The Fragile Bodies of Famous Men

The goring of Salman Rushdie at the venerable Chautauqua Institution last week has brought back memories for many of us. As for me, I found my thoughts returning mostly to 1989, and to 2015. The earlier year marks one of my first encounters with real literature, when the Ayatollah Khomeini unwittingly recommended The Satanic Verses by making me want to find out how any piece of writing could be that powerful.