The reading in front of the New York Public Library, in the Big Apple, in solidarity with the author stabbed on August 12: present novelists, journalists, friends
“I searched the list, found the phone number and address of Salman Rushdie, I took the subway to his house. He wasn’t at home, he was on vacation in Italy, but his mother-in-law let me in. We talked, she gave me pen and paper to write him a message … That was a world in which the only madness that could happen to you was to find an exuberant reader at the door. And that world was called civilization. Let’s try to keep it tight ». So the American writer Jeff Eugenidesspeaking yesterday at his turn, on the steps of the New York Public Library, he recounted his first attempt, as a young man, to meet Rushdie in London, before the Ayatollah Khomeini fatwa who sentenced him to death in 1989. How not to think about it later that on August 12, young American Hadi Matar took a bus from New Jersey to stab Rushdie ten times at the Chautauqua festival in New York State?
Paul Auster and his wife Siri Hustvedt they read excerpts from Rushdie’s memoir Joseph Anton, Gay Talese an excerpt from The fall of the Golden, Colum McCann a passage of Out of Kansasa short story that revisits his early literary influence (The Wizard of Oz) and the relationship with the father. They could not miss The satanic versesread by the British author Hari Kunzruwhile the Iranian Roya Hakakian she dived in Harun and the sea of storiesthe first book (for kids) later The verses. The Italian painter Francesco Clemente He acted In the south, illustrated by him: «My friendship with Salman is based on disagreement about everything, just like the characters in this story». The intellectuals who read Rushdie’s works yesterday morning in Manhattan, at an event organized by the association for freedom of expression Pen America, are also dear friends of the writer, eager to do something for him. And the ability to see in livestream the event on the New York library website was not just a way to reach the worldwide audience of its readers. It was also used to address Salman, still hospitalized: he’s recovering and has his humor back, even if he risks losing an eye, and has made it known that he would be following the event online. Some of those present had discussed the passages to read with him.
“I thought about you every hour of every day. I love you like a brotherSaid Paul Auster. Words similar to those he published thirty years ago in an article in the “New York Times”: every morning, when he began to write, he thought of his friend who lived hidden on the other side of the ocean, and thanked him because he was also defending his freedom. Auster nods. “It happens to me again, now that it’s started again. People like Salman fight because everyone has the right to express themselves – he says to the “Corriere” -. He didn’t ask for this, he just wanted to be a novelist, but he wrote a book and found himself in the middle of a violent political backlash that changed his life. Then he had the courage to start expressing his deep values of him. None of his essays on these issues would have been conceived if history hadn’t forced him to be not only a novelist, but also a spokesperson, and it’s hard to do both, but he succeeded. ”
Auster and his wife have been friends with Rushdie for thirty years. «We met him during the fatwa», Explains Hustvedt on the sidelines of the event. “When we saw him at dinner in London, we exchanged 3-4 secret phone calls, we went to the address communicated in secret, there were officers on guard outside, I forgot about them and then found them sleepy late at night. That was the time of secrets. But the Salman who lived in New York was a free man. He often came to dinner with us. Once, at the beginning of our friendship, when I was terrified of something happening to him, he looked at me and said, “Siri, I have nothing to fear from the public.” The attacker reminds the writer “the profile of mass shooters: lonely, angry, a young man who feels his masculinity humiliated and who finds an ideological outlet, denied by his secular mother. He seems to me to have little to do with the policies of the states ». Iran? “Guilty in the sense that they never canceled the fatwait remained there for those who, mad or not, wanted to follow it ».
Rushdie’s friends, including the reporter Tina Brown, underline that he fought for the pluralism of ideas, challenging the politically correct as the religious lobbies. To those who ask if in America also the «left woke“, The one most committed to the issue of rights, is not guilty of opposing freedom of expression, Hustvedt replies that she is” against anyone who legislates on human beliefs … but beware: today the biggest problem is the violence of white nationalists and the far right that influences the entire Republican Party ». Rushdie, former co-president of the Pen, said that writers in prison must be defended by celebrating their stories and metaphors with joy. This is what happened yesterday at the Public Library, concludes the spokesperson Suzanne Nossel: “Take this, ayatollah.”
August 20, 2022 (change August 20, 2022 | 11:03 am)
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