>> rose: welcome to the program. tonight, salman rushdie talks about his new memoir "joseph anton." >> i just felt emotionally ready to do it, i think. i knew that i was going to do it. i always knew i was going to do it which is why i kept a journal all those years to make sure i remembered the detail, the dailiness of it. but for a long time i was absolutely not ready to write it. i didn't want to go back into that dark tunnel having just come out of it. but, you know, the thing that happened to my life was that it turned into a thriller. it turned into a thriller/spy novel. >> rose: what's going to happen to him and the experience of hiding. >> suddenly there were spies in

it, there were secret policemen. there were unknown refugees, there were international assassins, all this stuff a that you normally come across in a certain kind of genre, fiction, except that it really happened to me. now, in retrospect that's a good story to tell. at the time it was no fun to live through and i think i needed recovery time. >> rose: we conclude with another literary figure, martin amis. his new novel is called "lionel as bow, state of england." >> i have this theory that everyone's a writer when they're adolescent they communicate with each other, they write diaries and poems and it's a marvelous coming of age with yourself, self-awareness dawns. and 99% of the population move on from there. but writers never do.

>> rose: rushdie and amiswhen we continue.

>> rose: sir salman rush city here. he is the author of 11 novels: three works of non-fiction, a collection of short stories. on february 14, 1989, valentine's day, a religious edict, a fatwa, was issued against him by the ayatollah khamenei. the fatwa called for his death "satanic verses" was accused of blasphemy against islam. he lived under the fatwa for nine years. on september 24, 1998 iran lifted the death threat against him. now he's written a memoir about those dark years called "joseph anton." i'm pleased to have salmon

rushdie back at this table. >> thank you. >> it's always good to have you at this table. tell me about what you think is going on today about this movie. >> you know, i think in the-- of course this video of what may or may not be-- we don't even know if the movie exists. >> rose: it's a trailer, yeah. >> obviously i think that was a flash point. i feel now as we see it continuing that it's more than that. i don't think it's entirely about the movie anymore. i think unfortunately we live in an age of manufactured outrage. there's a kind of outrage industry where people deliberately pick things which they think can be used to incite large-scale violence. >> rose: if it involves mohammed it's likely to. >> and one of the rps why in my book i use this metaphor of hirsch congress's movie "the birds" is that i felt sometimes

that what happened-- i have felt very often that what happened to me was a kind of prologue to a story which now engulfs all of us. you know? >> rose: the story of-- >> the story of the rise of radical islam and the ease with which it turns to violence and the kind of lang wij and rhetoric it repeatedly uses. which is very hostile towards what one might roughly call democracy. you can actually see pretty much a straight-line connection between what happened back then in 1989 to this particular book and writer and translators and publishers. you can-- through the 9/11 attacks right up to the present day. now we see the storm of the birds, you know? and i felt often back in those days that one of the reasons why people reacted to what happened to me with a measure of

bewilderment and confusion is that we had no frame of reference. you know? we had no context to put an event like that in. it just seemed bizarre and kind of out of left field and a kind of medieval attack being launched in the 20th century. and now i think we see a larger picture and we begin to see how these things fit together into what is, after all, one of the leading-- the major narratives of our time. >> rose: somebody said that the film "the innocence of muslims," which i think is the name of it, people have seen a trailer on the internet and i don't know whether the film exists, it would never have been made if you had been punished for "the satanic verses." >> well, you never learn-- learn never to ask "if" questions. the internet is full of stuff. if you want to find vilifications of anything, it's. there you can find it. >> rose: anything or anybody. >> yes. the internet is like that. so if you're looking for material to get het up about,

you will find it. >> rose: so that's the question. what are people who are prepared to latch on to something like this movie looking for? >> they're looking for, unfortunately, i think, one of the phenomena of our time is the idea that people are-- people find their identity in their rage. people find their self-hood in terms of what they most object to. >> rose: because it's larger than them they find-- >> it becomes like a collective act of-- you know, by having an enemy, you know, and by launching yourself in fiery against that enemy you seem to have a better feeling of who you are, you know? and that's what happened in my case. it becomes a kind of identity politics. people who are looking to find a narrowly defined but passionately feverishly

violently held definition of identity find it very easily by finding a target and attacking that target. >> rose: is it about modernity at all? >> it's something about that. and it's something about imbalances of wealth. many of these countries-- many of these young mostly men... >> rose: mostly uneducated in many cases because they have not had the opportunity. >> and their prospects are kind of nil. the idea that chances of getting a decent job, raising a family, bringing it up in an ordinary way, etc., they are very low. so there's that-- that creates anger, too. and it's very easy to turn that anger against the wealthiest bits of the world. >> rose: has it touched you again? >> not really. i mean, every so often-- essentially for the last more than ten years now it's sort of been fine. every so often somebody shakes a fist in my direction. but at this point... >> rose: from the street or-- >> no, no, i mean politically. i mean politically. usually coming out of iran somebody says something

unpleasant. but... >> rose: there's been no action by the iranian government at all because of this? >> no, it's been essentially down to the odd rhetorical remark now for more than ten years. >> rose: why did you decide to write the memoir now? >> well, i just felt emotionally ready to do it, i think. i knew that i was going to do it. i always knew i was going to do it when the why i kept a journal all those years to make sure that i remembered the detail, the dailiness of it. but for a long time i was absolutely not ready to write it. i didn't want to go back into that dark tunnel having just come out of it. but, you know, the thing that happened to my life was that it sort of turned into a thriller. it turned into a thriller/spy novel. >> rose: what's going to happen to him and the experience of higd. >> suddenly there were spies in it, there were secret policemen. there were unknown refugees. there were international assassins there was all this stuff that you come across in a

kind of genre, fiction, except that it really happened to me. now, in retrospect that's a good story to tell. at the time it was no fun to live through and i just-- i think i needed recovery time. >> rose: here is a scene from an interview you and i did in 1992. i'll never forget how many cars i had to change before i arrived to see you to do this interview. this was 1992, i believe. >> yes. >> rose: roll tape. march, 1992. most of us cannot imagine what it's like for you. there are all kinds of important issues which we want to talk about. but give us a sense of the pain, the isolation, the looking over your shoulder, the-- >> well, it was very bad at the beginning because it was like-- it was as if-- i mean, you have to imagine that every single procedure of your ordinary life is destroyed. i mean, that you can't go for a walk outside your front door. you can't see your child. that you can't meet your

friends. that every single thing that you think of as the most trivial, ordinary thing suddenly becomes impossible. and that you're living in places which are not yours, which are-- i mean, sometimes okay and sometimes very comfortable, sometimes very cramped, always very temporarily. >> rose: always the impersonal nature of a hotel room or somebody else's house. >> there's none of your stuff there. i've left without any of my possessions. i've left literally the clothes i stood up in. i then had to have somebody go into the house and get me some things out in the way of clothes which was done. but it meant-- i still don't have with me 99% of my possessions. i haven't seen them for three years. >> rose: here is the book "joseph anton, a memoir." joseph anton the title. >> well, there was a point when the police asked me to come up with the a pseudonym which was partly for practical reasons and partly because i had to write checks, i had to rent properties

in a name that was not mine. it was also sort of that they could train themselves not to accidentally use my real name if they were going for a walk around the block or something and just blow the cover of where i was so they asked me to come up with a name. and they also said "don't make it an indian name, too obvious. people can put two and two together." so i was asked to give up the etist inty of my mine so i decided to retreat into literature. i started trying out combinations of writers' names and most of them were just ludicrous but in the end i came up with conrad and chekhov. joseph conrad and anton chekhov. and that became the name that was used for i think almost 11 years. >> rose: you dedicate it "to my children and their mothers and to everyone who helped." who helped? >> well, that's, i think, one of the major subjects of this book and one of the great pleasures of writing it has been to be

able to say who helped because obviously at the most obvious level the police helped. >> rose: and we should make the point that the british government chose to help you because a foreign government had threatened one of their citizens. >> yes, it was because of the state attack, not because there were people who didn't like me. it was because of a state-sponsored terrorist attack. i mean, they told me on the first day that they believed that there was a high probability that there would be a state-sponsored attack against me and that that's why i was being offered it. so, yes, at the most obvious level the british government, the intelligence services, the special branch secret police. but beyond that-- i mean, i think one of the great lessons that i drew from this whole event was the power of friendship because i am really lucky, i think, in that i was surrounded by a group of astoningly loyal, courageous, principled people who went

through amazing lengths to help me. sometimes moving out of their own homes so they could live in them. and just in every second practical, emotional support, every kind of support a human being could wish in a kind of extreme situation they gave me. i mean, i remember a friend of mine, bill buford, who was then editing a magazine who afterwards worked for the "new yorker." he said to me "your friends are going to form an iron ring around you and you will be able to live inside it." that's what they did. remember, this is the kind of literary community famously leaky, incapable of keeping secrets, we love gossip above all things. >> rose: yes, yes, yes. >> and this was the community that absolutely shut its mouth, kept every secret, told nobody anything and allowed me to have a kind of life for ten or 11 years. >> rose: but there were times in which you had to do things that must have said to you "am i doing the right thing, hiding?"

>> yeah. it's very... >> rose: because it's humiliating. >> it's moo-hyun mill@ing. that was the overwhelming and repeating feeling. being humiliated. if you're in a house that you've rented and something goes wrong, there's a plumbing leak, you know, you have to call a plumber to the house, the plumber isn't allowed to know that i theme so i have to hide in another room. that kind of thing was demeaning and just-- it made you feel sick. >> rose: there are also instances in which you have talked about in this book the apology. >> yeah. well, that was, i think-- i say it very openly in the book, i think, the stupidest thing i ever did. and all i can say in my defense is that, you know, i was reading through my journals for this-- when i was writing this and it became very clear-- if you read the journals for that period-- that the person writing them is not in a good mental shape. i think i was probably in the most despairing condition i'd

ever been in my life. there was a lot of external pressure on me both through the media and profrom politicians. >> rose: it affects everything. your ability to write, your ability to feel good. your ability-- >> all of that. and there was a lot of people saying "you broke this, you fix it." there was a lot of pressure of that kind. "this is your fault, you need to find a solution to the problem." a lot of that. and when i was feeling in this very low state of mind i allowed myself essentially-- i only blame myself-- to be suckered into this encounter with sort of islamic leaders who were promising me the world, you know, we'll fix everything, we'll get rid of it. and they had produced this document i was supposed to sign acknowledging the muslim faith. and i mean i should never have signed it because i'm not religious, i never have been, but i did. >> rose: what's interesting, too, is what you know know about how the i toe la chose to issue the fatwa. >> i know for sure he never saw a copy of the book let alone

read a 600 page novel in english. >> rose: at his age and at the time... >> rose: and he was unwell. we know what was happening in iran at the time was that the revolution was in some trouble because of their iraq war having not gone at all well. and he was essentially looking for a way to rally the troops and it was my bad luck to be khomeini's last stand. >> rose: they visited him on the death when when he was very ill. >> and they told there was a book against islam. he was a shrewd and wily old man and saw this was something he could use to his advantage and did. i've often thought that if the book had been published a year later or he had passed away six months earlier we wouldn't be having this conversation. there would have been no need to write this book. >> rose: there's the idea of hiding which bothers you in retrospect. the idea of, in a sense, signing some kind of apology bothers you. what else. >> well, i mean just the loss of

ten years of my life. not being able to kick a football in the park with my son kind of thing. but i also felt i learned a lot about myself and that's a gain, if you like. >> rose: what did you learn? >> well, after this moment we've just discussed, this kind of rock-bottom moment, i think it clarified something for me. i think my mind became clearer and i thought after that i'm not going to be stupid like this anymore. i'm not going to try to make compromises on issues where there should be no compromise. i'm not going to apologize and appease and i'm not going to try and tug the fore lock and bend the knee. i'm just going to stand up for what i think is right and i'm going to fight in my corner and if you don't like it; you don't like it. >> rose: did you find people disappointed you? >> relatively few. as i say, my main memory of solidarity and friendship and love from the people i knew. >> yes, there were one or two

moments when writers who i would have hoped would have been on my side ended up not being. there were one or two moments when publishers behaved disappointingly but, you know... >> rose: do you now put yourself in some place of the context of the history of literature because of what was at stake here? >> yes, i mean, i do-- it's-- i'm not saying this to glorify myself but i think this was a-- an unusually violent attack on the greatest principle of all, which is the principle of the freedom of speech. the principle without which all the other freedoms collapse. the bedrock principal principle of a free society was freedom of expression and this is an assault such as we've not experienced in a long time. and i think, you know-- i mean, i try and work out whether this was a victory or defeat and i think at the end of the day if you look at the marrow issue--

the attack on that book and its author and publishers-- we didn't do so badly. we stood up for the publication of the book, it's freely available. there was an attempt to suppress the author and he's talking to you. >> rose: and there were people who stepped forward who you did not necessarily know or know well. >> who came closer. >> rose: what came closer who said-- >> well, one of which was your friend and mine christopher hitchens. >> rose: came forward and said "there is a principle here." >> yes, i had known christopher a little but he wasn't one of my close inner circle but he became it. as answer lit choice. he stepped closer and closer to me and that's somebody you want on your side in a fight. i was lucky to have him. >> rose: at least representing you rhetorically. (laughs) >> yes. >> rose: what would you do differently? >> i don't know. i often ask myself that. one thing i think is-- well, i would try not to make that appeasement mistake. i sometimes think i was wrong to

accept the please instruction to not go home. i think the only reason i did was because initially we all thought this would be of very short duration. the police thought it, too. it can't be allowed to stand that the head of state of one country orders the murder of a citizen of another country who's living in the country he's a citizen of and has committed no crime. it's outrages you. so basically i was told let's just lie low for a few days, be quiet in the countryside, let the diplomats do their work, let the politicians do their work, it will be fixed. then all of us believed that this was a matter of a few days. and ended up being 11 years. but what i'm saying is that when i agreed with them that i should not go h h h fmeor a few days i thought i was agreeing not to go home for only a few days. in retrospect i think i should have gone home and not gone all these wanderings.

>> rose: did the world community of leaders come home for you? >> slowly. i think the victory of this thing that we defend was a victory of ordinary people. the people who really came together with extraordinary sol dare tae was the community of book sellers. above all i think that was the front line. that was where there were bombs and threats and menaces and ordinary people just-- the public, the reading public. i think there was an enormous support from them and they kept this case alive and kept the issues in people's minds. eventually politicians came on board. i think one of the big moments, actually was not long after president clinton became president there was a real shift of-- in washington. and i was able eventually to go and meet with him. the day before thanksgiving. when he was just about to go pardon his turkey. so i squeezed in... >> rose: pardon me please. pardon you.

>> but i think the president of the united states making a statement of support was incredibly significant because it made a lot of other european allies who had been a bit kind of nervous. it stiffened their spine and got them behind the case then the next thing that happened was the election of the blair government in particular the fact that he put robin cook as foreign secretary and robin cook had a really personal passion to get this sorted out and suddenly there was a kind of energy there which there hadn't before. he said "we're going to fix this it can't stand, leave it to me, it's going to be done." so suddenly there was an energy in the british government supported by-- real support from the united states. >> rose: how about people in the muslim community? >> well, one thing that's interesting is that during these

years there was a lot of support from muslim writers and intellectuals. there was a book published here and in europe which was called "for rushdie" which was essays by a hundred different muslim writers, journalists, intellectuals in my defense. so there was a large attempt eventually by people who were not fanatics to say that this is an important principle and some of them said it was a good book. >> rose: i think the surprising thing about this-- i'm not sure how many people have read the book-- >> well, a lot of people were attacking it. that's for sure. it was interesting also that three years ago when it was the 20th anniversary of this threat a lot of the people who were interviewed in england who had been part of the opposition to the book-- and i think all of them said it had been a mistake. that the attack on the novel had been a mistake. so that's encouraging. some of them even said so because they accepted the free speech argument.

>> rose: any iranians? >> no. no, no, no. but this is-- the iranians i think most you can hope is that they just have other fish to fry. >> rose: you quote conrad husted "i must live until i die." >> yes, one of the characters in his books said this and it became a motto for me to keep going and i think-- a thing that i'm proud of in those years is that i managed to continue with my work as a writer and i wrote quite a lot of books and i wrote a novel for my son, a young adult novel, i wrote a collection of short stories "east/west." i wrote three novels. all of that work was done during this very difficult time. and i also think-- i mean, i set myself the task of trying to continue to be the writer i've always been. not to succumb to fear and write scared little books. not to succumb to anger and write vengeful tracts.

go on down your road, i told myself. >> rose: the book is dedicated to your children. this is in part a book to-- so they know the full story? >> yes, yes. it is. both of them have read it. i think they both like it. i think both of them are a little weirded out by it, having so much of their family story out there in public. >> rose: (laughs) yes, they're probably weirded out by that. >> but for instance my older son whose mother sadly passed away of cancer during this period, for him i think it was very important to see this portrayed of her. >> rose: did you speak at her service. >> yes, i did. we remained-- we were very close all the way to the end of her life. >> rose: when you look back and think about the implications of this and where it has come you also think about your father. who didn't want you to be a writer. >> yes, "what will i tell my

friends?" he said. (laughter) >> rose: he wanted you to be a lawyer? >> yes and he had a textile factory and he wanted me to help him run it. i didn't see myself running a textile factory. >> rose: your mother you describe as gossipy? >> yes, but in indian families the women are the keepers of the stories so she knew all the stuff on everybody so... >> rose: and what did cambridge do for you? >> well, i loved being there. i think it was a moment after an unhappy time at boarding school in england where i discovered, if you like, in england that i could like, be apart of. and my father had been there before me and i think it's important for him that i went and i must say one of the things i loved doing in this book is make the portrait of him in the first hundred pages because as i wrote it it showed me more and more the extent to-to-which i'm my father's son. how much of his world view, how many of his interests also...

>> rose: he died before-- >> he died before "the satanic verses" was published. >> rose: but he lived to see you as a writer. >> yes, he lived to see his children succeed. >> rose: did he say anything about it before he died? >> for a long time he wouldn't talk to me about my work at all. >> rose: why? >> i don't know. i don't know, he was like that. then on my 40th birthday which was just five months before he died he wrote me a long letter about-- in which he just talked about my work. and i suddenly realized he'd thought very deeply a lot about it, it mattered a lot to him and he understood it. it's an incredible letter to have received. >> rose: what did it mean to you? >> it meant everything. i carry it around wherever i go. i always have it. >> rose: what does it say? >> he talks about my work and shows... >> rose: shows that he was aware and participating and proud? >> and proud of it and just got it. understood it. >> rose: and your mom? >> my mother always-- you know, my mother was never-- i mean, my mother read "midnight's

children" and lie liked it. she tended to like shorter things so her favorite book of mine was a book of short stories and a book of essays so she could read little bits at a time. but, yeah... >> rose: it should be said that beyond the fact that an idea was a victim of this, the idea of freedom and expression and the role of writers in our civilization all of that were attacked in this. but also i guess it should be said that there were some other victims who lost their life because they were touched, connected. >> yes, i mean, that's what i mean. it was a real threat and unfortunately some of the people who were at the sharp end of it were people who were more vulnerable than i because they were not protected as i was. >> rose: go ahead-- >> first, my italian translator was attacked and stabbed and beaten and fortunately survived.

then my japanese translator was actually murdered at his university in an elevator. clearly a professional hit. then minor wejian publisher was shot three times in the back and i think should have died. made a miraculous recovery. >> rose: so what's missing? some people will argue, as kofi annan did here with me it's a time for moderate islam to speak out against those way on the extreme ended a separating radical fundamental violence and some say by doing so not being true to the koran. >> well, i just think... >> rose: so what's necessary to happen for people to somehow get beyond what is clearly-- because i think islam is the fastest-growing in the world. >> uh-huh. >> rose: and much beyond the

arab world. >> yup. in my lifetime there has been a growing intolerance inside islam. i mean, not everybody, but a movement of intolerance. the islam that i knew about as a boy in india was a very much more gentle, secularized open thing. the rise of this new extremism. i mean, first of all the people it most oppresss is other muslims. the taliban oppress the people of afghanistan, you know? and i think that moment of this radical fervor needs to fade. it needs to be overcome. >> rose: how will that happen? >> from the inside. >> rose: that's what i said. it has to come from the inside. >> it has to comele from the inside. no way it can be imposed from the outside. >> rose: most religions have conflict within. tensions within. whether it's protestant, whether it's-- i know less about, say,

hindu and other religions like that but there is a push and pull. in chris clanty there's a fundamentalist urge as well. >> in islam there's a sunni shi'a conflict. >> rose: which has to do with the beginnings. >> but mainly it's this question of sensitivity, of refusal to allow the core subject of the religion, the birth of the religion, the life of the prophet, to be questioned. it seems to me this is a battle we've had before. the writers of the european enlightenment out of whose ideas comes the american constitution among other things, they knew that their fight was not with the state, it was with the church. in those days it was the church that had inquisitions, anathemas excommunications, etc., all kinds of weapons by which it tried to limit what could be discussed and not discussed. and those great writers--

voluntary, monotest cue, russo-- they knew that in order to create freedom of express they had to overcome the power of the church is to set elementing points. that's what we owe them. that they won that battle. now we find the same battle in another religion. voltaire. >> rose: your father, was he an islamic scholar? n some ways? >> much more so than i. he could speak and read classical arabic and persian. he was much more scholarly than i. >> rose: in fact i think the largeest majority of muslims outside of-- what is it, india is one of the largest populations of-- >> yeah, india-- there's more muslims in india than pakistan, interestingly. i think please go has s the biggest country but, yes, there's-- but, you know, in our family we weren't religious. my immediate family. my parents and i but in my larger family there were many believing muslims.

my mother's father, my grandfather, was a deeply religious man, he went on the pilgrim plaj to meck mecca and so on. >> rose: what did they say when you were going through this? >> some were supportive and some weren't. some weren't. >> rose: you said every book has to teach you how to write it. how did this book teach you how to write it? >> well, the thing about writing this book, i didn't want to write it like a confessional or a diary, i thought i want to write it like a novel. i want to write it like a novel because it is kind of-- as we were saying, it's got elements of thriller and spy novel. i want to write it like a novel except that everything is true. so i thought about these great non-fiction novels, like truman capote's "in cold blood" or schindler's list or "the right stuff." these books were-- where the authors have used novelistic skills of character and language to shape a true life event.

i thought i wanted to do that, too, except the difference is that this time-- i'm writing about my story, they weren't writing about their own story. that's one of the reasons for pushing it into the third person. >> rose: i was going to ask that. >> because i wanted it to feel like the character with my name is a character like all the other characters and not separated out so that i could treat all of them alike. i wanted actually, i thought-- one of the going-in positions is that you've got to be rougher on yourself than anyone else. because otherwise the book reads like making excuses and nobody wants to read hundreds of pages of people making excuses for their life. >> rose: or to sound like they're whining. >> exactly. that third person just allowed me as the writer to take one step sideways from me character in the story and be, i think, more objective about it. to say, yeah, you know, there are things he did wrong, things he wished he hadn't done and to talk about him-- me-- with that

objectivity. >> rose: beyond the loss of your time in terms of how your life would have been different if you had not had to live it the way you did. what has it-- how do you look back on in the terms of what it has added to your life? >> well, as i say i'm much clearer about what i stand for. >> exactly. the lessons you say you're much clearer. but did it make you more human. did it make you more-- >> well, to use the cliche what doesn't kill you makes you stronger and i time that cliche is probably true. but i also worried-- this is one of the reasons also for doing the book the way i did. that something happened to me whereby my enemies i was demonized and by my supporters i was sometimes idealized. >> rose: lion ides. >> this iconic figure. and i don't feel like that monoor like that idealized figure. i felt like a human being somewhere in the middle. like we all. are messy. confused. complicated.

contradictory. sometimes managing to do something worth doing and sometimes misstepping. i thought i want to try and restore the idea of humanity to this store i. not to have sloganized versions of me. >> rose: and make it more real. >> yes, just a man going through an extraordinary crisis. >> rose: the book is called "joseph anton" for reasons we have described. salman rushdie. thank you, pleasure. >> thank you. >> rose: back in a moment. stay with us. >> rose: martin amis is here. his new novel is called "lionel asbo's fate of england." it tells the story of a violent young thug who wins the lottery. despite the fame and fortune, the internal question mark, like a rusty hook, somethat thats his inarchdiocese. he has displayed a keen eye for satire for his debut novel "the rachel papers." almost four decades have passed since that book was published but the "new york times" called amis fiction's angriest writer and he has not mellowed.

i am pleased to welcome him back at this table. you may not have mellowed but you have change it had place of your residency. >> that's true. >> rose: because? >> it was all sort of personal stuff. we talked about it. my mother died two years ago and we got to thinking and my mother-in-law is at that age and chris hitchens was still alive and there was a prospect that he would have lived for another five, ten who knows years. so that was what... >> rose: we had talked about it but a previous audience may not have seen that conversation. >> yes. >> rose: tell me about lionel asbo. his friendship with des. >> well, he's the worst character i've ever created. although far from the least likable. and desmond, his nephew and ward is the nicest character. and i have mellowed.

i've never risked sentimentality never come so close to it as with desmond but i was very fond of him as i'm very fond of lionel. someone once said the covers of a book are like the bars of a cage and you could admire the tighe we are his marvelous eyes and his bulk without feeling any danger. and literary monsters are very similar to that. we enjoy them without feeling threatened by them. >> rose: and what does des think of lionel? >> he loves him. that's the trouble. and is very loyal to him. so-- because he's been in lieu of a father and a mother for him since the age of 12. so he helplessly loves him. you know, the people you've known all your life, the power of your early feelings never

leaves you and both he and his wife have a figure in their lives. his wife's father who is contemptible but you can't help loving them. and that's the situation in desmond. >> rose: you have often written about the ambiguity between father and son. >> yes. but-- but i wouldn't like to give any other impression than that i got on so well with my father that i was the envy of my friends and it was a good father/son relationship but it was also a literary friendship. so i-- i think i benefited very much from it. >> rose: can you make the-- i hadn't thought about this much before but i hope i-- the idea of-- the genetic idea of talent. >> well, it can't be true, then.

because it wouldn't be such a rarity, the father and son-- i don't-- i'm not aware of any comparable mini... >> rose: father son-- >> right, in any language. so if it is inherited then it's... >> rose: it would be more apparent. more numerous. >> yeah. i mean, there are examples of brothers, the jamess and three brothers all novelists but the usual pattern, i think, is the david updike version where you write one book and that seems to satisfy your'm you louseness or whatever it is. and then the urge leaves you but i always knew that i was in it for life right from the start. >> rose: because? >> i don't know. i just-- i have this theory that

everyone's a writer when they're adolescent. they commune with themselves as desmond does in that book. they keep notes, diaries, write poems. and it's a marvelous coming of age with yourself, sechl awareness dawns. and most-- 99% of the population move on from there. but writers never do. >> rose: what's the significance of winning the lottery? >> it's meant to be utterly arbitrary. it's just one of the things that can happen in the modern world and there is no reason why it should. it's as arbitrary as the machine that picks out the winner. that it should happen to someone when they're... >> rose: but it can be a life changing catalyst. >> yeah. there's a whole population of lotto louts in england. >> rose: and what happens to them? >> i read a-- an autobiography

of one of them. a charming book called "careful what you wish for" about somebody who got through... >> rose: oh, the stories are amazing. >> $12 million pounds on cocaine and girls and roller derbys in his back garden and is now back to being a dust bin man having spent it all. his biography ends rather sweetly by saying "my investments are all sorted out, my money is all in dubai." (laughter) >> rose: gambled it there. >> but when i read the book i thought it would be full of pointers for me but i closed it with regret thinking i can't-- i can't follow this story at all. i've got to go in another direction. not girls and parties. it will have to be something. >> rose: is there a debt to dickens here? >> yeah. he was very much my looming larger than usual in my mind.

and the extent of that didn't become clear to me later on, the verbal furniture of the book, the street names and so on, some of the characters names are taken from dickens. but i realized when i was writing in the same genre as dickens. now everyone always knew dickens was a great writer but it wasn't established that he was a serious writer because he's not a social realist like all the other great victorians he deals in a kind of magical fairy tale kind of world with parental mysteries, strange transformations, arbitrary rewards, huge punishments. i realized this was-- my novel is like that, too. it's sort of a fairy tale tale. it is social realists but it's more like a disney cartoon than george elliot "middle march."

and why "state of england" is the title? >> well, my 12-year-old daughter said "enough with the subtitles, dad, for crying out loud." >> rose: (laughs) stop it! >> with real passion. >> rose: stop it! >> it's a bit of a false lead. but there used to be such a thing as state of england novels and they were very earnest and full of bureaucrats and academics talking about identical voices of the condition of various institutions in england and mine is not that kind of novel at all but just a salute. >> rose: so what is it about england that lionel represents? >> well, what he represents, i suppose, is the fact that england takes it to its hurt. he becomes a kind of national treasure. although it's manipulative from his point of view.

but he's-- what he represents, i suppose, is someone given enormous celebrity through no virtue of their own. there is this echelon in england and elsewhere of people who just as they say, are famous for being famous. >> rose: (laughs) yes, that's right. >> rose: >> but the tabloid culture in england is much deeper than it is here and your "new york post" looks like at latin monthly compared to the "sun" and the "star" and the "mirror". >> rose: did any of that make you want to leave? >> no. >> rose: you don't care about that enough to-- >> no, that's the a fantasy of journalists that they've driven you out of the country. >> rose: (laughs) would negative reviews drive you out of the country? >> no. >> rose: do you care about reviews? >> i don't read them anymore and i know that's often bull when writers say it but the thing is

with all this doing pub lis city that that book is gone and you're on to the next one and that's the one you're thinking about and you don't want phrases jiangling in your head from reading reviews because there's always something to irritate you and you-- you don't want to give it head room so you just stop reading them. >> rose: i want to talk just a little bit more about the book and mainly talk about you. you're here writing about our political conventions and political process and you seem to find it distressing. >> well, it's a marvelous spectacle and the characters... >> rose: but should it be ennobling rather than a spectacle? >> it's getting worse. >> rose: should it be a laboratory for democracy and all of that that? >> with ideas thrashed out and so on? >> rose: right. right.

>> well, it hasn't been like that for quite a while and we've definitely come to a new low with this crop of republicans who-- i went to an occupy protest in tampa and amazingly tame it was. as if that fiery hot lefty passion has been come fleetly bred out of american youth. it was-- they had rappers there, they had a churchman speaking. but there was none of that fire. and this is an election that the republicans are trying in a pinscher movement to steal and buy at the same time and talking a pack of lies whenever they make statements about policy. it's-- it's dishonest to the core. and i've-- i don't-- you know, in the 19th century there must have been... >> rose: do we have something in-- we have something in politics which is called fact checking and it's done by something other than journalists.

somebody working if for the paper will do it, they're journalists but they're not reporters, they're out writing about their responsibility is to make assessments for the people telling the truth. >> yeah. >> rose: we see a lot of that. it's amazing. it's almost like people know that they're not telling the truth but they believe they can get away with it. >> that's right. >> rose: so repeat it enough, it will be the truth. which may go back to-- >> there's no penalty for lying. >> rose: that's right. or shame. >> or shame. and one of romney's spokesmen said "we're not going to be dictated to by the fact checkers." or put another way "we're not going to be dictated by facts. by truth." which is-- you know, that's-- >> it's a great line, somebody said "you can change your opinion, but you can't change the facts." >> exactly. but the depth of cynicism. they're lying with a here? because they think you're too stupid to understand. with a sneer. i think it will kill them in november. if you lie enough...

>> rose: and if you look at the polls today they may very well lose the presidency but maintain the house of representatives and perhaps do-- narrow the margin or win the senate. >> yeah. and then back to obstructionism or rejectionism. and nothing will be done. >> rose: but does-- is that something that's just-- i mean it is so-- the idea of dysfunction in washington, the idea of gridlock in washington, the idea of serious people not being able to get a deal done. >> yeah, but it's all the republicans. a democrat is used to making progress. that's-- it's a progressive party. what the republicans won't-- they won't compromise with democrats, but will they compromise with reality, that's the question. >> rose: right. >> because demographically they're doomed and only 8%... >> rose: the proponents-- their

electoral support is on a decline and the components of electoral support for democrats-- whether it's hispanics or other minorities-- is rising. so their numbers are rising. unless they can have a change of approach. you know, so to make an appeal to those groups. >> rose: the republicans? >> yes. >> rose: well, they've got a long way to go. >> rose: here's what you said, talking about age and everything else "what happens, it's already started happening to me. you turn 60 and there's this. this can't turn out well but life grows in value because of your leave taking with regard to it. not very significant things suddenly look very poignant and charming. this particular period of my life is full of daily novelty that turned out to be worth a great deal. >> rose: well, part of it is to do--. >> rose: sunsets and things like that or something else? >> no, it's nauseatingly sentimental when you start to explain it. but when you arrive in the world

when you're young you're saying though the world and then after a certain point you're saying bye to the world. and you come at things the other way and it's in a leave taking mode and suddenly it all looks fresh and unbearably precious and how terrible it will be to be parted from it. the death of christopher hitchens plays into this in an odd way because it's a catastrophe that he died. but i felt-- and i'm touching a word because i think i'm due a depression but what happens is your beth friends bequeath you when they die your love of life. and his love of life is really intense. that's why he never went to bed. and i like to think that he died at the age of 70 because his

days were four hours longer than ours. but he-- it becomes your solemn duty to love life in the way they no longer can. and so this tends to make everything look precious. >> rose: in other words, he's imbued with the idea that you have to love life for him... >> rose: on his behalf, yeah. >> rose: and how do you do that? >> there was no effort of will, it just-- the world suddenly looked a better color. like being in love. while being miserable in all sorts of ways. and giving out a yell at the incredulity four or five times a day that he's not. there and yet-- i'll probably have to pay a price for this but just-- you know, you-- they can't love life any more so you've got to do it for them.

it's not very rational but it seems to happen. >> rose: of all the great things to happen to you, that friendship is high up on the list, is it? >> rose: i've been thinking about it a lot, clearly. and what marked out that friendship and it's not true of any other friendship i had is that we could say absolutely anything to each other, no matter how shameful and abject. >> rose: or mean or-- >> mean or anything. >> rose: hurtful. >> you didn't have to tailor it to him and to his presuppositions and nearly every other friend-- usually with friends, one is presenting a version of one's self. it's slightly tight and straightened but with him it was utter relaxation from that point of view. it was the same with my father and larkin: my father used to

say "i can tell him anything." >> rose: the book is called "lionel asbo: state of england." author martin amis, good to see you. >> always good to see you. >> thank you for joining us. see you next time.