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Collection of essays, long one on Wizard of Oz, some post 9/11, a surprising one Turner's frontier thesis.
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I have fallen in love with Rushdie.The more i read his books the more I get addicted to him
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This book is a collection of articles and essays. Articles on terrorism and freedom were the ones I found most interesting. These were mainly contained in Section II - Messages From the Plague Years. Most of Section One did not hold my interest.
A few good quotes:
"Moral stature is a rare quality in these degraded days. Very few writers possess it. Miller’s seems innate but was much increased because he was able to learn from his mistakes. Like Günter Grass, who was brought up in a Nazi household and had the dizzying experience, after the war, of learning that everything he had believed to be true was a lie, Arthur Miller has had—more than once—to discard his worldviews. Coming from a family of profit-minded men, and discovering Marxism at sixteen, he learned that “the true condition of men was the complete opposite of the competitive system I had assumed was normal, with all its mutual hatreds and conniving. Life could be a comradely embrace, people helping one another rather than looking for ways to trip each other up.” Later, Marxism came to seem less idealistic. “Deep down in the comradely world of the Marxist promise is parricide,” he wrote, and, when he and Lillian Hellman were faced with a Yugoslav man’s testimony of the horrors of Soviet domination, he says, unsparingly: “We seemed history’s fools.”"
Rushdie, Salman (2002-09-10). Step Across This Line: Collected Nonfiction 1992-2002 (p. 47). Random House Publishing Group. Kindle Edition
"When Arthur Miller says, “We must re-imagine liberty in every generation, especially since a certain number of people are always afraid of it,” his words carry the weight of lived experience, of his own profound re-imaginings. Most of all, however, they carry the weight of his genius."
Rushdie, Salman (2002-09-10). Step Across This Line: Collected Nonfiction 1992-2002 (p. 48). Random House Publishing Group. Kindle Edition.
"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 untrammeled. 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; and it is the skepticism of journalists, their show-me, prove-it unwillingness to be impressed, that is perhaps their most important contribution to the freedom of the free world. It is the disrespect of journalists—for power, for orthodoxies, for party lines, for ideologies, for vanity, for arrogance, for folly, for pretension, for corruption, for stupidity, maybe even for editors—that I would like to celebrate this morning, and that I urge you all, in freedom’s name, to preserve."
Rushdie, Salman (2002-09-10). Step Across This Line: Collected Nonfiction 1992-2002 (p. 135). Random House Publishing Group. Kindle Edition.
"I have tried repeatedly to remind people that we are witnessing a war against independence of mind, a war for power. The peculiar evil of silencing the expression of an opinion is that it is robbing the human race, posterity as well as the existing generation—[robbing] those who dissent from the opinion, still more than those who hold it. [For] if the opinion is right, they are deprived of the opportunity of exchanging error for truth; if wrong, they lose what is almost as great a benefit, the clearer perception and livelier impression of truth produced by its collision with error. Those words are from John Stuart Mill’s great essay “On Liberty.” It is extraordinary how much of Mill’s essay applies directly to the case of The Satanic Verses. The demand for the banning of this novel and indeed the eradication of its author is precisely what Mill called the “assumption of infallibility.” Those who make such demands do so, just as Mill anticipated, because they find the book and its author “immoral and impious.” “But,” he writes, “this is the case in which [the assumption of infallibility] is most fatal. These are exactly the occasions on which the men of one generation commit those dreadful mistakes which excite the astonishment and horror of posterity.” Mill gives two examples of such occasions: the cases of Socrates and of Jesus Christ. To these can be added a third case, that of Galileo. All three men were accused of blasphemy and heresy. All three were attacked by the storm troopers of bigotry. And yet they are, as is plain to anyone, the founders of the philosophical, moral, and scientific traditions of the West. We can say, therefore, that blasphemy and heresy, far from being the greatest evils, are the methods by which human thought has made its most vital advances. The writers of the European Enlightenment, who all came up against the storm troopers at one time or another, knew this. It was because of his nervousness of the power of the Church, not of the State, that Voltaire suggested it was advisable for writers to live in close proximity to a frontier, so that, if necessary, they could hop across it into safety. Frontiers will not defend a writer now, not if this new form of terrorism, terrorism by edict and bounty, is allowed to have its day. Many people say that the Rushdie case is a one-off, that it will never be repeated. This complacency, too, is an enemy to be defeated. I return to John Stuart Mill. “The dictum that truth always triumphs over persecution is one of those pleasant falsehoods which all experience refutes. History teems with instances of truth put down by persecution. If not suppressed for ever, it may be thrown back for centuries. . . . Persecution has always succeeded, save where the heretics were too strong a party to be effectually persecuted.” There it is in a nutshell. Religious persecution is never a matter of morality, always a question of power. To defeat the modern-day witch-burners, it is necessary to show them that our power, too, is great—that our numbers are greater than theirs, and our resolve, too. This is a battle of wills."
Rushdie, Salman (2002-09-10). Step Across This Line: Collected Nonfiction 1992-2002 (pp. 214-215). Random House Publishing Group. Kindle Edition.
"British Muslims may not wish to hear this from the author of The Satanic Verses, but the real enemies of Islam are not British novelists or Turkish satirists. They are not the secularists murdered by fundamentalists in Algeria recently. Nor do they include the distinguished Cairo professor of literature and his scholarly wife who are presently being hounded by Egyptian fanatics for being apostates. Neither are they the intellectuals who lost their jobs and were arrested by the authorities in Saudi Arabia because they founded a human-rights organization. However weak, however few the progressive voices may be, they represent the best hope in the Muslim world for a free and prosperous future. The enemies of Islam are those who wish the culture to be frozen in time, who are, in Ali Shariati’s phrase, in “revolt against history,” and whose tyranny and unreason are making modern Islam look like a culture of madness and blood. Alibhai-Brown’s interviewee Nasreen Rehman wisely says that “we must stop thinking in binary, oppositional terms.” May I propose that a starting place might be the recognition that, on the one hand, it is the Siddiquis and Hizbollahs and blind sheikhs and ayatollahs who are the real foes of Muslims around the world, the real “enemy within”; and that, on the other hand—as in the case of the campaign on behalf of Bosnia’s Muslims—there are many “friends without.”"
Rushdie, Salman (2002-09-10). Step Across This Line: Collected Nonfiction 1992-2002 (pp. 240-241). Random House Publishing Group. Kindle Edition.
"No religion justifies murder. If assassins disguise themselves by putting on the cloak of faith, we must not be fooled. Islamic fundamentalism is not a religious movement but a political one. Let us, in Djaout’s memory, at least learn to call tyranny by its true name."
Rushdie, Salman (2002-09-10). Step Across This Line: Collected Nonfiction 1992-2002 (p. 249). Random House Publishing Group. Kindle Edition.
"The attack on all those concerned with the publication of The Satanic Verses is an outrage. It is a scandal. It is barbaric. It is philistine. It is bigoted. It is criminal. And yet, over the last seven years or so, it has been called a number of other things. It has been called religious. It has been called a cultural problem. It has been called understandable. It has been called theoretical. But if religion is an attempt to codify human ideas of the good, how can murder be a religious act? And if, today, people understand the motives of such would-be assassins, what else might they “understand” tomorrow? Burnings at the stake? If zealotry is to be tolerated because it is allegedly a part of Islamic culture, what is to become of the many, many voices in the Muslim world—intellectuals, artists, workers, and above all women—clamoring for freedom, struggling for it, and even giving up their lives in its name? What is “theoretical” about the bullets that struck William Nygaard, the knives that wounded the Italian translator Ettore Capriolo, the knives that killed the Japanese translator Hitoshi Igarashi? After nearly seven years, I think that we have the right to say that nobody has been angry enough about this state of affairs. I have been told in Denmark about the importance of cheese exports to Iran. In Ireland it was halal beef exports. In Germany and Italy and Spain other kinds of produce were involved. Can it really be the case that we are so keen to sell our wares that we can tolerate the occasional knifing, the odd shooting, and even a murder or two? How long will we chase after the money dangled before us by people with bloody hands? William Nygaard’s voice has been asking many such uncompromising questions. I salute him for his courage, for his obstinacy, and for his rage. Will the so-called Free World ever be angry enough to act decisively in this matter? I hope that it may become so, even yet. William Nygaard is a free man who chooses to exercise his rights of speech and action. Our leaders should recognize that their lack of sufficient anger indicates their own lack of interest in freedom. By becoming complaisant with terror, they become, in a very real sense, unfree."
Rushdie, Salman (2002-09-10). Step Across This Line: Collected Nonfiction 1992-2002 (pp. 255-256). Random House Publishing Group. Kindle Edition.
A few good quotes:
"Moral stature is a rare quality in these degraded days. Very few writers possess it. Miller’s seems innate but was much increased because he was able to learn from his mistakes. Like Günter Grass, who was brought up in a Nazi household and had the dizzying experience, after the war, of learning that everything he had believed to be true was a lie, Arthur Miller has had—more than once—to discard his worldviews. Coming from a family of profit-minded men, and discovering Marxism at sixteen, he learned that “the true condition of men was the complete opposite of the competitive system I had assumed was normal, with all its mutual hatreds and conniving. Life could be a comradely embrace, people helping one another rather than looking for ways to trip each other up.” Later, Marxism came to seem less idealistic. “Deep down in the comradely world of the Marxist promise is parricide,” he wrote, and, when he and Lillian Hellman were faced with a Yugoslav man’s testimony of the horrors of Soviet domination, he says, unsparingly: “We seemed history’s fools.”"
Rushdie, Salman (2002-09-10). Step Across This Line: Collected Nonfiction 1992-2002 (p. 47). Random House Publishing Group. Kindle Edition
"When Arthur Miller says, “We must re-imagine liberty in every generation, especially since a certain number of people are always afraid of it,” his words carry the weight of lived experience, of his own profound re-imaginings. Most of all, however, they carry the weight of his genius."
Rushdie, Salman (2002-09-10). Step Across This Line: Collected Nonfiction 1992-2002 (p. 48). Random House Publishing Group. Kindle Edition.
"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 untrammeled. 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; and it is the skepticism of journalists, their show-me, prove-it unwillingness to be impressed, that is perhaps their most important contribution to the freedom of the free world. It is the disrespect of journalists—for power, for orthodoxies, for party lines, for ideologies, for vanity, for arrogance, for folly, for pretension, for corruption, for stupidity, maybe even for editors—that I would like to celebrate this morning, and that I urge you all, in freedom’s name, to preserve."
Rushdie, Salman (2002-09-10). Step Across This Line: Collected Nonfiction 1992-2002 (p. 135). Random House Publishing Group. Kindle Edition.
"I have tried repeatedly to remind people that we are witnessing a war against independence of mind, a war for power. The peculiar evil of silencing the expression of an opinion is that it is robbing the human race, posterity as well as the existing generation—[robbing] those who dissent from the opinion, still more than those who hold it. [For] if the opinion is right, they are deprived of the opportunity of exchanging error for truth; if wrong, they lose what is almost as great a benefit, the clearer perception and livelier impression of truth produced by its collision with error. Those words are from John Stuart Mill’s great essay “On Liberty.” It is extraordinary how much of Mill’s essay applies directly to the case of The Satanic Verses. The demand for the banning of this novel and indeed the eradication of its author is precisely what Mill called the “assumption of infallibility.” Those who make such demands do so, just as Mill anticipated, because they find the book and its author “immoral and impious.” “But,” he writes, “this is the case in which [the assumption of infallibility] is most fatal. These are exactly the occasions on which the men of one generation commit those dreadful mistakes which excite the astonishment and horror of posterity.” Mill gives two examples of such occasions: the cases of Socrates and of Jesus Christ. To these can be added a third case, that of Galileo. All three men were accused of blasphemy and heresy. All three were attacked by the storm troopers of bigotry. And yet they are, as is plain to anyone, the founders of the philosophical, moral, and scientific traditions of the West. We can say, therefore, that blasphemy and heresy, far from being the greatest evils, are the methods by which human thought has made its most vital advances. The writers of the European Enlightenment, who all came up against the storm troopers at one time or another, knew this. It was because of his nervousness of the power of the Church, not of the State, that Voltaire suggested it was advisable for writers to live in close proximity to a frontier, so that, if necessary, they could hop across it into safety. Frontiers will not defend a writer now, not if this new form of terrorism, terrorism by edict and bounty, is allowed to have its day. Many people say that the Rushdie case is a one-off, that it will never be repeated. This complacency, too, is an enemy to be defeated. I return to John Stuart Mill. “The dictum that truth always triumphs over persecution is one of those pleasant falsehoods which all experience refutes. History teems with instances of truth put down by persecution. If not suppressed for ever, it may be thrown back for centuries. . . . Persecution has always succeeded, save where the heretics were too strong a party to be effectually persecuted.” There it is in a nutshell. Religious persecution is never a matter of morality, always a question of power. To defeat the modern-day witch-burners, it is necessary to show them that our power, too, is great—that our numbers are greater than theirs, and our resolve, too. This is a battle of wills."
Rushdie, Salman (2002-09-10). Step Across This Line: Collected Nonfiction 1992-2002 (pp. 214-215). Random House Publishing Group. Kindle Edition.
"British Muslims may not wish to hear this from the author of The Satanic Verses, but the real enemies of Islam are not British novelists or Turkish satirists. They are not the secularists murdered by fundamentalists in Algeria recently. Nor do they include the distinguished Cairo professor of literature and his scholarly wife who are presently being hounded by Egyptian fanatics for being apostates. Neither are they the intellectuals who lost their jobs and were arrested by the authorities in Saudi Arabia because they founded a human-rights organization. However weak, however few the progressive voices may be, they represent the best hope in the Muslim world for a free and prosperous future. The enemies of Islam are those who wish the culture to be frozen in time, who are, in Ali Shariati’s phrase, in “revolt against history,” and whose tyranny and unreason are making modern Islam look like a culture of madness and blood. Alibhai-Brown’s interviewee Nasreen Rehman wisely says that “we must stop thinking in binary, oppositional terms.” May I propose that a starting place might be the recognition that, on the one hand, it is the Siddiquis and Hizbollahs and blind sheikhs and ayatollahs who are the real foes of Muslims around the world, the real “enemy within”; and that, on the other hand—as in the case of the campaign on behalf of Bosnia’s Muslims—there are many “friends without.”"
Rushdie, Salman (2002-09-10). Step Across This Line: Collected Nonfiction 1992-2002 (pp. 240-241). Random House Publishing Group. Kindle Edition.
"No religion justifies murder. If assassins disguise themselves by putting on the cloak of faith, we must not be fooled. Islamic fundamentalism is not a religious movement but a political one. Let us, in Djaout’s memory, at least learn to call tyranny by its true name."
Rushdie, Salman (2002-09-10). Step Across This Line: Collected Nonfiction 1992-2002 (p. 249). Random House Publishing Group. Kindle Edition.
"The attack on all those concerned with the publication of The Satanic Verses is an outrage. It is a scandal. It is barbaric. It is philistine. It is bigoted. It is criminal. And yet, over the last seven years or so, it has been called a number of other things. It has been called religious. It has been called a cultural problem. It has been called understandable. It has been called theoretical. But if religion is an attempt to codify human ideas of the good, how can murder be a religious act? And if, today, people understand the motives of such would-be assassins, what else might they “understand” tomorrow? Burnings at the stake? If zealotry is to be tolerated because it is allegedly a part of Islamic culture, what is to become of the many, many voices in the Muslim world—intellectuals, artists, workers, and above all women—clamoring for freedom, struggling for it, and even giving up their lives in its name? What is “theoretical” about the bullets that struck William Nygaard, the knives that wounded the Italian translator Ettore Capriolo, the knives that killed the Japanese translator Hitoshi Igarashi? After nearly seven years, I think that we have the right to say that nobody has been angry enough about this state of affairs. I have been told in Denmark about the importance of cheese exports to Iran. In Ireland it was halal beef exports. In Germany and Italy and Spain other kinds of produce were involved. Can it really be the case that we are so keen to sell our wares that we can tolerate the occasional knifing, the odd shooting, and even a murder or two? How long will we chase after the money dangled before us by people with bloody hands? William Nygaard’s voice has been asking many such uncompromising questions. I salute him for his courage, for his obstinacy, and for his rage. Will the so-called Free World ever be angry enough to act decisively in this matter? I hope that it may become so, even yet. William Nygaard is a free man who chooses to exercise his rights of speech and action. Our leaders should recognize that their lack of sufficient anger indicates their own lack of interest in freedom. By becoming complaisant with terror, they become, in a very real sense, unfree."
Rushdie, Salman (2002-09-10). Step Across This Line: Collected Nonfiction 1992-2002 (pp. 255-256). Random House Publishing Group. Kindle Edition.
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The best writing in this collection is very fine, perhaps most particularly the long section of speeches and writings directly concerning the years of internal exile between the issue and the retraction (ten years later) of an order from Iran to have him killed. I do wish it had been edited more tightly. Easily 75 pages of reprinted columns could have been shed without loss, and perhaps 25 more by judicious trimming of an excess sentence here, paragraph there, phrase or auxiliary clause somewhere else.
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Rushdie has been hit or miss for me. I devoured Haroun and the Sea of Stories; savored Shalimar the Clown and The Ground Beneath Her Feet. but I can't seem to make myself get into Midnight's Children, I try and I stall. I've read about have of The Moor's Last Sigh and don't really mind that I don't know how it ends. I've ceased to expect much from Rushdie aside from his wonderful prose. Maybe I'll be drawn in to the story, maybe not.
Before reading this I'd never attempted his nonfiction, I'm not sure I'd ever even read an interview with him. So I had no idea what I was in for. I was enthralled: the collection is a mishmash of literary crit, political and social commentary, and the migrant experience. I saw The Wizard of Oz through news eyes, discovered new authors I'm curious to read, I learned more about Indian politics, the Indian/Pakistan conflict, and read the nonfiction version of a fictional scene in The Ground Beneath Her Feet. It was an illuminating and interesting read and it whetted my appetite for Rushdie and all things India.
Before reading this I'd never attempted his nonfiction, I'm not sure I'd ever even read an interview with him. So I had no idea what I was in for. I was enthralled: the collection is a mishmash of literary crit, political and social commentary, and the migrant experience. I saw The Wizard of Oz through news eyes, discovered new authors I'm curious to read, I learned more about Indian politics, the Indian/Pakistan conflict, and read the nonfiction version of a fictional scene in The Ground Beneath Her Feet. It was an illuminating and interesting read and it whetted my appetite for Rushdie and all things India.
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I don't even know why I stuck with this book to the very end but I guess I kept hoping it will get better when it didn't. The idea of having this non-fiction collection on absolutely random topics packed together intrigued me because I thought it would be super cool if he managed to pull it off and make it work. I thought if the writing is good then I will probably be a little bit interested at least in every single chapter/essay. Unfortunately that wasn't the case, I didn't like the writing style and there were only a handfull of chapters which I found good or interesting (hence 2 instead of 1 stars). The rest was either boring or I found the points being made at times a bit questionable. This was probably meant to be read by hardcore Rushdie fans who would read even his grocery shopping list if given the chance and in my opinion is definitely not a good introduction to his work.
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I found this collection of essays thought provoking and well written.
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Sir Salmon Rushdie is one of my most favorite, still living writers. The famous and illegal fatwa against him is by now a residual threat. It was declared at some point during the writing of the collection of essays in: Step Across this Line. Remembering how real this threat was and how readily some folks wanted to blame the victim add to the poignancy of this volume.
Introduction done... These are wonderful essays. As the title suggests the essays are about the many kinds of borders a person can cross. He begins with the fictional border Dorthey crosses to arrive in the lad of Oz. I had never seriously considered this story before. I had never before thought that the Wizard of Oz was worthy of serious consideration. Rushdie reminded me of the value of thinking about traditional children's stories. I will never think of the Oz story the same way. Such is the power of any good essayist.
Among the other boarders he will cross are death, politics, literature and fame. Here is one of the first essays Sit Salmon will write about his cross into hiding as prisoner of conscious. It is noteworthy that his concerns and gratitude include the security officers who shared his risks and lost time with family members to keep him safe. There will be several essays about terrorism. Given that he wore a target for enemies of free speech and human dignity to aim their killing weapons, he is allowed to speak on this topic. He speaks not merely from his passion and his personal involvement, but from a vastly intelligent mind.
The recounting of the efforts to adopt Midnight's Children into a movie, or a miniseries was something of a tease. This was one of his better novels, (not my favorite but up there) if either the movie or series has been placed on film, it has not made it to America or to American TV.
Essays here range from as few as two pages to about 30. Roughly 60 essays total. The threat of Fatwa aside some are lighthearted others personal to the point of being domestic (On Leavened Bread); too many for individual comment here. What comes through is the depth and breadth of a man who knows how to write. This book is recommend on the merits of the use of language and for the insight into the mind of a very thoughtful -thought-filled writer.
Introduction done... These are wonderful essays. As the title suggests the essays are about the many kinds of borders a person can cross. He begins with the fictional border Dorthey crosses to arrive in the lad of Oz. I had never seriously considered this story before. I had never before thought that the Wizard of Oz was worthy of serious consideration. Rushdie reminded me of the value of thinking about traditional children's stories. I will never think of the Oz story the same way. Such is the power of any good essayist.
Among the other boarders he will cross are death, politics, literature and fame. Here is one of the first essays Sit Salmon will write about his cross into hiding as prisoner of conscious. It is noteworthy that his concerns and gratitude include the security officers who shared his risks and lost time with family members to keep him safe. There will be several essays about terrorism. Given that he wore a target for enemies of free speech and human dignity to aim their killing weapons, he is allowed to speak on this topic. He speaks not merely from his passion and his personal involvement, but from a vastly intelligent mind.
The recounting of the efforts to adopt Midnight's Children into a movie, or a miniseries was something of a tease. This was one of his better novels, (not my favorite but up there) if either the movie or series has been placed on film, it has not made it to America or to American TV.
Essays here range from as few as two pages to about 30. Roughly 60 essays total. The threat of Fatwa aside some are lighthearted others personal to the point of being domestic (On Leavened Bread); too many for individual comment here. What comes through is the depth and breadth of a man who knows how to write. This book is recommend on the merits of the use of language and for the insight into the mind of a very thoughtful -thought-filled writer.
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I read only half of Rushdie's "Fury", because the novel felt more like an editorial with plot. "Fury" was the last novel I tried to read, switching this year to nonfiction alone. "Step Across This Line" is a collection of Rushdie's many essays, journal entries and op-ed pieces, and if you enjoy Rushdie's novels, you will likely appreciate his refreshing political perspective. Rushdie is very reasonable, very down-to-earth, very humanitarian. His analysis is vivifying; his knowledge of world affairs is impressive. He is, as ever, the angry atheist, but the section titled "The Plague Years" certainly explains his rage. Even if the Ayatollah HAD read "The Satanic Verses" (he didn't) and even if he HAD understood the dream sequences (not an easy task) and even if he DIDN'T find them fairly inoffensive (as I did), did Rushdie deserve to be hunted like a stag in the global desert? For me, Rushdie is a kind of secular saint -- his preachings are essays, his deity is peace and justice, and his miracle is survival. Rushdie is oft accused of egotism, but what qualities, coupled with a great sense of humor and appreciation for rock music, could be less pretentious?
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My introduction to Rushdie. I heard him read from this book on Book TV (CSPAN 2), and was intrigued. I had dismissed him before this, and I was frankly blown away by his insight and wry humor. He wonderfully describes those frontiers in which we interact and struggle to live along the borders of our lives. I will read everything this man writes. He is gifted and amazing, and expect that one day the world will recognize him as he deserves: as a Nobel laureate for literature.
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Salman Rushdie is one of my favorite authors. This book of essays gives his thoughts on a wide variety of subjects. I especially was interested in the section including his descriptions of his life under the fatwa.
I want to include some quotes from the book. The first is a precious description of the TaJ Mahal, something agreed to be pretty much indescribable.
"I had been skeptical about the visit. One of the legends of the Taj is that the hands of the master masons who built it were cut off by the emperor, so that they could never build anything lovelier. Another is that the mausoleum was constructed in secrecy behind high walls, and a man who tried to sneak a preview was blinded for his interest in architecture. My personal imagined Taj was somewhat tarnished by these cruel tales.
The building itself left my skepticism in shreds, however. Announcing itself as itself, insisting with absolute force on it sovereign authority, it simply obliterated the million million counterfeits of it and glowing filled, once and forever, the place in the mind previously occupied by its simulacra.
And this, finally, is why the Taj Mahal must be seen: to remind us that the world is real, that the sound is truer than the echo, the original more forceful than its image in a mirror. The beauty of beautiful things is still able, in these image-saturated times, to transcend imitations. And the Taj Mahal is, beyond the power of words to say it, a lovely thing, perhaps the loveliest of thing."
About love of country, he says:
"...my characters have frequently flown west from India, but in novel after novel their author's imagination has returned to it. This, perhaps, is what it means to love a country: that its shape is also yours, the shape of the way ou think and feel and dream. That you can never really leave."
Rushdie's characteristic humor is also evident in the following:
"Down into the dirt we tumble, in the name of the gentle Christ."
President Clinton, who reportedly prayed with his spiritual advisers while the impeachment vote was being taken, is nos slouch in the faux department himself."
"No amount of Western hypocrisy can come close to Saddam Hussein's faux-Islam and the crimes committed in its name. Ye religious zealots have the nerve to accuse god-free secularists of lacking moral principles."
"...whoever we are, friend or faux."
"Yes, all right, on February 14 it will be ten years since I received my unfunny Valentine." (speaking of the day the fatwa was announced)
"Speak and I risk deafening the world to those other utterances, my books, written in my true language, the language of literature. I risk helping to conceal the real Salman behind the smoky, sulfurous Rushdie of the Affair. I have led two lives: one blighted by hatred and caught up in this dire business, which I'm trying to leave behind, and the life of a free man, freely doing his work. Two lives, but non I can afford to lose, for one loss would end both."
Some thoughts on writing:
"A writer's injuries are his strengths, and from his wounds will flow his sweetest, most startling dreams."
Some thoughts on the fatwa:
"But these dark anniversaries of the appalling Valentine I was sent in 1989 have also been times to reflect upon the countervailing value of love. Love feels more and more like the only subject."
"What happened in India, happened in God's name. The problem's name is god."
"So freedom is now to be defended against those too poor to deserve its benefits by the edifices and procedures of totalitarianism."
I want to include some quotes from the book. The first is a precious description of the TaJ Mahal, something agreed to be pretty much indescribable.
"I had been skeptical about the visit. One of the legends of the Taj is that the hands of the master masons who built it were cut off by the emperor, so that they could never build anything lovelier. Another is that the mausoleum was constructed in secrecy behind high walls, and a man who tried to sneak a preview was blinded for his interest in architecture. My personal imagined Taj was somewhat tarnished by these cruel tales.
The building itself left my skepticism in shreds, however. Announcing itself as itself, insisting with absolute force on it sovereign authority, it simply obliterated the million million counterfeits of it and glowing filled, once and forever, the place in the mind previously occupied by its simulacra.
And this, finally, is why the Taj Mahal must be seen: to remind us that the world is real, that the sound is truer than the echo, the original more forceful than its image in a mirror. The beauty of beautiful things is still able, in these image-saturated times, to transcend imitations. And the Taj Mahal is, beyond the power of words to say it, a lovely thing, perhaps the loveliest of thing."
About love of country, he says:
"...my characters have frequently flown west from India, but in novel after novel their author's imagination has returned to it. This, perhaps, is what it means to love a country: that its shape is also yours, the shape of the way ou think and feel and dream. That you can never really leave."
Rushdie's characteristic humor is also evident in the following:
"Down into the dirt we tumble, in the name of the gentle Christ."
President Clinton, who reportedly prayed with his spiritual advisers while the impeachment vote was being taken, is nos slouch in the faux department himself."
"No amount of Western hypocrisy can come close to Saddam Hussein's faux-Islam and the crimes committed in its name. Ye religious zealots have the nerve to accuse god-free secularists of lacking moral principles."
"...whoever we are, friend or faux."
"Yes, all right, on February 14 it will be ten years since I received my unfunny Valentine." (speaking of the day the fatwa was announced)
"Speak and I risk deafening the world to those other utterances, my books, written in my true language, the language of literature. I risk helping to conceal the real Salman behind the smoky, sulfurous Rushdie of the Affair. I have led two lives: one blighted by hatred and caught up in this dire business, which I'm trying to leave behind, and the life of a free man, freely doing his work. Two lives, but non I can afford to lose, for one loss would end both."
Some thoughts on writing:
"A writer's injuries are his strengths, and from his wounds will flow his sweetest, most startling dreams."
Some thoughts on the fatwa:
"But these dark anniversaries of the appalling Valentine I was sent in 1989 have also been times to reflect upon the countervailing value of love. Love feels more and more like the only subject."
"What happened in India, happened in God's name. The problem's name is god."
"So freedom is now to be defended against those too poor to deserve its benefits by the edifices and procedures of totalitarianism."
...
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от Салман Рушді у доволі непоганому, але якось надто рівному есе Ще раз на захист роману, пише: Бо література - справжня література - завжди була надбанням меншості. все вірно, але я ніяк не можу скласти конструкт "справжня література". та, яка лікує? очищає? чи, як пише Рушді у есе про Артура Мілера, є конденсатором моралі?..
тут насправді треба чітко відрізняти моралізаторські романи і романи, де питання моралі/етичний нерв - вихідне (Дост��євський, Філіп Рот, Уільям Голдінг - спонтанно пишу). так от, Рушді, напевно, має на увазі саме останній курс і ракурс, що і робить Міллера маргінальним в ситуації постмодерного релятивізму, позааксіологічних тарантіно і паланіків. із цитати: в часи, коли багато літераторів і ще більше літературних критиків повернули погляд всередину себе, гублячись у дзеркальних кресленнях, Артур Міллер твердо відстоює реальність реального і моральну функцію літератури, що на сьогодні постає не меншим радикалізмом, аніж у його юності. потім вже далі Міллеру, немов, мораль була дарована із дитинства. як бачимо, це якийсь особливий імпульс, енергетика прози і сміливість розмежовувати добро від зла без делитантського "все відносно". тому, Рушді хоче бути чесним із читачем, не зважачи на тему розмови. його чесність може балансувати від концертів Боно і Міка Джаггера до хвилюючих рядків, присвячених Анджелі Картер. такий він Рушді - завжди відкритий до світу, який так часто його не приймає у свої обійми.
тут насправді треба чітко відрізняти моралізаторські романи і романи, де питання моралі/етичний нерв - вихідне (Дост��євський, Філіп Рот, Уільям Голдінг - спонтанно пишу). так от, Рушді, напевно, має на увазі саме останній курс і ракурс, що і робить Міллера маргінальним в ситуації постмодерного релятивізму, позааксіологічних тарантіно і паланіків. із цитати: в часи, коли багато літераторів і ще більше літературних критиків повернули погляд всередину себе, гублячись у дзеркальних кресленнях, Артур Міллер твердо відстоює реальність реального і моральну функцію літератури, що на сьогодні постає не меншим радикалізмом, аніж у його юності. потім вже далі Міллеру, немов, мораль була дарована із дитинства. як бачимо, це якийсь особливий імпульс, енергетика прози і сміливість розмежовувати добро від зла без делитантського "все відносно". тому, Рушді хоче бути чесним із читачем, не зважачи на тему розмови. його чесність може балансувати від концертів Боно і Міка Джаггера до хвилюючих рядків, присвячених Анджелі Картер. такий він Рушді - завжди відкритий до світу, який так часто його не приймає у свої обійми.
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