Sir Salman Rushdie

March 10, 2009 You've probably heard of the British Indian (Indian British?) author, or at least of his fourth novel "The Satanic Verses" which spurred protests and death threats from some of the Muslim community - "The Satanic Verses controversy".

Though Salman Rushdie was spared from physical harm, the Japanese translator of "The Satanic Verses" was found slain in a university north of Tokyo, the Norwegian translator was shot three times in the back (He was an Olympic athlete; his supreme health was perhaps the only thing that kept him alive), and the Italian translator was beaten and stabbed in Milan.

A surprisingly droll Sir Salman Rushdie lives and entertained a large crowd in Las Cruces. Highlights from the evening, straight from Sir Salman Rushdie's mouth:

• The novel's initial function was providing social news which in turn resulted in social and political change and told news which society would otherwise have never known, i.e. Dicken's novels. Nowadays few novels serve that function; he cited "Kiterunner" and "Reading Lolita in Tehran".
• The Internet is a battlefield for truth, "There is a difference between truth and 'truthiness'."
• "The world has become unrealistic ... the extremeness."
• "The greatest myth is ordinary life." (No longer such a thing as "ordinary life" as there is no longer a clear divide between public and private life.)
• "Surrealistic growth ... like the Bushes ... (for which) even magical realism seems insufficient (to explain)." Ha!
• "Writers are natural liars that become truth tellers." (Whereas politicians rally truths and tell lies.)

-P