Salman Rushdie on freedom to publish

Nine months after he was stabbed during an event, Salman Rushdie gave a rare speech ... and he had this to say about the freedom to publish.

Transcript

00:00We live in a moment at which freedom of expression, freedom to publish,

00:04has not in my lifetime been under such threat in the countries of the West.

00:22The freedom to publish, of course, is also the freedom to read and the freedom to write.

00:27The ability to write what you want, to be able to choose what you want to read and not have it

00:32decided for you externally. And the freedom to publish books that ought to be published,

00:40that need to be published, and sometimes are difficult to publish because of pressure from

00:46this or that group. It's very important, I think, that such pressure should be resisted.

00:51And we live in a moment at which freedom of expression, freedom to publish,

00:56has not in my lifetime been under such threat in the countries of the West.

01:01Obviously, there are parts of the world where censorship has been prevalent for a long time,

01:07quite a lot of the world, Russia, China, in some ways India as well. But in the countries of the

01:12West, until recently, there was a fair measure of freedom in the area of publishing. Now,

01:19I've been sitting here in the United States. I have to look at the extraordinary attack on

01:26libraries and books for children in schools, the attack on the idea of libraries themselves.

01:34It's quite remarkably alarming. And we need to be very aware of it and to fight against it

01:41very hard. I have to say, it's also been alarming to see publishers looking to,

01:50how shall I put this, boderize the work of such people as Roald Dahl and Ian Fleming. I have to

01:57say, the idea that James Bond could be made politically correct is almost comical. I think

02:02that has to be resisted. Books have to come to us from their time and be of their time. And if that's

02:09difficult to take, don't read it. Read another book. But don't try and remake yesterday's work

02:16in the light of today's attitudes.