“You have to be able to reject all the normal things that come with belonging, which include loyalty, trust, confidence.. If you don’t do that, you can’t do it. There certainly were periods where I felt that there was a bulletproof glass between me and the rest of the world and that I was moving through the world without being fully in it or of it.”In The Ground Beneath Her Feet, which is already being tipped in some quarters as a shoo-in for this year’s Booker Prize, Rushdie also broaches the highly topical subject of fame. For Bono, it is the perfect marriage of writer and topic.”At the end of the century, it’s the classic subject matter,” says the U2 singer, “because it’s gotten to such proportions Lady Diana was the apotheosis – there’s a pretentious word It’s a subject you have to tackle… As regards Salman taking on the subject, some people were shocked that he’d go there. I just thought it was obvious.”In the book, Rushdie probes the gap between celebrity and reality. “When they’re writing about a famous person, journalists look up the cuttings and repeat them,” says Wall “That becomes the received wisdom and feeds on itself.
In the end, the celebrity might as well stop bothering to tell the truth about himself. Salman is interested in the extent to which that happens to all of us. We all have different versions of ourselves, depending on who we’re with.”Rushdie takes up the theme “There is a fictitious version of me. I’m conscious that when I meet people, I can see them erasing the tape. They’re erasing a whole bunch of things they’ve read in the papers… I’m aware of a fairly abrasive personality having been created for me, and actually,” he adds with a self-mocking grin, “I’m incredibly cuddly.” So now you know.`Arena: Salman Rushdie and the Ground Beneath His Feet’ is on Thur at 11.20pm on BBC2James Rampton. www.xingtech
A number of people have taken us to task over the last week for suggesting recently that Apple Macintosh users get a poor deal when it comes to the Internet.
“You suggest to gullible PC-users that they get a better deal,” says Miriam Downing.
It’s a fair point. There is, in fact, plenty of excellent software for Macintoshes available for downloading and the situation is improving all the time.If you want to stay at the cutting edge of Internet activity, for instance, you could do a lot worse than get hold of the latest version of AudioCatalyst, which is now available for Macs.This piece of shareware, which you can download from the Internet, fills a long-standing gap in the Macintosh world. Basically, the program lets you strip tracks from CDs and then convert them into MP3 files, the format which has become the Internet standard for sending near-CD quality sound files. It’s an extremely user- friendly program, which allows you to convert CD tracks and standard sound files directly into MP3 – something that has never been possible on a Macintosh before – although on slower Macs you can spend a fairly hefty 15 minutes converting a five-minute song, so an entire album could take hours. The package costs $30 and can be downloaded directly from the company’s site The makers promise free upgrades as they become available.. Net Gains has, over the last week, received a warning from about a dozen different sources about a virus contained in an e-mail with the subject heading “It takes guts to say Jesus”.
