Salman Rushdie reading Donald Barthelme's "Concerning the Bodyguard," Friday, August 19, 2011:
[It is more fluid hearing him read]
"is the bodyguard frightened by women of good family
women of good family whose handbags contain god knows what
does the bodyguard feel that the situation is unfair
will the son of the bodyguard living with his mother in a faraway city himself become a bodyguard
when the bodyguard delivers the son of his principal to
the school where all of the children are delivered by bodyguards
does he stop at a grocers on the way and buy the child a peach
does he buy himself a peach"
from an interview with SPIEGEL in September:
"So in your case there was Joe, the man your bodyguards were protecting. Then there was Joseph Anton, who rented houses and signed checks. And then there was Rushdie, the troublemaker, and Salman was the writer who sat alone in his hiding place."
[Joseph Conrad/ Anton Chekhov: which sounded better, he thought, than Marcel Beckett, Vladimir Joyce, Franz Sterne.]