Durante la chiusura al pubblico dell’Istituto, in questa pagina vi proponiamo testi e riflessioni di amici e scrittori, talvolta scritti per l’occasione, scelti ogni giorno per voi. Un modo di rimanere vicini, anche nella distanza.
Over a long time, I have many happy memories of the Italian Institute, having enjoyed a lot of talks, exhibitions and parties in that beautiful building, which I consider to be one of London’s glories. It is a peaceful and stimulating place to visit and meet people. Let’s hope normal life will resume there soon!
Like most people, I haven’t done much recently, but here are two pieces I did manage to write, one about the past, and one about the present. The first piece is published today. The second one will be published tomorrow.
Hanif Kureishi
Courtesy of the author
HOW I WROTE THE BUDDHA OF SUBURBIA.
All first novels are letters to one’s parents, telling them how it was for you, an account of things they didn’t understand or didn’t want to hear, saying what couldn’t be said, providing them with a bigger picture.
It was the late 80s, and I was in my early 30s, when I began to work on The Buddha of Suburbia. The two films I’d written previously, My Beautiful Laundrette and Sammy and Rosie Get Laid, had bought me time and money. The success of My Beautiful Laundrette had given me confidence that the writing tone I’d found, could be extended into the novel I’d wanted to write as a teenager.
I had been no good at school, but always felt more alive than the people around me. I was a horny bookworm, and novels got through to me. I thought I’d do one. I did several.
They were not published. But I did write what became the first chapter of The Buddha of Suburbia, as a short story for the London Review of Books, published in 1987.
I believed that was that. Then I kept thinking there was more material. I had an intense experience which can happen to writers, when you understand that your subject is right there; you have lived it already, and that world is waiting to be converted into scenes. If people were not writing books about people like me, I’d write one myself, spitting out all the painful things, rudely, lightly. Someone said to me, write your pleasure. I did.
Reading the first paragraph of The Buddha now, I’m surprised to notice that the hero, Karim Amir, announces his nationality three times. I guess he was insecure. Like David Bowie, he was eager to find an identity, throw it away, and start again next day with another one, brand new.
In 2015, Zadie Smith wrote a lovely introduction to my novel. She describes discovering the book at school, which she calls a first for us ‘new-breeds’. She says, ‘Irresponsibility is an essential element of comic writing’. And Karim Amir, my boy and avatar, who likes both boys and girls in bed, and where possible both at the same time, is determinedly wild and rash.
But Karim knows something that most people don’t know. And what he knows is priceless: that being a person of colour isn’t at all like being white. No white person walks into a room and finds it weird that there are only white people present; no white person thinks of themselves as a problem for others, a question, a perplexity. No one asks them where they’re really from. Whites belong in the world. It’s theirs, they own it, and they don’t even appreciate it. But they do get defensive and cranky when you point it out, as you have to, repeatedly.
Karim understands that being a person of colour means being bullied all the time. Yet while whites might consider themselves superior, it’s more original and enjoyable being underneath, laughing up at the poverty of privilege. Karim begins to get that his disadvantage is his advantage. Then he stops caring either way. He’s free.
If anyone thanks me for writing The Buddha, or says it meant something to them, I am always grateful, since I’m reminded of how a few decent people, along with some good stories, once got me out of a bit of a jam, and into a more open world.
As I think about my novel today, looking back on myself, I wish were that boy again, free on his bike. But I know he’s still in me, funny, hopeful, rarin’ to go, always up for it, going somewhere.
Hanif Kureishi, author. His latest title is What Happened? (Faber and Faber, 2019)
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