Salman Rushdie Getty Images

The Indo-American Arts Council is celebrating its 15th anniversary on Thursday evening and is honoring Rushdie, along with filmmaker Mira Nair and Dr. Manjula Bansal, for their support and contributions to arts and culture in North America.

The cause is one that is important to Rushdie, who has supported the council since its inception to promote Indian arts and culture to mainstream America. With Indian artists now part of various television shows and films, as well as the literary world, Rushdie says  artists from the Indian Diaspora are just getting going. Excerpts from an interview with Rushdie.

You have been honored many times before, how is this different and what does it mean to you?
 
In a way, honoring me is a way of honoring the organization. It’s a way to jointly celebrate the Indo-American Arts Council making it to 15 years. What has happened during these 15 years is that this community has matured and developed. What I like about IAAC is it’s supporting different forms of art like Indian classical dance here in the U.S., it’s showing how high the level of complexity of the dance is. The literary field has been exploding, the Indian Diaspora writers and not just Jhumpa Lahiri who is good but there are so many great South Asian-American writers now. It’s very encouraging. And I think we’re just getting going. A bee in my bonnet that I have is about the authenticity issue, when you come from a minority group you can only write about your own group. There has been historical pressure from Asian society, their group consistently writes about that and we really have to mature and go beyond that, as writers in America to write about anything in America.

What would that take?
 
You must be confident. You can see it beginning in Indian filmmakers in the U.S. The more experience there is in these various fields, the broader their canvas will become.

As a person of literary note, what would you say to young inspiring writers in the world of social media and short attention spans?
 
I don’t think it will affect it that much. Every time there has been a new form of communication that has emerged, people have always predicted that it will kill the novel. Radio was supposed to have killed the novel. Movies, TV were supposed  to kill the novel, but none of them have done that. There is something very persistent about sitting quietly and enjoying an interaction between the reader and the words in a book. People really like it. I think the novel has never had the size of audience that an episode of “Friends” has, unless it’s been freakishly like Harry Potter or the Twilight books, or God help us, “50 Shades of Grey.” The number of people reading the novel style has stayed the same, remarkably loyal.

You talk to a lot of your fans on Twitter. What has been  most surprising to you when Tweeting?
 
A couple of years ago, a friend of mine bullied me to use it. As long as you don’t take it too seriously, it’s quite enjoyable. I like it not for what I’m able to say, but the speed at which news reaches me. I get news on what is happening around the world long before I get it from TV or radio. I found out yesterday of the passing of Doris Lessing who is an old friend. I saw it as a posting on Facebook. It’s clear that there are aspects of social media that have been valuable, for instance in the Arab spring, those young people passing information to each other. My great worry about the Internet in general is related to the issue of anonymity. When people are able to speak anonymously, it makes them much less careful about they say, and therefore can be less courteous, more anonymous and rude. I worry about the growth of this culture of rudeness and triviality. There is just an enormous avalanche of garbage and good things can get lost. Thanks to the Internet, it’s essentially impossible to ban a book. It’s a tool and we will learn how to use it.

What was the last good book you read?
 
I am writing a novel right now so not reading much else. I have been reading two or three book that are on the verge of being released. One is by a Chinese-American author called Yiyun Li called “Kind of Solitude.” Another is by Teju Cole called “Every Day is for the Thief.” I just went back and started reading J.D. Salinger, after that movie and biography came out, which I didn’t care for. I went back and read the nine stories. I was surprised to see how amazing they are. It’s hard to do, to tell stories largely through dialogue. To not just reveal the character but to tell stories and he does really well. There is something there to learn from, it’s a real skill.

Tell us about your new novel?
 
It’s the most surrealist novel I have written for a long time. I seem to have an imaginative reaction to the realism of my memoir. Making stuff up. (Laughs) I went back to the thing that I first fell in love with, when I was reading the wonderful stories that you grow up in the East, the Arabian nights, the Ramayana.I’m writing something modern that relates to those stories. In terms of IAAC – it is an attempt to take some of the culture and apply that to the world that I now live in. It’s quite related to what a group like IAAC is trying to do.

Do you think we’re in an era of subpar fiction writing? Where are the great novelists and poets right now?
 
I do think it’s been a rich era. The writers I admire are older than me. Milan Kundera from the Czech Republic, Günter Grass from Germany,Italo Calvino from Italy. Used to be a lot of really good American literature like (Philip) Roth. I think there are a lot of brilliant young writers like Zadie Smith. Everyone called Jonathan, there are so many writers called Jonathan.  There has been this great explosion of writers that are Latin American — Gabriel García Márquez, Jorge Luis Borges, Mario Vargas Llosa. It’s been a very rich time to be working is this area. Indian literature has been so interesting. So many talented writers have emerged, Kiran Desai, Vikram Seth, Vikram Chandra.

What are the key ingredients for you on your path as a writer?
 
I don’t have funny habits. I think of it as a job and do it like a job and do it more or less 9 to 5 pm. The thing I have got better at over the years is my powers of concentration have gotten better. To shut the world out and focus on the novel, particularly when it’s a novel, it takes so long to write. You have to have techniques of re-entering the world every day. I have friends that write for theater and film and they say the benefit of writing stage plays is you have the advantage of writing in speed. You can’t write a novel like that.

What’s next for you?
 
I’m slow, this book is getting itself written, I will take two years on it. I am a one thing at a time guy. Now I am very much focused on this. There is one thing happening that I am excited about. The St. Louis opera company is making an opera of “Shalimar the Clown.” They have a 2016 premiere date and so far I been having meetings every so often to discuss it.