Talking to Strangers

by Paul Auster

  December 3, 2014

  OCCASIONS

  A Prayer for Salman Rushdie

  When I sat down to write this morning, the first thing I did was think of Salman Rushdie. I have done this every morning for almost four and a half years, and by now it is an essential part of my daily routine. I pick up my pen, and before I begin to write, I think of my fellow novelist across the ocean. I pray that he will go on living another twenty-four hours. I pray that his English protectors will keep him hidden from the people who are out to murder him—the same people who have already killed one of his translators and wounded another. Most of all, I pray that a time will come when these prayers are no longer necessary, when Salman Rushdie will be as free to walk the streets of the world as I am.

  I pray for this man every morning, but deep down, I know that I am also praying for myself. His life is in danger because he wrote a book. Writing books is my business as well, and I know that if not for the quirks of history and pure blind luck, I could be in his shoes. If not today, then perhaps tomorrow. We belong to the same club: a secret fraternity of solitaries, shut-ins, and cranks, men and women who spend the better part of our time locked up in little rooms struggling to put words on a page. It is a strange way to live one’s life, and only a person who had no choice in the matter would choose it as a calling. It is too arduous, too underpaid, too full of disappointments to be fit for anyone else. Talents vary, ambitions vary, but any writer worth his salt will tell you the same thing: To write a work of fiction, one must be free to say what one has to say. I have exercised that freedom with every word I have written—and so has Salman Rushdie. That is what makes us brothers, and that is why his predicament is also mine.

  I can’t know how I would act in his place, but I can imagine it—or at least I can try to imagine it. In all honesty, I’m not sure I would be capable of the courage he has shown. The man’s life is in ruins, and yet he has continued to do the thing he was born to do. Shunted from one safe house to another, cut off from his son, surrounded by security police, he has continued to go to his desk every day and write. Knowing how difficult it is to do this even under the best of circumstances, I can only stand in awe of what he has accomplished. A novel; another novel in the works; a number of extraordinary essays and speeches defending the basic human right to free expression. All that is remarkable enough, but what truly astonishes me is that on top of this essential work, he has taken the time to review other people’s books—in some cases even to write blurbs promoting the books of unknown authors. Is it possible for a man in his position to think of anyone but himself? Yes, apparently it is. But I wonder how many of us could do what he has done with our backs against that same wall.

  Salman Rushdie is fighting for his life. The struggle has gone on for nearly half a decade, and we are no closer to a solution than when the fatwa was first announced. Like so many others, I wish there was something I could do to help. Frustration mounts, despair sets in, but given that I have neither the power nor the influence to affect the decisions of foreign governments, the most I can do is pray for him. He is carrying the burden for all of us, and I can no longer think of what I do without thinking of him. His plight has focused my concentration, has made me reexamine my beliefs, has taught me never to take the freedom I enjoy for granted. For all that, I owe him an immense debt of gratitude. I support Salman Rushdie in his struggle to win back his life, but the truth is that he has also supported me. I want to thank him for that. Every time I pick up my pen, I want to thank him.

  1993

  Appeal to the Governor of Pennsylvania

  I am not here today to argue the pros and cons of the death penalty (I am fervently against it) nor to talk about the question of race relations in America (surely the central, burning issue of our culture) nor to get sidetracked into a discussion of free speech and First Amendment rights. I simply want to address some words to the Honorable Thomas Ridge, Governor of Pennsylvania, who is the only person whose opinion counts anymore in the whole miserable and tragic case of Mumia Abu-Jamal.

  As one American citizen to another, I would like the Governor to stop and consider the enormous power he has been given: the power to kill a man or to allow that man to go on living. Whatever the jury has decided about what Mumia Abu-Jamal did or didn’t do, whatever laws might support the state of Pennsylvania’s right to put Mumia Abu-Jamal to death, you have been designated by those same laws as the one person in that state with the authority to nullify the decision of the jury and save Mumia Abu-Jamal’s life. That is because the law knows it isn’t perfect. The law understands that it makes mistakes, that the men and women who carry out the law are imperfect creatures, and therefore the power to nullify the decisions of the law must be written into the law itself. In no instance is this more important than when the law proposes to take a man’s life. That is why the appeals in such cases go directly to the governor—because the governor is assumed to be wise and just, even if the law isn’t always wise and just.

  Governor Ridge, you have been asked to take on the largest, most terrible task a man can be given: to decide another man’s fate. Mumia Abu-Jamal’s life is literally in your hands. Considering the enormous power and responsibility that have been thrust upon you, I take it for granted that you are intimately familiar with the facts of the case. Even I, an ordinary citizen with no power at all, have read endless amounts of material concerning the trial, and every report has indicated numerous irregularities and discrepancies with regard to jury selection, evidence, and the testimony of witnesses—enough for even the most cynical observer to conclude that there is far more than just a shadow of a doubt as to whether Mumia Abu-Jamal actually committed the crime he was accused of. And as long as there is a doubt, as long as a plausible argument can be made that Mumia Abu-Jamal did not do what he has been found guilty of doing, then it strikes me as monstrous that his life can be taken from him—monstrous and shameful, a sin against the laws of man and God.

  Governor Ridge, we all want to live in a country we can be proud of. We all want to believe that America is a country in which there is, truly, justice for all. That is the single most important idea we have ever produced, and now it is your turn to uphold that principle and prove that America is indeed a great country worthy of the respect and admiration we want to give it. All eyes are on you, Governor Ridge. I am watching you, my fellow writers at PEN are watching you, tens of thousands of people around the world are watching you, and we are all praying that you will do what is wise and just.

  Do us all proud, Governor. Save Mumia Abu-Jamal’s life.

  1995

  The Best Substitute for War

  When I was asked to write something about “the millennium,” the first word that came to me was Europe. The millennium is a European idea, after all, and it makes sense only if one refers to the European calendar, the Christian calendar. Most of the world keeps time by that calendar now, but go back a thousand years, and no one in Asia, Africa, or the Americas would have known what you were talking about if you had told him he was living in the year 1000 AD. Europe is the only place on earth that has experienced this millennium from beginning to end, and when I cast about in my mind for a single, dominant image or idea that might sum up the past ten centuries of European history (when someone asks you to talk about “the millennium,” you tend to take the long view), the word that kept coming back to me was bloodshed. And by that I mean the metaphysics of violence: war, mass destruction, the slaughter of the innocent.

  This is not to denigrate the glories of European culture and civilization. But in spite of Dante and Shakespeare, in spite of Vermeer and Goya, in spite of Chartres and the Declaration of the Rights of Man, it’s a proven fact that scarcely a month has gone by in the past thousand years when one group of Europeans has not been intent on killing another group of Europeans. Country has fought against country (the Hundred Years War), alliances of countries have fought against other alliances of countries (the Thirty Years War), and the citizens
of a single country have fought against each other (the French Religious Wars). When it comes to our own, much vaunted century of progress and enlightenment, just fill in the appropriate blanks. And lest anyone think the carnage has ended, he has only to open the paper and read about the current situation in former Yugoslavia. Not to speak of what has been happening in Northern Ireland for the past thirty years.

  Mercifully, there has been peace among the major European powers since the end of World War II. For the first forty-five postwar years, that peace was tainted by another kind of war, but since the fall of the Berlin Wall and the breakup of the Soviet Union, the peace has held. This is unprecedented in European history. With a common currency on the horizon and passport-free borders already a reality, it looks as though the combatants have finally put down their arms. That doesn’t mean they like each other, and it doesn’t mean that nationalism is any less fervent than it used to be, but for once it seems that the Europeans have found a way to hate each other without hacking each other to pieces. This miracle goes by the name of soccer.

  I don’t want to exaggerate, but how else to interpret the facts? When France pulled off a surprise victory in the World Cup last summer, more than a million people gathered on the Champs-Élysées to celebrate. By all accounts, it was the largest demonstration of public happiness seen in Paris since the Liberation from the Germans in 1944.

  One could only gape at the enormity of the event, the sheer excessiveness of the joy on display. It was just a sports victory, I kept telling myself, and yet there it was for everyone to see: on the same street in the same city, the same festive jubilation, the same outpouring of national pride that greeted General de Gaulle when he marched through the Arc de Triomphe fifty-four years earlier.

  As I watched this scene on television, I thought of the title of a book I had read earlier in the decade: The Soccer War, by Ryszard Kapuściński. Was it possible that soccer had become a substitute for war?

  Compared to American football, the European version seems rather tame, but the truth is that the history of soccer has always been steeped in violence. Legend or not, the first reference to football-playing in this millennium stems from an incident of war. In the year 1000 or thereabouts, the British were supposed to have celebrated their victory over an invading Danish chieftain by removing his head from his body and using it as a football. We don’t have to believe that story, but verifiable documents confirm that by the 1100s Shrove Tuesdays were celebrated throughout England with massive football matches that pitted entire towns against one another. Five hundred players on a side. A field that could be up to several miles long. And games that lasted all day, with no fixed rules. It came to be known as “mob football,” and the mayhem that resulted from these semi-organized brawls led to so many injuries, broken bones, and even deaths, that in 1314 Edward II issued an edict that banned the playing of football. “Forasmuch as there is great noise in the city, caused by hustling over large balls from which many evils might arise … we commend and forbid, on behalf of the King, on pain of imprisonment, such game to be used in the city in future.”

  Further bans were issued by Edward III, Richard II, and Henry IV. These kings were not just disturbed by the violence of the sport, they were worried that too much “meddling in football” had cut into the time previously devoted to archery practice and that the kingdom would not be militarily prepared in the event of a foreign invasion. As far back as the first half of the millennium, then, the connection had already been made. War and football were two sides of the same coin.

  With the development of firearms, archery ceased to be a required skill among soldiers, and by the late seventeenth century football was actively encouraged by Charles II. Standard rules were introduced in 1801, and as every schoolchild knows, Napoleon was defeated a decade and a half later “on the playing fields of Eton.” After 1863, when the rules of present-day soccer were drawn up at Cambridge University, the game spread throughout Europe and the rest of the world. Since then, it has developed into the most popular and widely played sport in human history.

  America seems to be the only country that has resisted its charms, but the importance of this game in Europe, its grip on the imagination of tens of millions of people living between Portugal and Poland, cannot be overestimated. Add together our interest in baseball, football, and basketball, then multiply by ten or twenty, and you begin to have an idea of the scope of the obsession. When you further consider that each country fields its own national team, and that these teams go head-to-head against each other in European and world tournaments, it isn’t hard to imagine how the love of football and homeland can be turned into a cocktail for chauvinistic excess and the settling of ancient scores. No country in Europe has avoided invasion and humiliation by one or more of its neighbors during this millennium, and now, as we come to the end of these thousand years, it sometimes looks as though the entire history of the continent were being recapitulated on the soccer field. Holland versus Spain. England versus France. Poland versus Germany. An eerie memory of past antagonisms hovers over each game. Every time a goal is scored, one hears an echo of old victories and old defeats. Passions among the spectators run high. They wave their country’s flag, they sing patriotic songs, they insult the supporters of the other team. Americans might look at these antics and think they’re all in good fun, but they’re not. They’re serious business. But at least the mock battles waged by the surrogate armies in short pants do not threaten to increase the population of widows and fatherless children.

  Yes, I am aware of the British football hooligans, and I know about the riots and injuries that occurred in several French cities during last year’s World Cup. But these instances of extreme and violent behavior only reinforce my point. Soccer is a substitute for war. As long as countries square off against each other on the playing field, we will be able to count the casualties on the fingers of our two hands. A generation ago, they were tallied in the millions.

  Does this mean that after a thousand years of bloodshed, Europe has finally found a peaceful way to settle its differences?

  We’ll see.

  December 1, 1998

  Banned British Art in New York

  Delivered at a Protest Rally in front of the Brooklyn Museum

  We don’t have to like it, and we don’t even have to think it’s good, but that doesn’t mean we shouldn’t stand up and defend its right to be shown.

  This isn’t a debate about censorship and artistic freedom—it’s about the use of public funds. No one is telling these artists they can’t make the art they choose to make—but the curators of the Brooklyn Museum have been told they can’t show that art because it has been deemed offensive—and the city government, which funds the museum, is not in the business of promoting offensive art.