My Great Books

Salman Rushdie, Emory University Distinguished Professor, talks about the great books in his life (Feb. 18, 2015).
The Emory Williams Lecture Series in the Liberal Arts has been made possible by a generous gift from Mr. Emory Williams (Emory College '32 and Trustee Emeritus, Emory University).
college.emory.e...
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[@oliverbennett00]

The books are: Sterne: Tristram Shandy The Thousand and One Nights Joyce: Ulysses Swift: Gulliver's Travels Dickens: Great Expectations Borges: Ficciones Marquez: One Hundred Years of Solitude Grass: The Tin Drum Calvino: Our Ancestors Bulgakov: The Master and Margarita

[@adhominemsis-t.australisensis]

You forgot Robinson Crusoe

[@anuradhainamdar8967]

Have Lawrence sterne " Trinstan Shandy". Charles Dickens " Great expectations ". are some books from this list that I have read.

[@oliverbennett00]

@@adhominemsis-t.australisensis he only mentions Robinson Crusoe to provide a contextual comparison for Gulliver's Travels; (similarly, he mentions Clarissa in juxtaposition to Tristram Shandy). So neither form part of his "greatest book" list themselves

[@jimhen459]

i would add a few-- but I agree with the list as far as anti-realism is an analytical tool.

[@arkaprabhmandal1248]

for some reason, I have completely moved away from Anglican literature. While I do agree with most of his shelf, I do wonder why it doesn't have any European or Oriental titles....

[@kaungkhantthein5348]

(Edit 6th April 2023: Watched for a second time and was still blown away! Had to stand up and clap afterwards!) Wow! What a great lecture that was! Blown away!

[@joyplanta2402]

“midnight’s children” is on my list

[@karansehgal3962]

This is such a great talk. I wish I listen to him speak in real life. Gonna read some of these books.

[@ajithp.r6787]

I listened to the lecture (yes that is what it was and a much needed one, for I wanted to know more about Sir Rushdie. And now I'm going to reading some of the books that I've put off for the longest time and those that I had never heard of before. This was really great. Thank you for the upload.❤️❤️❤️

[@lindapierce6882]

It would seem that no one in the audience has read any of the books that Mr Rushdie has been talking about - thus the fascinating details of their origin(s) and his humourous sidebars seem to be unappreciated.

[@graham6132]

That’s a great excuse for having your jokes bomb.

[@TheGuinever]

This is because education, in so many places, has been watered down so severely and so frequently replaced with ENTERTAINMENT (partly due to the decrease in average attention span), that there is no longer such thing as the TYPICALLY well-read gentleman or gentlewoman or gentleperson. Literate comedians probably avoid references to novels and poetry because they know audiences these days won't recognize them and the jokes will fall flat. The US elected someone who cannot quote one verse of the Bible, and liberal education is thought (by about a third of adults) to be elitist and unnecessary. You might have noticed all of the proofreaders seem to have disappeared, also. Literacy is apparently too time consuming and too expensive for the vast majority of us to pursue. (This helps explain the absence of critical thinking skills.) But rest assured; there's always money for bombs. 😢 I just hope Rushdie is able to confront his attacker in court. After all the hiding out, the exile and all those safety measures during the fatwa, some impertinent twit has the nerve to do what Matar did! Make the kid read every published word Rushdie has written, FROM PRISON, and make him write an assessment! I'm so angry, still.

[@RemoteIndigoIndex]

Nice... I missed the lecture live, but it is good to be able to see it here.

[@srijanmoysengupta]

How on earth this video has only 31K views! ( 27.03.24)

[@j.c.3800]

Fun speaker, obsessive, intelligent

[@EXMuslimHafizji]

He is my Heero

[@sattarabus]

I wish they had flashed on the screen the names of ten books Salman commends. I missed the name and the author of he Japanese novel recommended by Knopf.

[@nickzanet]

In case you're still looking 8 months later, it was "The Makioka Sisters" by Jun'ichirō Tanizaki

[@sattarabus]

@@nickzanet Thank you for having been a reader with a catholic taste.

[@pdelaprimm]

Thank you for the post.

[@priapushk996]

32:49 In another interview, Rushdie discusses reminiscing to his mother the family's consternation over China's incursion into India when he was a schoolboy. His mother says he's misremembering because he was away at boarding school in England at the time, which Rushdie concedes and uses to illustrate a broader point about false memories becoming reality. So call me a cynic for doubting his disavowal of García Márquez as an influence for Midnight's Children.

[@TheGuinever]

Still having trouble understanding how Matar could plead ng.

[@guharup]

Emory must seriously consider introducing some background laughter

[@sharonHossan3887]

I can't get mine.

[@watchsleep]

Fiction is, as a method of revelation by creative enquiry, real and in a way true to human condition.

[@arpanahuja]

Wow! The audience seems to be dead!

[@ianmartinezcassmeyer]

They're not well miked, that's probably why we can hear their reaction.

[@inafern]

Re first few minutes: Great Expectations isn't deemed realistic fiction? I haven't read it but am surprised to hear that.

[@RollingWug]

Having read it, Dickens’s narrative doesn’t try to keep itself in a realm that bears to reality. In fact it repeatedly challenges what is real and what is believed to be so. Nothing overtly fantastical or surreal explicitly happens (the opposite in fact, the novel is situated in a realistic Kent and London) but the line between what the characters understand to be true and what actually is, are deliberately blurred throughout. The way Pip is convinced the world ‘is’, and indeed how he has made his way through it, are definitely detached from what’s actually happening. In this way, as an exploration of the tension between reality and belief or understanding, I think Rushdie speaks of Great Expectations as more contemporary. Modern(ism) is muddled for the reader and happily so, I think at least that’s what he’s getting at more or less. Maybe ?

[@inafern]

@@RollingWug very interesting, thanks

[@Gregor.Gregor]

14:40

[@nasreenakhter7927]

What is his religion now any onetellme

[@guharup]

He has been atheist since Rugby. No religion

[@arjitas]

Does it really matter?

[@prakharmathur5737]

Not Stupidity, that's for sure

[@kreek22]

It's ironic that Rushdie ends his talk on his top ten books, all anti-realist, by commending an ultra-realist book as being better than Anna Karenina. But, I appreciate his commentary on his ten more than the list itself, which he knows to be largely arbitrary.

[@infinitafenix3153]

I loved the lecture and his sense of humor, but it doen't seem the audience did. Pity.

[@rigzingurmet8218]

The setting being more of a class room one donot clap nor whistle but then laughs were badly missed

[@graham6132]

Didn't Molly Bloom just have one affair? With "Blazes" Boylan?

[@Slowhiker-xw2kp]

Isssssslammmmmm, the religion of Peace?

[@Faseeh626]

He's not a Muslim

[@Slowhiker-xw2kp]

@@Faseeh626 Who's not a Muslim?

[@Faseeh626]

@@Slowhiker-xw2kp Salman Rushdie and Me

[@guharup]

Peace of the graveyard more like

[@samyako9701]

😂 religion of kill go haven 72 vergens. Sex with kids and guys. Religion of peace 🤣

[@EmmanuelGoldstein74]

Sorry but he provided too much explanation. He bored me to death. I wish he would have been more succinct and listed the books more readily.

[@oscarrch]

I'm glad you were bored. Hope still are.

[@guharup]

@@oscarrch No he is dead now. Read carefully.

[@mrhood8073]

Rushdie may sound smart but he really is not. I think this audience may see that.

[@greenjupiter]

🤣 🤣

[@ArranVid]

Why do you think that Salman is not smart?

[@ArranVid]

I just want to let you know that he studied in King's College in Cambridge University.

[@DinkanFollower]

​​@@ArranVidThats a bad argument; not everyone who studies at Cambridge is necessarily smart. You should have asked the commentator to expand on why he thinks Salman is not smart and then countered him.

[@ArranVid]

@@DinkanFollower I know that not everyone who studies in Cambridge University or Oxford University is smart, but there is some mental skillset required to be able to pass and attend those universities (unless someone somehow got there by pure nepotism alone with hardly any academic potential). And anyway, it's obvious that Salman is smart in his own way if you've heard his thought processes when he speaks in interviews. He is knowledgeable on a wide range of topics although he may sometimes get things wrong.