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Salman Rushdie defends his record
The Atlanta Journal-Constitution
Salman Rushdie: Part-time Atlantan (when he’s at Emory), prize-winning novelist, fatwa survivor, well-known ladies’ man, and now, the world’s fastest book-signer. Is there nothing this man cannot do?
The British newspaper The Guardian has been keeping track of Rushdie’s recent claim to have set the record for most books signed in one hour. He says he knocked off 1,000 autographed copies of his new novel “The Enchantress of Florence” in Nashville in 57 minutes on his recent book tour, which included Atlanta earlier this month. Apparently there is a spat between Rushdie and author Malcolm Gluck, who accomplished something roughly similar, the details of which are in this letter from Rushdie in the Guardian.
Who knew there was this sort of macho competition among book signers? You just know it would be two men jousting for whose signing prowess was greater. Can you imagine Joyce Carol Oates and Margaret Atwood having a fight about this? Next thing you know, they’ll be arguing over whose Sharpie is longer.
As always, only the greatest of literary issues for this blog. Anyone have any author signing stories to contribute, even if they don’t involve speed-signing?
Permalink | Comments (2) | Post your comment | Categories: Books
Comments
By Lily Toad
July 22, 2008 10:43 AM | Link to this
I was standing in line to get some books signed by Kaye Gibbons at the South Carolina literary festival in Columbia when I noticed that Lee Smith’s line was moving a lot faster. I asked the person behind me to hold my place, got in Lee Smith’s line and complimented her on her quick signing, then went back to my original place in Ms.Gibbon’s line. Lee Smith just smiled and said she had a lot of experience signing and no, her hand didn’t get tired.
By Kate
July 22, 2008 9:45 PM | Link to this
Michael Chabon was the keynote speaker at the Marcus JCC book festival a couple of years back. The line for his book signing was slow, oh so slow. When I got up closer, I saw that he would talk to every person that came up to him—looked them in the eye, made a comment, asked their name. Very sweet. And dreamy.