TH E R EVI S IONI ST : AN E -Q&A WIT H S ALMAN RU SH DIE

Can you describe your first computer? Did it change the way you write?

It was some big old cream-coloured beast of an early Mac. The main difference was the ease of revision.

You’ve likened email to the frequent mail deliveries in Paris or other metropolitan areas at the turn of the twentieth century. Do you still write letters or have you gone over completely to the digital realm of written communication?

Very few letters on stationery. Almost all digital now.

Rumor has it that you have an iPhone now: has this changed your correspondence yet again? Do you text, Tweet, or blog? Do you read or reply to your seven thousand-plus fans’ comments on Facebook? Do your sons keep in touch through texting?

I text. I do not Tweet or blog or reply to fans’ comments on Facebook. One son texts, the other emails.

The story is that you spilled a Coke on your computer, which fried it, but Emory’s software engineers managed to recover the content. Was it a Coke? Were you glad the files were able to be recovered?

It was a Diet Coke. Haven’t really seen what has been salvaged yet.

How would you describe your experience at Emory? Are you looking forward to touring the exhibition? Will it be a strange experience for you?

Emory has been a lot of fun, and a great place to write as well. The exhibition promises to be beyond embarrassing.

How do you believe scholars will use your digital archives for research? No idea. I dread to think.

It’s said that when you handed your computers over, email and all, you made the comment, “I have no idea what I’ve just given you.” What were your conditions about privacy, censoring content, and protecting information about others?

These conditions were and are exhaustive. Privacy was the major issue for me.

ëA WORLD MAPPED B Y S TORIE S í: T H E ARC H IVE ON DI S PLAY

A multimedia exhibition of Salman Rushdie’s manuscripts, drawings, journals, letters, photos, and digital materials will be on display February 26 through September 26 in Woodruff Library’s Schatten Gallery. For more, go to www. emory.edu/rushdie.

The team plans to provide access to Rushdie’s electronic materials not only to scholars but to the public as well. Selections will be on display in an exhibition that opens in February in Woodruff Library’s Schatten Gallery, “A World Mapped by Stories: The Salman Rushdie Archive.” Like Rushdie’s archives, the exhibition will be a hybrid, mixing portions of his digital and paper materials throughout.

“There is a charm and integrity to the more traditional exhibits—a respect for the artifact, the paper,” says Associate Professor of English and exhibition curator Deepika Bahri. “But we wanted a multimedia exhibit that shows a similar respect for the new digital artifact. It’s about honoring what kind of material you now have and its intent. The emerging and the traditional forms coexist; I wanted to break down the hard line between the two.”

Having consulted with Rushdie on the exhibition, Bahri can vouch for him as a fully wired denizen. “Rushdie may not have been born digital but he has been reborn digital,” she says. “And he has the fastest return-reply on email I’ve ever seen.”