Salman Rushdie, he of The Satanic Verses and hovering Islamic death sentence, is saying vehemently that pornography is vital to freedom. Makes sense. In a lavish new book by photographer Timothy Greenfield-Sanders, xxx: 30 Porn Star Portraits, he says that porn, “when it comes into societies in which it’s difficult for young men and women to get together and do what young men and women often like doing, it satisfies a more general need” and “while doing so, it sometimes becomes a kind of standard-bearer for freedom, even civilisation.” Other literary contributors to the book include John Malkovich, J.T. Leroy, Lou Reed, and John Waters.

Critics have said Rushdie‘s writings about sex detract from his literary strength. A Muslim academic, Ziauin Sarda, has noted that a character in The Satanic Verses seemed sex-crazed: “Rushdie portrays Mohammad as a banal, frantic man obsessed with sex.” Rushdie, 54, is decidedly unstuffy, by the way, and just this side of being a roué. He was recently married for the fourth time, to Padma Lakshmi, in a Hello! magazine-covered Hindu ceremony in Manhattan. His lovelife with Laksmi, 26 years his junior, figured heavily in his last book, Fury, which was nominated for but didn’t win The Literary Review‘s bad sex award.

Why is pornography so vital to civilization just now? Gore Vidal, who wrote the forward to xxx: 30 Porn Star Portraits, says, “We didn’t take sex so seriously thousands of years ago because we had so many other things to worry about, such as surviving.”

(via Fleshbot, HindustaniTimes.com)