Perhaps the most appreciative response from the crowd that gathered at the New York Public Library on Friday to support Salman Rushdie was author Hari Kunzl voicing Mr. Rushdie’s acclaimed and infamous novel The Satanic Verse. It was when I read The book’s publication in 1988 put a target on its author’s back, prompting a series of book bans, violent demonstrations and killings after Iranian leader Ayatollah Ruhollah Khomeini issued a fatwa calling for his death. connected.
It might have seemed daring, even provocative, to openly read such a book in such circumstances, at such a time, just a week after Mr. Rushdie was attacked. not. Western New York Arts Festival. But leaving it out might have seemed to go against Mr. Rushdie’s own uncompromising view of such things.
As he said in 1996, as part of a speech to the American Society of Newspaper Editors read by Tina Brown on Friday, “I would like to propose to you a free society, a citizen of a democracy. do not keep their freedom in cat’s footsteps, centering on the opinions of their fellow countrymen.”
The event is sponsored by the Library, PEN America, the literary non-profit House of SpeakEasy, and Penguin Random House (Rushdie’s publisher), and features a stellar cast of writers, free speech advocates, and friends of authors. , all read excerpts from his works. Work from the ground front stairs of the library. Writers included Gay Talise, Kiran Desai, Roya Hakakian, Colum McCann, Amanda Foreman, A.M. Holmes, and many others. Sometimes their statements were calls to action, and sometimes they were very personal.
“I’ve been thinking about you every hour of every day for the past week,” said Paul Auster to the absent Mr. Rushdie. (PEN said the author knew about the event and might be able to attend or watch the recording later from his hospital bed.)
He added of his wife Siri Hustvedt: You and all of us are fervent believers.
Organized as a show of support for Mr Rushdie, who was seriously injured in the attack, the hour-long event resonated well beyond his personal situation.
“It’s no coincidence that this happened now,” said former PEN Chairman Andrew Solomon. “We live in a time when the right to free speech is under constant attack from both the Left and the Right, libraries are closed, books are being removed from schools, and everything is a symbol of American freedom. Speech is threatened.”
Before reading a passage in Joseph Anton, a third-party memoir written by Rushdie about the aftermath of the fatwa, Hustvedt said, “The right to free expression in fiction and non-fiction needs to be defended with ruthless good faith. ” he said fiercely. wild irony. Without it, she said, “literature is little more than an echo chamber for the fleeting clichés and truisms that plague all cultures.”
The atmosphere was serious, but the speaker admired Mr. Rushdie’s playful, erudite, pun-filled, rich and exuberant style, and read some of his many moving defenses. , the event felt affectionate and at times almost joyous. freedom of expression.
Iranian author Loya Hakakian read a passage introducing the title character of her first post-fatwa novel, Haroun and the Sea of Stories, allegorically portraying Rushdie’s own predicament. Set in a city of severely restricted speech – “a city so miserably sad that its name has been forgotten” – it tells the story of a happy young man named Haroun, the only child of narrator Rashid Khalifa. was famous throughout that ill-fated metropolis, but who would notice it has lost its power to tell a story?
Read by Mr. McCann “From Kansas” An essay on “The Wizard of Oz” and a 1992 New Yorker essay on the influence of Mr. Rushdie’s boyhood imagination. British-American actor Asif Mandvi read a passage from Mr. Rushdie’s next novel, “Victory City,” and author Reginald Dwayne Betts said in a speech Mr. Rushdie gave in 2005 that the book I read “The Power of the Pen” which talks about how it can change people.
Mr Rushdie wrote: “We read our lives through them, and their descriptions of the inner and outer worlds are conflated with ours. They become ours.”
This is New York, and the event drew crowds who stopped to see what was going on, and those who came deliberately out of admiration for Mr. Rushdie and what he stands for. The 33-year-old AI developer, Adam Becker, said he was proud to support an author he admires. Sweltering in the sun in front of the library, he carried a copy of The Satanic Verse in his backpack.
“It’s not like I can send him money, but if he sees a picture of all of us here, he’ll get the message,” he said.
Read more about the attack on Salman Rushdie
Enrico Mariani, Ph.D. The candidate from Italy, who has been studying in New York for several months, is touched by the outpouring of support, especially in this volatile time of polarization, fear and mistrust in the United States and abroad. Said he did
Mariani, also 33, said: “
Mr. Kiran Desai, who read Mr. Rushdie’s book “Quichotte”, spoke directly to the author. “Over the past week, we’ve realized that many of us have been counting on you to hold up the skies,” she said. We are here for you, and we will be here for a long time.”
Before reading the opening passage of The Satanic Verse, Mr. Kunzl quoted a passage from another part of the book. That’s when the profane poet Baal defined the purpose of the poet. That definition applies to other kinds of writers as well.
“Salman once said that the role of the writer is to name the unnameable, point out fraud, take sides, start arguments, shape the world, and keep it from sleeping. “That’s why we’re here because it’s his duty to wake up and use our words to shape the world.”