Most American writers don't get asked their opinion on current affairs, whereas in Europe and England, we still do. There are writers here who are the most sophisticated commentators, but they're not asked. Like Don DeLillo, who sort of forecast most of the modern world before it happened.
Interpretation
American writers are often overlooked in discussions on current affairs compared to their European counterparts.
In this quote, Salman Rushdie highlights a cultural difference between American and European attitudes towards writers and their insights on current events. He suggests that while in Europe, writers are still seen as valuable commentators on modern issues, American writers like Don DeLillo, who have made significant contributions to understanding contemporary society, are often unrecognized and not consulted in discussions about the state of the world.
In practice
In a speech about the role of writers in society, this quote could emphasize the importance of valuing literary perspectives.
I've been fascinated by Machiavelli since I was very young. I've always felt that he had a bad rap from history, and that he was actually a person quite unlike what we now think of as Machiavellian. He was a republican. He disliked totalitarian government.
Killing people because you don't like their ideas - it's a bad thing.
faith without doubt is addiction
I am clearly vulnerable to these more passionate and volatile unstable relationships. I am trying to not be so vulnerable.
In India, as elsewhere in our darkening world, religion is the poison in the blood. Where religion intervenes, mere innocence is no excuse. Yet we go on skating around this issue, speaking of religion in the fashionable language of 'respect.' What is there to respect in any of this, or in any of the crimes now being committed almost daily around the world in religion's dreaded name?
Reality is a question of perspective; the further you get from the past, the more concrete and plausible it seems - but as you approach the present, it inevitably seems more and more incredible.
I noticed in America that if you write a book of any kind, you're made to be the representative of all the issues that might surround it.
I think that most of us, anyway, read these stories that we know are not "true" because we're hungry for another kind of truth: the mythic truth about human nature in general, the particular truth about those life-communities that define our own identity, and the most specific truth of all: our own self-story. Fiction, because it is not about someone who lived in the real world, always has the possibility of being about oneself. --From the Introduction
I don't know the literary world; I was scared of being confronted with famous names, not knowing what they had written. It was occupied territory I was entering.
If a writer knows what he or she is doing, I'll go along for the ride. If he or she doesn't... well, I'm in my fifties now, and there are a lot of books out there. I don't have time to waste with the poorly written ones.
Every individual ought to know at least one poet from cover to cover: if not as a guide through the world, then as a yardstick for the language.
It's difficult to tell the truth about how a book begins. The truth, as far as it can be presented to other people, is either wholly banal or too intimate.
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