The literary earth compensated tribute today to the writer Salman Rushdie, severely injured just a week back, in the coronary heart of New York, summoned by PEN The usa, the most prestigious writers’ club, and by the Massive Apple Community Library.
The party, which according to the organizers was adopted stay by Rushdie himself from the clinic in which he is hospitalized, took spot on the actions of the well known library headquarters, a historic constructing found a few hundred meters from Periods Square.
Paul Auster, Gay Talese, Jeff Eugenides and a dozen other lesser-acknowledged authors took the floor and in lots of scenarios skipped the script: whilst they had been asked to go through passages from Rushdie’s do the job, a lot of preferred to explain to their experiences and memories that connection them to the creator of “The Satanic Verses”, the perform that attained him a fatwa and a loss of life sentence in 1989 by the Iranian routine.
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The values underlying Rushdie’s prolific work have been evoked by writers as beacons that illuminate a world in conflict: diversity of suggestions, cross-breeding, appropriate to no cost speech, flexibility of the press, like of guides, and in the long run, “the celebration of everyday living”, maybe the most felt expression for the duration of the hour that this tribute lasted.
A dozen PEN activists had geared up them selves with posters with emblematic phrases written by Rushdie, these types of as the one proclaiming that “artwork is not entertainment at most effective, it is revolution”, or “If we are not sure of our flexibility, we are free of charge. “
“YOU DID NOT Inquire TO BE A HERO”
“You failed to talk to for the purpose of hero: you just wanted to be allowed to compose in peace, but you finished up turning out to be our hero,” claimed British Tina Brown, turning to Rushdie, to study under the paragraphs in which the author promises the great importance of the press, the “important skepticism of journalists and their continuous questioning about electricity”.
The most predicted of the event was Paul Auster, who, dressed in black and with a straight experience – he had just shed a niece and her son to an overdose – recalled that Rushdie’s perform is like the very best literature, which “opens the Universe pushes the boundaries of languages, enlarges the world and will help us to establish with those who are not like us “.
Author Siri Husvedt – herself an American of Norwegian dad and mom – praised the diversity in which Rushdie grew up: born in India, educated in England and resident in the United States, stating that her value lies “in not struggling from the lack of roots. , but on the opposite, to enjoy its many roots “.
Irishman Colum McCaan, yet an additional immigrant to New York, reported the world will have to stand in solidarity with Rushdie as it did when the attack on Charlie Hebdo magazine in Paris, and as the globe then reported “Je suis Charlie” , now it is time to say “Nous sommes Salman” (We are Salman).
Rushdie’s bravery in not succumbing to self-censorship or silence after his dying sentence in 1989 was also highlighted by a lot of of his colleagues, these types of as American Amy Residences, who recalled that artists like to chat about their get the job done and not censorship, but someone has to do it, like Rushdie himself, simply because the freedom to write “is like air: only when you skip it do you truly feel the need to have”.
But not everything was dominated by gravity or solemnity: perhaps to emulate Rushdie’s jovial character, Iranian poet Roya Hakakian (a further “exile” in New York) read excerpts from a kid’s book by Rushdie, “Harun and the sea of stories “.
In a world dominated by the “factories of sadness”, a narrator named Rashid nevertheless retains the flame of the creativity alive, but a person day his stories operate out and it will be his son Harún, via a thousand adventures, to enable him recuperate his gift touring to the Sea of Stories.
Harun, like Salman himself.
With information and facts from EFE.
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