By James Lomuscio
As Salman Rushdie’s optimistic humor evoked continual laughter among the approximate 950 persons in Westport’s Staples High School auditorium tonight, all the precautionary hoopla preceding his talk seemed as mythical as the genies in his latest novel.
Author Salman Rushdie stands behind a Staples High School library cart tonight filled with his latest novel, “Two Years Eight Months and Twenty Eight Nights.” (CLICK TO ENLARGE) Helen Klisser During for WestportNow.com
“I’m sorry you had a bit of fuss about my showing up,” said the 68-year-old British Indian author as he took to the podium. “All I can say is that you don’t look scary to me, and I hope I don’t look scary to you.”
Rushdie, this year’s speaker at the Westport’s 13th annual Malloy Lecture in the Arts, was in town to read excerpts and talk about his latest novel, “Two Years Eight Months and Twenty-Eight Nights,” a fantasy under consideration for the Nobel Prize in literature.
Prior to the talk, the novelist and essayist had met with about 60 Staples advanced placement (AP) English literature students who read the book released in September.
But it was Rushdie’s 1988 book, “Satanic Verses,” that, in an age of heightened terrorism concerns, had raised concerns among at least a dozen parents, prompting Westport Police Department sweeps of the school prior to and following his talk.
Rushdie made worldwide news in 1989 when Iran’s Ayatolla Ruholla Khomeni issued a fatwa (edict) calling for the author’s assassination for the book considered blasphemous by Muslims.
“I think a lot of students thought it was really overblown,” Rebecca Hoving, a Staples junior covering the event for the school newspaper Inklings, said about concerns about Rushdie speaking at the school. “They made us take our gym bags from the cafeteria, but some thought it made sense.”
A Wilton police officer stands watch tonight as Salman Rushdie signs books in the Staples lobby. (CLICK TO ENLARGE) WestportNow.com photo
She added that some parents’ Facebook postings expressed fears that Rushdie’s appearance would make the school vulnerable.
“But the students, I don’t think they minded much since it’s at 7:30 p.m.,” said Hoving.
Westport police took the security concerns seriously, asking help, including bomb-sniffing dogs and rooftop watchers, from Wilton, Trumbull, Monroe, Stamford, Darien, and the FBI. Rushdie, who was caught in heavy I-95 traffic, was given a Westport police motorcycle escort from the highway to Staples. Police were stationed all around the auditorium and adjacent areas.
Though Rushdie’s more than half-hour talk focused on his latest work, “Satanic Verses” was brought up twice during the question and answer period that followed.
“Nobody thought it was going to happen,” Rushdie said about the fatwa.
He also said that his did not want that event to change him on his journey of being a writer.
“I didn’t want to be deflected by this event but to go on being the writer I always wanted to be,” Rushdie said.
He later quipped to the audience that if one can avoid it, a writer should pursue a book without “being sentenced to death by a fanatical leader with terrorists at his disposal.”
Inklings reporter Rebecca Hoving: “a lot of students thought it (fear of an attack) was really overblown.” (CLICK TO ENLARGE) Lynn U. Miller for WestportNow.com
Rushdie also took the opportunity to assail all types of censorship due to “a series of traps because of sensitivity.”
“I believe you should be allowed to publish and live,” he said, adding that those who are criticized should learn how “to deal with it.”
“What would a respectful political cartoon look like?” he asked rhetorically, adding that the form demands disrespect. “If offending people is wrong, then nothing can be said because everything offends someone.”
He described his latest novel set mostly in New York City, as a “very weird novel,” in which an immortal genie falls in love with a mortal and has 19 children.
“I thought about how I might be recreating ‘I Dream of Jeanie,’ ” he joked about the 1960s television sitcom starting Larry Hagman and Barbara Eden.
Rushdie said that despite their fictions, myths and fantasies “begin to tell us truths about ourselves.”
“They are completely truthful about human nature,” he said. “These are ordinary human beings to whom the extraordinary intrudes.”
Author Salman Rushdie walks through a Staples High School hallway tonight as he makes his way to his car following his talk. (CLICK TO ENLARGE) WestportNow.com photo
He described his latest work as “oddly optimistic …cheerful, maybe more cheerful than the times demands.”
“I get tired of bleakness,” he said, pointing to time specific realism in literature.
“It’s fantasy, it’s short, it’s cheerful, and it’s not naturalistic,” Rushdie said.
One of the odd things about the new novel, he said, was that it took him about the same amount of time to write it as stated in the title.
“raised concerns among at least a dozen parents”
ONLY “a dozen”… ? Is this really accurate reporting ???
Then why did it appear there was a higher than normal number of kids absent from SHS today ?
My son reports that in just his orchestra class, he noted an estimated 10-12 missing, when there may be 1 or 2, if even that, on a “normal” day.
Playing hooky?