Rushdie on Storytelling

As reported in Time Out New York, Salman Rushdie had this to say about storytelling at last week’s Moth Ball:

I love reading. But you sit by yourself to read. [The oral tradition] is a way of making stories and literature into a collective act, a community act. And it lends itself more to the first person; it's difficult to tell a third-person story onstage. So live storytelling is also personal and intimate. And there's an edge of danger in it because there's a chance of really dying. The teller is more vulnerable—and that is [what] makes it really exciting.

I suspect that only if you’re Rushdie is there “a chance of really dying” when telling a story to a crowd, but his other points make sense.