Author Salman Rushdie poked fun at his old nemesis, the former Iranian Supreme Leader Ayatollah Khomeini, Tuesday night.
"One of us is dead," Rushdie said.
Khomeini pronounced a fatwa - a Muslim religious decree - on Rushdie after the 1988 publication of his book "The Satanic Verses." The decree said the book was blasphemous and amounted to a world-wide death sentence. It was not lifted for nine years.
Rushdie spoke in Cohen Auditorium in the third installment of the Richard E. Snyder President's Lecture Series.
The opening comment set the tone for a speech that was light-hearted and conversational in style, despite broaching the serious subjects of politics, religion, and the art of the novel.
"I came as a writer to be very interested in the questions of the borderlines, of the boundaries," Rushdie said. "Great literature doesn't happen when there is no risk. It happens at the edges."
Rushdie, born in 1947 in what was then Bombay, India and educated in England at King's College in Cambridge, lived in hiding in the United Kingdom during the fatwa, though he traveled widely to lobby for its reversal.
Rushdie discussed the difficulties modern authors face in an age when information is widely available and easily disseminated. "Too much of my life has been in the newspaper," he said.
He said it is difficult for him to separate himself from his art. "People assume that you're offering your autobiography in disguise," he said.
Rushdie has published numerous novels and works of non-fiction, the newest of which, "Shalimar the Clown," is a New York Times bestseller. The novel explores tensions between families in the divided region of Kashmir.
Another challenge modern writers face is how to make their works stand the test of time. "At a certain point, material will not be contemporary," he said, in reference to including political and social events and allusions.
"The great risk is that your book will no longer be interesting," he said. "It is a risk that needs to be taken."
Rushdie briefly discussed influences on his writing style, including India's long tradition of oral storytelling.
"The most interesting way to tell a story is not necessarily from beginning to end," he said. "The best way to keep an audience interested is not [always] linear narration - [sometimes] something more joyfully playful."
Power and religion do play a role in authors' works, though, he said. Despite his own lack of religious convictions, Rushdie said the prevalence of religious belief in India forced him to deal with the issue in his writing.
Politicians and authors, he said, compete with each other because both are "fighting for the same territory." Both want to describe the world, but the politician does it in a self-serving way, he said.
Rushdie said his experiences have taught him the importance, the right and the power of free speech. He discussed free speech in reference to a defamatory movie made in Pakistan about him and "The Satanic Verses." British authorities wanted to censor the movie, but Rushdie asked that the ban be lifted.
The movie failed miserably - a fact Rushdie attributed to the film's poor quality. He said if the censors had refused the film a license, the controversy would have made the film popular.
Rushdie was introduced by President Lawrence Bacow, who described Rushdie as "one of the great literary figures of our age."
The two previous Snyder lectures took place last year. The series began last fall with Leon Kass, an advisor to President George W. Bush. Daniel Kahneman, who won the 2002 Nobel Prize in economics, spoke last spring.
