Salman Rushdie Speaks to the Tufts Community about the Importance of Free Speech and the Challenges Confronting Modern Authors
The Tufts University community was treated to the irreverent humor and wit of Salman Rushdie on Tuesday, September 27 in the third event of the Richard E. Snyder President’s Lecture Series.The renowned Anglo-Indian author spoke about his infamous career and the challenges confronting modern authors today.
A number of Fletcher School students attended to hear the author, who earned a reputation as a champion of free speech following the Ayatollah Khomeini’s pronunciation of a fatwa - a death sentence - upon him after the 1988 publication of his book The Satanic Verses.
“Great literature does not happen in places where there are no risks. It happens at the edges,” Rushdie said, perhaps in allusion to what some critics refer to as his streak of literary adventurism.
Born in 1947 in Mumbai (then Bombay), India, Rushdie moved to England to attend boarding school when he was 14, and later attended King’s College in Cambridge. Rushdie has published numerous works of fiction and non-fiction, the most recent of which is Shalimar the Clown, a novel that describes the issues and tensions facing the people in the Kashmir region who were affected by the 1947 Partition Treaty.
Rushdie said that because a lot has been written about his personal life in the media, it has become difficult for him to separate himself from his art.
“One of the curses of being a writer is that people assume that you are offering your autobiography in disguise. People who read my books tell me that they think I must have a very colorful life,” he said.
”Very often, in fact, I have had to tone down what I write,” Rushdie added. ”Real life, after all, is stranger than fiction.”
According to Rushdie, another challenge for authors is competition from politicians “for the same territory” - that is, the public’s attention.
“Politicians and writers compete to define reality,” Rushdie said. “Power argues with art.”
Rushdie also touched on the influences on his writing style, including India’s tradition of the oral narrative. He said that his immersion in different languages during his multi-cultural upbringing resulted in his later creativity and playfulness in his English-language writing.
In writing The Satanic Verses, Rushdie said that he was prompted to explore how the issue of migration affects people, particularly their loss of things that they had previously shared with their fellow citizens, such as language, belief systems and common understandings.
“When you lose all of these things which define yourself, you then start questioning your outlook in life,” he said.
Queried whether the art of the novel is in danger in today’s digital world, Rushdie replied that he does not anticipate its loss of relevance.
“The novel has never been widely consumed in the millions throughout history, and yet it has persisted, so it cannot be said to be losing ground,” he said.
Rushdie emphasized that his experiences have taught him the importance and power of free speech. He referred to a defamatory movie about him, made in Pakistan at the wake of the fatwa, which British authorities wanted to censor. Rushdie described the irony of the situation he found himself in -- he was fighting for free speech while being protected by censorship. He asked British authorities to allow the movie to be shown. The film failed miserably at the box office because of its poor quality, which validated his belief in free speech, he said.
He said that while the issue of censorship remains to be challenge for modern writers, “it has come to be very hard to ban books in the modern age because people now have easy access to information.”
Rushdie addressed would-be censors by alluding to a quote by the novelist Saul Bellow: “For God’s sake, open the universe a little more. The power of the novel is that it increases a little more the things that we can see, think and feel. Sometimes, though, when a writer pushes it open, others would close it.”
