Step Across This Line: Collected Nonfiction 1992-2002

Rushdie writes with a golden pen and I have nothing new to say about that. This collection is exactly what it says on the tape -- a decade's assortment of nonfiction covering a smorgasbord of subjects. As with any topically broad collection, not every piece resonates with me equally, but I do feel Rushdie approached each piece with deep introspection, yielding compositions that were thoughtful, challenging, entertaining, frustrating, and ultimately insightful.

My criticisms of this collection fall mainly on the editor(s). Some pieces had a brief note about where the essay/lecture/etc. debuted, but most were sorely lacking context. Because several of the pieces were incredibly niche and topical, a little information regarding where/when the work was originally published would've greatly aided in understanding and contextualizing Rushdie's words.

As a collection of non-fiction writing from 1992-2002, read in 2018, this was always going to struggle from issues of anachronism.
However, I appreciate Rushdie and am interested in his ideas, and this book popped up at a remainders sale. I could not overlook it.
There are many rewards for the reader, primarily in the writing skill, but also in some of the ideas:
He writes of, "...suffering from culturally endemic golden-ageism: that recurring, bilious nostalgia for a literary past which never, at the time, seemed that much better than the present does now.” Common sense, beautifully expressed.
Or his attempts to do, in "Midnight's Children", something he found in Dickens:
“Dickensian London, that stench, rotting city full of sly, conniving shysters, that city in which goodness was under constant assault by duplicity, malice, and greed, seemed to me to hold up the mirror to the pullulating cities of India, with their preening elites living the high life in gleaming skyscrapers while the great majority of their compatriots battled to survive in the hurly-burly of the streets below….his real innovation: namely his unique combination of naturalistic backgrounds and surreal foregrounds. In Dickens, the details of place and social mores are skewered by a pitiless realism, a naturalistic exactitude that has never been bettered. Upon this realistic canvas he places his outsize characters, in whom we have no choice but to believe because we cannot fail to believe in the world they live in.”
More connections, this time with the Roman historian Suetonius:
“From Suetonius, I learned much about the paradoxical nature of power elites, and so was able to construct an elite of my own in the version of Pakistan that is the setting for Shame: an elite riven by hatreds and fights to the death but joined by bonds of blood and marriage and, crucially, in control of all the power in the land.”
And simply cheerful Gothic punning about his English unfaithfulness to flat-breads:
“In the whorehouses of the bakeries, I was serially, gluttonously, irredeemably unfaithful to all those chapatis-next-door waiting for me back home. East was East but yeast was West.” (Also clean water from the tap.) “A regime of bread and water has never, since that time, sounded like a hardship to me.”
And some fine second-hand humour:
“was once a goalkeeper name Dracula because he was afraid of crosses. Also a goalie named Cinderella, because he was always late for the ball.”
Many of his thoughts, articulated twenty years ago, have perhaps even greater importance now when the warnings have clearly not yet been heeded:
“However, we live in an increasingly censorious age. By this I mean that the broad, indeed international, acceptance of First Amendment principles is being steadily eroded. Many special-interest groups, claiming the moral high ground, now demand the protection of the censor. Political correctness and the rise of the religious right provide the pro-censorship lobby with further cohorts. I would like to say a little about just one of the weapons of this resurgent lobby, a weapon used, interestingly, by everyone from anti-pornography feminists to religious fundamentalists: I mean the concept of ‘respect.’”
“I want to suggest to you that citizens of free societies, democracies, do not preserve their freedom by pussyfooting around their fellow-citizens’ opinions, even their most cherished beliefs. In free societies, you must have the free play of ideas. There must be argument, and it must be impassioned and untrammelled. A free society is not a calm and eventless place – that is the kind of static, dead society dictators try to create. Free societies are dynamic, noisy, turbulent, and full of radical disagreements. Skepticism and freedom are indissolubly linked…”
Rushdie does not hold back in his criticisms, writing of Rajiv Gandhi and then Sonia:
(Rajiv's) “stunningly tedious oration in broken schoolboy Hindi, while the audience simply and crushingly walked away. Now, here on television is his widow, her Hindi even more broken than his, a woman convinced of her right to rule but convincing almost nobody except herself.”
So, there are many gems one takes away, and they are not all isolated; his sustained commentaries on his own travails (the jihad pronounced against him); religion in general and of any form; and the many issues of the sub-continent and of partition are all articulately, intelligently and thoughtfully presented, even though it is virtually certain no one reader would agree with everything he has written. One does not only defend his right to say these things, but thanks him for his courage and for his intellect as he says them.

This is a diverse collection of Rushdie's non-fiction writings, mostly columns and editorials, along with several speeches and a few other things mixed in. Some of the pieces weren't on topics that weren't of great interest to me, but even those included moments of his characteristic snark and wit. However, his essays on current events, even over 15 years later, still seem very timely, and his arguments in favor of freedom of speech and expression against all forms of bigotry and censorship remain both powerful and timely.

A brilliant mind and an excellent writer

I normally find Rushdie quite boring, but this I liked. Also thumbs up for being an interesting work of nonfiction!

Essays on a wide range of topics, in a wide range of styles, from reviews of the Wizard of Oz to speeches about the right to freedom of expression.

This collected nonfiction includes essays, newspaper columns and lectures. Rushdie is at his best when he explores items of passionate interest, like his lengthy Wizard of Oz interpretation. He is smart but not show offy. Maybe it just looks effortless, but it makes me feel like I could do the same thing. Someday.

"Faith means making a virtue out of not thinking. It's nothing to brag about. And those who preach faith and enable and elevate it are our intellectual slave holders, keeping mankind in a bondage to fantasy and nonsense that has spawned and justified so much lunacy and destruction." --Bill Maher