite character. i thought maybe this kid has a little bit of a dark side and i can push it a little bit. but, no, he ended up with this anti-father -- >> that was his favorite character. >> his favorite character. >> you second son milan. >> milan, yes. >> so milan comes along and

said, ok, dad, where is my book? >> yes. he read the first book. he must have been nine and a half, 10. and immediately began the campaign about the injustice of his life and how his brother had this treasure and he didn't have anything so where was his book. what he didn't know is when i wrote the first book, i actually enjoyed the experience of writing it so much that the moment he was born i had it in my mind, just let him grow up a bit and maybe i will write a book for him. so i already had the thought but i let him feel he pushed me into it. >> why did you enjoy the form. >> there's something very liberating about the pureness of story telling. if you can reduce everything that you're doing to the pure line of the narrative, it's a wonderful freedom for a writer. and one of the things that happens is that, whereas in an adult novel an enormous amount of what happens can be interior, it has to do with what happens

inside. in this kind of book you have to show who people are, what they're feeling, what they're thinking, and why. and you have to show it entirely through what they say and what they do so everything is exteriorized. everything is outside. >> but luka and the fire of life is about mortality. >> yes. the question is what happens if you're in danger of losing your father, what do you do then? i think these days, kids are more grown up certainly than i was when i was 13 years old and they can face all kinds of varied questions. >> it's an interesting period between 13 and 14, between childhood and something somethi. i think it's very interesting, this borderland and i think some of the most interesting writing now is set in that borderland. obviously there's rolling and phillip pollman's books which adults read with just as much

pleasure as children. there's books like "the dog in the nighttime" and then books that started out as adult books that acquired a second readership among younger readers so i have been interested in how blurred that border shrine beginning to be and how much interesting work there is in it. >> luka is heroon's younger brother. they're linked. >> it's the same father, the story teller rashid and his wife soriya and his father has his heads in the clouds and the mother is the one that says that life is real and you have to, you know, face it. he is more boring. >> what was rashid known as? the shaw of blah. >> the shaw of blah because he is a bad story teller. that's a bad review. if people liked him they called him the ocean of notion but if they don't he is the shaw of

blah. >> and luka encounters the father's ghost. >> and he has to set off an a quest through the majorric world like classical quest narratives facing adversaries and overcoming a series of obstacles and finally getting to the center fire. >> and you want to say this is not a sequel to this. they are companions. i think they stand alone. i wanted to write it as a stand alone book. they're related. in the way that this is maybe an arrogant comparison but in the way that through the looking grass and alice's adventures in wonder land, one is not a sequel of one other. you can read one without the other. but they're related. in that way i think they're related. >> there are also video games in this. >> yeah. because the video game, in our time, has used many of the

techniques of the classical quest narrative, the business of levels and saving and proceeding to the next is very much like what happened. if you take myths like beowulf, the hero arrives in the village to kill the man center. he kills the man center friend el and immediately face's bigger monster, which is friend el's mother. so he has to go up to do another level, a bigger challenge. i think video games, the people that have devised them have carefully studied the quest narrative and they know that you use this structure, because the structure is not only about killing dragons and overcoming obstacles but about personal growth. the boy grows up as he overcomes the obstacles. >> it is always about story telling. >> yes. i think there are moments in luka, where, in a slip of the tongue, he refers to something as the onliest story. the demon figure tells him off

and said, you of all people, the son of a story teller, you should know there's no such thing. he says man alone with the story telling animal. he says, do rats tell tales? two pour peses have purposes? no, they don't. man alone. >> it's always about the children saving the parents. >> right. first, it's more fun, isn't it? if it's a parent saving a child, boring story. other way around, it's more interesting. but also i think it's because there is a sense, an adult sense that we feel that our children are in some way our salvation. >> the writing of the books in the end was about the joy of your life. they brought you the most joy at the end of the day when push came to shove. >> no question. as a result they were the two most joyful books i have ever written. they were the most fun to write because they're written out of

love. they are acts of love. >> i understand that milan got first look. >> nobody was allowed to see it until he approved it. >> if he said this doesn't work or i don't like this -- >> i would have been in bad trouble. >> did he ever say it? >> no, he didn't. he was very -- as i say, i needed him to reassure me on certain points along the way and i fortunately got the reassurance. and there are one or two things that were in the book because he more or less forced me to do it. he has a dog called bear. and luke ahas a dog called bear and a dare called dog. -- and a and a bear called dog. and i used to say to him, your call him to bed you have to say dog so it was a family joke. >> is rashid you?

>> he is two people. he comes from two people. yes, of course he is a comedy version of me. but he is also a kind of comedy version of my dad. because my family was the first story teller in my life, you know, and when my three sisters and i, when we were little, he would tell bedtime stories. he was very good at it. and the way that i first heard some of the famous stories of the east, sinbad the sailor and alibaba was in his versions of it's. so he was my shaw of blah if you like and rashid is a little bit both of us. >> do you fear growing old, the diminishing power of age? >> i'm not crazy about it. i have to say, as that great line of woody allen's, if he was happy if he would live on through his movies and he said, no, he would prefer to live on through his apartment. [laughter] that's my opinion.

you know, i'm not in favor of growing old. but i don't mind it either. you just have to accept what there is. there's a point as an artist, this point in your life when you have done a lot where you do have to look harder for the next direction, you have to make sure you're not just repeating yourself and find fresh challenges. >> so why have you come now to writing memoir? >> it was instinct. the truth; after everything that happened around "the satanic verses" during those years, there was a writer bit of me sitting on my shoulder that was saying, good story, take notes. but then for long time at the end of that period, i didn't want to write about it. i thought i would just come out of it and i don't want to put myself into it. i want to go back to the day job and i want to write novels. and i just thought there's going to come a time when you feel ready and i'm just going to leave it to instinct.

>> and instinct has spoken. >> instinct spoke earlier this year. something said what do you want to do next? and i found myself thinking well maybe it's time to tell that story. so i have now -- my guesstimate i have written about a quarter of it. >> it's a memoirs of just that kind? >> no. >> it's a memoir of life? >> yes. initially i thought i wanted to write about that nine year period. but i thought if i'm going to tell that truthfully i have to make all of the people real including myself and that means telling the whole story. i think to the reader, the interest is always the same. you have to see characters on the page that are vivid and that you're interested in and you want to know what happens and you care about what happens to them. so in a sense, it's novelistic and i have to write it in the same way i would write a novel. i have to write people and make them come alive on the page and make them people that you would care about.

but in a way, one of the reasons for waiting was to feel that i would have the proper writer's distance from the material and could approach it like a writing task. >> rose: so therefore the question, how now do you see that incredible period, perhaps differently than you saw it, and did you know about it -- >> the thing i instinctively felt at the time that nobody else really saw was this was not an iso late incident. a lot of people treated it, even people -- either people on my side or against -- >> i don't think people understood it until it came along with you and said, ok, this is something that exists and what's it about? >> but very few people wanted to see it as one incident among many. it was seen as an isolated thing. one of the things i tried do at the time, there was a larger

problem. you know, it wasn't just me but the attacks on other writers, on individual freedoms, and so on, inside this radical islamic world, it was very widespread and often using the same language used against my book but much less publicized because they were happening in arab countries. >> so what did you find out, without talking about a particular individual, i know chris hitchens said to me when he thinks about his life, one of the proud moments is that he was there for you. >> the thing i feel very moved by is the way in which my friends moved closer to me and stood beside me and helped me through that. and christopher hitchens was one of the people who undoubtedly did that. and certainly at the point -- there was a key moment when up finally was able to get a meeting with president clinton, which is the first time the american administration had ever taken an interest. christopher was very knee

pushing for that meeting, talking to people he knew inside the administration and then -- he wasn't the only person. >> tony blair was too. >> blair was trying to make it happen, too. the british ambassador, etc. so there were a group of people. but of my friends, christopher was very connected in washington and he used everything he had in order to try bring about what he felt needed to happen. and i mean, you notice your friends need. >> you have also said something very interesting, that your sense of respect for the brave people that stood in line to buy satanic verses, that they somehow had a kind of courage. >> i think that there was, you know, a general, very widespread reaction amongst just ordinary people that they didn't feel like being told what they could read and what they couldn't read by a priest, fanatical priest in a far away country. and i think the people did stand

up for that book as a point of principal, not just readers but people working in stores and publishing companies. there was a collective principle and i feel proud to have been involved in that. >> rose: were were the people that said oh, i can't, i'm sorry, i can't be there for you. >> there were a few. there weren't that many. but there were a few. there was a certain feeling that maybe i had brought it on myself and deserved everything i got. >> anybody ever tell you that? >> yes. >> did they really? >> yes. a few people here. >> and islam itself today -- >> i know. that's a big subject. >> but i think for me to answer in one sentence, the interesting thing is the war not between the islam and the west but look what happened in iran after the last election, you can see a whole generation of young people, you know, rejected that very

conservative, repressive, inhibiting regime, that they are stuck with. and i think if you look across the muslim world you will see that. you will see a younger generation that really doesn't want that world. >> they want a modern islam. >> they want a more open society. they want the society in which they can be the people they choose to be rather than the people -- rather than be forced into the very narrow world that they are obliged to. >> >> rose: there's always this thing that perplexed me. it is sometimes said as the west versus islam which is like geography versus a religion. it doesn't make sense. >> it doesn't make sense. and i think that there obviously is a kind of radical islam that is opposed to an idea of the west and wishes to attack it. >> what idea of the west is it that that wing of islam is opposed to? >> imperialist, oppressive, you

know, and the power center that they need to overthrow. >> it's about power though. in the end it's about power. with groups like al qaeda, it's no to the bring about a holier world. it's about to bring about a world that they're in control of. it's not about faith; it's about power. and i think it's important to understand -- >> does the koran have to power? >> koran is like any holy book; it contradicts itself. you can find in the koran texts of great tolerance and others that sound pretty intolerant. >> which promote conflict. >> and the old testament, too, you can find in these books the text that justify the point of view you happen to have already. >> so when you look at the conflict today, will change come from sphwhim. >> the truth is, i don't know. i do feel that the women are the

most uniformly oppressed group in the islamic world and they have a key problem. >> if you go from country to country to country, it is not necessarily what you might expect to who is the most repressive. >> it's true. this is one of the problems when you try and, you know, group all of these different cultures under the single name of islam, because they're not -- one of the things that was interesting to me is to see what happens when people move beyond religion. what is in the world now is called secularization and it struck me writing this book that after all, we know of many religions which have ceased to be active so to speak, which are like extinct volcanos and the greek myths of today were originally the greek religion

and had indivisions and priests no doubt and that's true of the aztecs and the nor dick religions. the world is full of dead religions. in my mind, when people stop believing in them literally is that you can then believe in them as a more beautiful way, as stories and many of these stories are very found and contain great truths like the greek myths and inform certainly my work. so i have an objection to religion that still has this structure of power and that try to force themselves down poem's throats as being the only truth. >> but are you equally offended by the whole notion of proselytizing for religion? >> i'm not in favor of it, no. i think i'm more in the kind of hitchens dawkins camp as any other. >> is that atheist or agnostic. >> i would say atheist. but we all have a slightly different take on it. and my take on it is that --

which is unlike hitchins, that i think if you happen to be religious and the brings you nourishment and solace and inspiration, whatever, that's your business, not mine. and i don't see that it's my business to tell you that you're an idiot. i might think it. >> or as chris kristopherson said, to get you through the night. >> yes. but the religious sensibility is moving more and more into public affairs and politics and trying to determine the way in which an entire society should shape its exef what path it should follow and then i have a quarrel with it. in india where nobody thought of hinduism as extremist, there's a militant extremist hinduism and it can be true in parts of america there can be an extreme faction of christianity. >> how will this play itself out? is there an end game?

>> well, i have always felt, in many of these ancient myths that i tried to use in luka and the fire of life, any situations suggest there's a moment when the human beings outgrow the gods. there's the nordic myth of the twilight of the gods. after that, there ain't no gods anymore. it's up to man to deal with their own lives. even in the greek and roman myths, there's that moment when the gods stop meddling in human affairs and they step back and say now it's over to you. i see that as being related in a human life to the process of growing old. that when you're young, even adolescent, you need parents, you need figures of guidance, even if you're rebelling against them, doesn't matter, you still need them. but there's a point where you move from that to making your own life decisions and choices and own way in the world. and i see that religious experience as being part of the

childhood and adolescence of the human race. and when we grow up, hopefully we grow out of it. >> the book is called luka and the fire of life. salmon rushdie. great to see. >> on the next charlie rose, davis guggenheim, the filmmaker much his new movie is called "waiting for superman" about american education today. >> i don't know what college i want to go to but i know i want to be a teacher. >> i want to be a nurse; i want to be a doctor. >> how come? >> because i would like to help somebody in need. >> you wake up every morning and you know that kids are getting a really crappy education right now. >> so you think most of the kids are getting a dropy education right now? >> oh, i don't think they are. i know they are. >> even though kids are getting stupider every year or something is wrong with the education system. >> i just try to do my best in

school and make my grandmother proud. >> among 30 developed countries we rank 25th in math and 21st in science. every category we have fallen behind. but kids in usa rank number one in confidence. >> i think 60,000 people have gone to this school. 40,000 didn't graduate. this is the damage the school has done to this neighborhood. >> a child that doesn't finish high school will earn less in ad be eight times more likely to go to prison. >> i want to go to school. >> for these kids their only chance of going to a great school depends on if their number is picked in a lottery. >> if francisco doesn't get in, is there another chance? >> no. >> your children and future generation are on the bridge of the titanic and everyone is going to drown. >> someone has taken an interest

in you, someone loves you and recognize the importance of education, and the first student selected... 20! >> oh, my god. >> 9. >> it takes a lot about rage and a lot of good examples to say, yes, we can do this. >> when you see a great teacher, you are seeing a work of art. >> i want my kids to have better than what i had. >> 18. >> 10. >> 12. >> 2. >> and the last number... >> the tide has turned and we know what works. you know, 10 years ago when i made the first film there was a feeling of oh, you can't go there. you can't teach those kids, or those parents don't care. some of those things are still real and kids come in with real problems and parents thank the are not partners but the kip jones have proven that you can do it. so we have the proof that you

can do it. we have got smart people who are seeing it as possible, and the third piece, i think, is us. clambering and saying, we have to do this now. >> what is there -- >> i think it's entrenched forces. the system is built for harmony among adults. the union is one piece. the central bureaucracy in that piece. in some cases the politics, when the democratic party has been getting tons of money from the unions for years to do very little. i think obama is changing that. >> because he was looking for a place that he could say to constituents i'm prepared to take on traditional constituents and you would say, where, and he would say schools. >> i think the most courageous thing obama has done is his position on education because it is flying in the case of his biggest supporters. but that's what the film is about. people will debate i got this wrong, you know, or this is

unfair. but bringing more people to the table and saying, this is an outrage. a kid shouldn't have to win the lottery to have a school. to have a great school. ♪ ♪ captioning sponsored by rose communications captioned by media access group at wgbh access.wgbh.org