Step Across This Line

Collected Nonfiction 1992-2002

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by Salman Rushdie

Random House, Inc

Due/Published September 2002, 320 pages, cloth

ISBN 0679463348

Salman Rushdie’s latest collection of nonfiction. The essays, speeches, and opinion pieces assembled here, written over the last ten years, cover an wide range of subjects. The collection chronicles Rushdie’s intellectual odyssey and is also an especially personal look into the writer’s psyche. Rushdie writes about his fascination with The Wizard of Oz, his obsession with soccer, and the state of the novel, among many other topics. Most notably, delving into his unique personal experience fighting the Iranian fatwa, he addresses the subject of militant Islam in a series of challenging and deeply felt responses to the terrorist attacks of September 11, 2001. The book ends with the eponymous “Step Across This Line,” a lecture Rushdie delivered at Yale in the spring of 2002, which has never been published before.

Review

Salman Rushdie has been in the thick of things for over two decades now. He was, of course, the subject of an Iranian fatwa which, though it forced him into exile, did not stop him from writing eloquently on the role of the writer in society. More recently, Rushdie has become something of a pop celebrity (some criticize him for being starstruck), he has, among other things, appeared on stage with U2, been the subject of a Richard Avedon photo, and met with Bill Clinton. Rushdie has a sense of humor about all this, incredulous that a once awkward Indian writer has found himself in such climes. In his essay about appearing on stage with Bono & co., Rushdie compares a rock concert full of 80,000 screaming fans to a book reading: “The audience at the average book reading is a little smaller. Girls tend not to climb onto their boyfriends’ shoulders during them, and stage-diving is discouraged. Even at the very best book readings, there are only one or two supermodels dancing by the mixing desk.” Rushdie’s wit and insight also serve him well in pieces that examine his less-than-swinging life in swinging ’60s London, his obsession with soccer and especially the Tottenham Hotspurs, and his famous passion for the Wizard of Oz. Rushdie has also been a careful observer of recent events, and Step Across the Line includes his newspaper columns and longer essays on contemporary politics in South Asia (including a compelling diary of Rushdie’s visit to India), Islamic fundamentalism, U.S. popular and political culture, and such recent battlegrounds as Palestine, Northern Ireland, and Kosovo. Finally, Step Across the Line also collects some of Rushdie’s finest writing on authors and the current state of literature. Two longer essays stand out in particular: “Damme, This Is the Oriental Scene for You!,” an excellent overview and analysis of Indian fiction, and “In Defense of the Novel, Yet Again,” a persuasive and refreshing answer to George Steiner and other recent critics who view the novel as an increasingly irrelevant feature of contemporary culture. In many ways, this collection reveals Salman Rushdie to be a quintessential citizen of the world. He is a South Asian author, writing in English, who forcefully and intelligently addresses issues that shape our world and our inner lives.