By Clyde Noel

Salman Rushdie speaks just as glowingly as he writes, and last Friday evening he charmed and dazzled the sold-out Flint Center with his wit, irreverence and knowledge of today’s world.

“You look like sensible people coming to hear a writer speak,” Rushdie said. “It’s only in recent years authors have started to face an audience. Charles Dickens started by performing scenes from his novels with the death of Little Nell in his ‘Old Curiosity Shop.’”

During a discussion of his literature, Rushdie managed to tell a multitude of personal anecdotes. He had the audience laughing out loud when he said his mother was the “keeper of the family stories” and she was a world-class gossip.

He discussed how there is always a person who sees him- or herself as a character in his novels. He recalled on a trip to India, a woman whom he had never met came up to him, slapped him playfully on his arm and said, “Naughty boy; you had to do it.”

Confused, Rushdie inquired as to what she meant and discovered she was convinced a character in one of his novels had been based on her.

“Telling a story is fundamental to people, and the desire to speak freely is part of the essential nature of all human beings,” Rushdie said. “We are the only creatures that have self-consciousness and engage in self-discussion. We’re unique in being storytelling animals who exist in our stories.”

Rushdie didn’t spend much time on “The Satanic Verses” and the fanatical Muslim clerics who accused him of blasphemy by insulting their religion. The Ayatollah Khomeini issued a fatwa to sentence him to death.

“Assassination is a form of literary criticism,” Rushdie said. “Khomeini was not my favorite person, and I would like to call into attention which one of us is dead.”

Rushdie spoke about free speech in this country and the assault on our liberties. He gave it a name — “Ashcroft Ridge: the ministry of false alarms.”

“The defense of free speech begins when someone speaks about something you don’t like,” he said. “Defending curious stuff not to your taste becomes the heat of the argument.

“Democracy is not a tea party. There is a danger of one side becoming intimidated by the other side, and neither should be intimidated openly,” Rushdie said. “There is an incredible openness to live in this country, and that is why I like to live here.”

Rushdie’s free speech position is to let everybody talk. “If it’s s___, people can tell by the smell,” he said.

When the floor opened to questions, political inquiries started to fly. Prodded to comment on whether the United States should have invaded Iraq, Rushdie said yes, but not unilaterally. There should have been a visible coalition.

“With great power comes great responsibility,” he said. “It’s not good for America to be out of step with the world. You should not take an army into battle unless you know how to get it out.”

He continued, “We will be in Iraq at least five more years and at a cost of $87 billion. Unilateralism and lack of foresight is the problem, even though we got rid of Saddam.”

Rushdie responded to a question about relations between India and Pakistan, both being nuclear powers with Kashmir in between. “Pakistan is a very unstable society,” he said. “It’s a nuclear state that is Islam radical. Pakistan will be the most dangerous place in the world if the Taliban achieves power.”

Another person asked which world culture is the most intellectually enlightened. Rushdie jokingly said the French. But he continued, “I spend a lot of my life in different cultures, and the world has never been as mixed up as it is right now. I have no idea which is best.”

Rushdie ended the evening with an apology to Dr. Seuss before he recited “The Grinch that Stole the Election.”