Acclaimed and controversial novelist spoke about the “Role of the Writer” Friday night to a packed house in the Memorial Practice Gymnasium.
Rushdie, recently knighted by the for his service to literature, concluded a writer’s role was to inform, provide pleasure, impart truth, illuminate foreign ideas or places, celebrate the unexpected, inspire dreams and deal with international issues on the human scale.
“However unimportant literature may seem, in the end it is literature that writes the history of our lives,” Rushdie said.
The humorous speech recounted his personal experiences, among them the much publicized Fatwa from the Ayatollah Khomeini that forced him to go into hiding in the late 1980s, and discussed the many roles and obligations that writers have in society.
Rushdie implored writers to bring truth to their readers even in fiction and even if it leads them to become targets for people in power who may disagree.
“Don’t stay in the safe middle ground,” Rushdie said. “There are interest groups in the world who do not wish us to increase the size of the universe.”
Rushdie also discussed the difficulty novelists face writing in the current age of contention because character does not always determine destiny.
“It becomes more important than ever for art to become that space where human intimacy is preserved,” Rushdie said. “The writer’s role is not to answer the questions of the world but to frame the issues in interesting ways.”
