“Rushdie went on, ‘I just thought, There are various ways in which this event can destroy me as an artist.’ He could refrain from writing altogether. He could write ‘revenge books’ that would make him a creature of circumstances. Or he could write ‘scared books,’ novels that ‘shy away from things, because you worry about how people will react to them.’ But he didn’t want the fatwa to become a determining event in his literary trajectory” (“Defiance” by David Remnick, The New Yorker, 02/13&20/23). Writing takes courage, vision, and sometimes, heroic single-mindedness. For more literary thoughts, see REFLECTIONS.
