Rushdie hour

Here’s a lesson in irony: But for the troubles that earned him a death sentence, Salman Rushdie might be a name that people recognize but barely remember.

As it is, Rushdie is known more for being condemned to death by the Ayatollah Khomeini, the late leader of Iran, than for any of his several award-winning novels.

And more than anything else, this disappoints the 57-year-old author because, he says, the issue was resolved long ago.

“There’s really nothing of consequence anymore,” Rushdie said in a recent phone interview, “and there hasn’t been for years.”

The Bombay-born writer attracted enough hate mail and death threats to last a lifetime following the publication of his 1988 novel “The Satanic Verses.” The ribald, fantastic fable examines the nature of belief in a manner that, at least to followers of Islam, blasphemes both the Quran and the prophet Muhammad.

But Rushdie – who will close out Get Lit! 2005 with a reading at 7 p.m. Saturday at The Met – was a successful writer long before 1989, the year the Ayatollah issued his fatwa (or Islamic ruling) calling for the novelist’s death.

The British-educated writer, who these days spends most of his time in New York, had won the Booker Prize in 1981 for his novel “Midnight’s Children.”

Even during the years that he lived underground, dodging the ongoing death threats that came his way, Rushdie continued to be productive. He published eight books, novels such as 1995’s “The Moor’s Last Sigh” and 1999’s “The Ground Beneath Her Feet” and 2002’s collection of nonfiction writing, “Step Across This Line.”

Rushdie will read from “Step Across This Line” on Saturday.

Get Lit!, the seventh Inland Northwest Literary Arts Festival, begins it final three days at 7 tonight at The Met with a reading by best-selling humor writer David Sedaris (“Me Talk Pretty One Day”). Sedaris, who is expected to read first, will be followed by poet Michael Heffernan and Spokane young-adult novelist Chris Crutcher.

At 7 p.m. on Friday, former National Public Radio host Bob Edwards will read at Showalter Hall Auditorium on EWU’s Cheney campus. Edwards will be preceded by Spokane novelist John Keeble and essayist Kathleen Dean Moore.

Besides Rushdie, Saturday’s closing-night event will include Montana novelist Debra Magpie Earling and Portland poet Carlos Reyes.

Born in 1947, Rushdie was just 14 when he went to England to attend school. He earned a degree from King’s College in 1968. His family, meanwhile, left India in 1964, choosing to live in Pakistan.

Rushdie returned home long enough to work in Pakistani television, but until 1981 he made money mostly by working as a freelance ad copywriter.

Through it all he pursued his main artistic pursuit: writing.

His first published novel, the blend of science fiction and fantasy “Grimus,” debuted in 1975. It wasn’t until 1981, with the publication of “Midnight’s Children,” that Rushdie was able to earn a living as a novelist.

Then, following his 1983 novel “Shame,” came “The Satanic Verses” and Rushdie’s time of troubles.

But the fact that his time in seclusion ended several years ago hasn’t been publicized, he says, nearly as much as the fact of the fatwa itself.

Calling from his literary agency in New York, Rushdie explained that he visited India three times last year alone.

“I don’t think that I’m going to go and take any vacations in Iran anytime soon,” he said. “But, you know, other than that the situation has been completely back to normal for many, many years now.”

So why isn’t that fact more widely known?

Rushdie has an easy answer: “People,” he says, “don’t write the good news.

“As I’m sure you know, one of the natures of journalism is, ‘People want to kill so-and-so’ is a news story,” he said. “And ‘People don’t really want to kill him anymore’ isn’t a news story.”

Still, while the death sentence was still in effect – a reward as high as $2 million had reportedly been posted on his head – Rushdie managed to maintain his literary career.

Part of his ability to work was the obstinacy that he says comes naturally to a writer.

“If you’re going to spend four or five years of your life writing a book, which I have several times done, you’ve got to be pretty damned determined to do it,” he said with a laugh. “It doesn’t happen by accident.”

But another, maybe more important, part involved his wanting to make a point.

“(I)n a way, it was an aspect of my resistance, you know, to not be silenced, to not in anyway be deformed by it as a writer,” Rushdie said.

“I though it would have been easy for me to not write or to writer very embittered books or to writer very frightened books. And all of that seemed to me to be a terrible defeat. And I thought the best thing I can do is to go on trying to write the kind of books that I’ve always wanted to write. And go on being myself.”

If there is a point that Rushdie wants to emphasize about the fatwa it’s that, ultimately, he proved victorious.

“(T)here was this attempt to murder a writer who was not murdered,” he said. “There was an attempt to suppress a work, which was not suppressed. And in the end, the people issuing those threats were forced by international opinion and by political realities to withdraw those threats.”

And if there’s one thing that Rushdie is thankful for, it’s that everyone from critics to ordinary readers continued to judge his books for their literary worth instead of for the furor surrounding their author.

Alison Lurie, writing in The New York Times Book Review, called “Haroun and the Sea of Stories” a “lively, wonderfully inventive comic tale with an updated Arabian Nights background.”

On the other hand, New York Times book reviewer Michiko Kakutani called “The Ground Beneath Her Feet” a “decidedly disappointing performance.”

“(I)t wasn’t all favorable,” Rushdie admitted, “but what I’m saying is that it was about writing, you know. And I think that those people who have written about and read my books and cared about my books, have done me the favor of allowing me to go on being a writer above all.

“And I think now that the news stuff is fading into the background, that literary self, which was the only self I ever wanted, has begun to reassert itself. That’s a huge relief, I can’t tell you.”

So, news editors everywhere, take note: Inspirational stories do attract readers and viewers.

“I think, you know, it would have been, in my view, a news story worth writing that it’s possible to defeat these threats,” Rushdie said. “You know, you don’t always have to lose.”

For a full transcript of Dan Webster’s interview with Salman Rushdie, go to the online edition of this story at www.spokesmanreview.com.