Scene Magazine » salman rushdie

To Do Monday: The Written World

Daniel D'Addario — Mon, 30 Apr 2012 08:30:31 -0400

Being a writer is drab and unglamorous—lots of nights spent watching HBO comedies and trying to forget deadlines, not nearly enough spent out on the town—but once you’ve made it, you’ve really made it. The 1 percent of the writing world celebrate themselves at the Pen World Voices Festival opening night at the Top of the Standard, with pre-eminent lit-world party-boy Salman Rushdie in attendance, as if to prove Midnight’s Children was less a title than an organizing principle. For all the glamour, though, writers still have to confront their own essential nerdiness—the highlight of the evening is a 35-minute cabaret act based on lyrics by Anthony Burgess of A Clockwork Orange fame. After a few drinks, you’d have to hold our eyes open to keep us watching!

Top of the Standard, Standard Hotel, 848 Washington Street, 10 p.m. Tickets and information can be found at http://pen.org.

Salman Rushdie, Padma Lakshmi Both Attend Hitchens Memorial

Daniel D'Addario — Mon, 23 Apr 2012 10:17:17 -0400

Who knew the Top Chef host was such a fan of Vanity Fair's late columnist? Padma Lakshmi dropped in on a VF-hosted tribute to Christopher Hitchens on Friday at the Cooper Union--as did her former husband, author Salman Rushdie. Though the pair were not photographed together, perhaps out of the loss of Hitchens may come a rekindling of the Rushdie-Lakshmi romance?

To Do Wednesday: Fatwa Chance

Daniel D'Addario — Wed, 21 Mar 2012 12:45:05 -0400

Salman Rushdie (Patrick McMullan)

Where’s Salman Rushdie been lately? Ever since that high-society parvenu Devorah Rose sought him out as the catalyst of her latest reinvention and spilled all the details to the tabloid press, he’s been quieter than anytime since the clerics called for his head! Tonight, the verses he’ll be sharing are angelic, not satanic, as he’s cohosting a book auction with Michael Stipe (a member of R.E.M. in the same sense that Mr. Rushdie is an author); the texts were hand-designed by the likes of Chuck Close, Philip Glass, Sir Ben Kingsley (forget the honorific at your own peril) and Archbishop Desmond Tutu. It’s all in support of providing food to South African schoolchildren, so raise those paddles!

Piedmonte Room, Del Posto Ristorante, 85 10th Avenue, 7 p.m. Tickets and information can be found athttp://www.boomset.com/apps/eventpage/628.