The lighter side of Rushdie

Salman Rushdie, acclaimed novelist and the last speaker in this year's Distinguished Speaker Series, didn't tiptoe on Thursday night around the infamous death warrant placed on his head by Ayatollah Ruhollah Khomeini.

Instead, the writer used his best-known controversy surrounding his renowned novel, "The Satanic Verses," as a starting point for discussion at Alumni Arena about the utter necessity of free speech.

"The first amendment is the thing that I, a foreigner, look at as truly wonderful about your country," said Rushdie, who was born in India and has lived most of his life in England. "Even here in America, public discourse seems to be narrowing, and if you see that happening, I encourage you to resist."

Rushdie explained his dispute with Khomeini had little to do with religious nitpicking, and everything to do with his right to tell stories as they need to be told.

Storytelling is at the center of who we are, Rushdie said, both individually and as a nation. We tell stories to reach a better understanding of ourselves, and our control over our stories, over our history, is definitive of our freedom.

"If we're able to constantly reexamine and rethink our past, that's the definition of freedom," Rushdie said. "If we lose that, if we are forced to take our stories from men in pulpits or men in uniforms, these stories stop being liberation and start becoming jail."

Although his ordeal with the death warrant, or fatwa, did turn Rushdie into a staunch supporter of free speech, the author stressed that as a writer, he is simply a storyteller.

"People who haven't read much of my work figure it's dark, theological, obscure, and incomprehensible," Rushdie said. "It's not."

The writer backed up this point by reading from a number of accessible works that dealt with very ordinary walks of life.

Among the things read were a short story about his life in the 1960s-during his "hippie stage"-and the first sex scene he ever wrote. The selection from his novel, "The Moor's Last Sigh," was ultimately partly a commentary on the sexual taboos Rushdie learned growing up in India that he said still inhibit him today.

Growing up in Bombay provided a great source of material for Rushdie.

"I was given, without asking, the subject of the end of empire," Rushdie said. "I was given, in the city of Bombay, the great gift of English with multiple origins, and my goal became to find a written form of that unique type of English."

Using a number of entertaining and insightful anecdotes, and cracking jokes about President Bush and Michael Jackson, Rushdie endeared himself to the audience on hand, and effectively shook the notion that he is "dark" and "incomprehensible."

"I came because he seemed like such a controversial figure," said Maria Komartsova, a political science major. "But he was very witty and intelligent. I plan on reading a lot more of his stuff."

"He came across just like his stories," said Sarah Bernard, a senior English major. "He was laid back, intelligent, and entertaining."