Sir Salman Rushdie

Yup. You read that correctly.

Author, political critic, and dare I say humorist Sir Salman Rushdie paid a visit to Greensboro last night for the next installment in the Guilford College lecture series: Literature and Politics in the Modern World. Riveting. Fatwa be damned!!!

At one time, novels were one of the main sources for news and information concerning the world around us. Take Charles Dickens. Whether it was reporting on substandard children's orphanages or frankly inventing a lot of Christmas, his novels reported on the state of the world, fomenting change where needed. With the multitude of avenues to receive news nowadays, some say today's novels fall by the wayside and do not provide this service to society anymore. Rushdie says hogwash.

When the state mandates that Item A is the "truth", and an author writes a novel from his/her own perspective and states the TRUE Item B in their book, the author has become a political author.

The differing importance of the Napoleonic Wars to Tolstoy and Austen are interesting. Tolstoy brings a version of the Russian front in War and Peace from his own perspective, virtually bringing to light a worldview of the Russian military leader Kutuzov that stems mainly from the book's exploits versus more timid real-time "newsy" accounts. Jane Austen uses military figures in her romance novels merely as pretty party guests in impeccable attire, nevermind the war of the time that was ravaging. The war did not affect her lifestyle as it did Tolstoy.

The novel is not a mouthpiece of the state, a nation, a religion, a cause. The novel is the perspective of the author alone; the thoughts and vision of the world through the eyes of the author. The novel still has a place in the world for political and newsy topics.

Afterward, I had the privilege to have three books signed by Rushdie. Invigorating. So cool to meet the man. The line was immense and time was short, so no personal photo op with him. But he's caught for posterity signing my books, including the eponymous The Satanic Verses.