SOURCE: Lahr, John. “No Way Back to Kansas.” New Statesman and Society 5, no. 204 (29 May 1992): 39-40.

In the following review, Lahr regards The Wizard of Oz to be a “shrewd and joyous assessment of a film that has played such a large part in the imaginative landscape of America, and in [Rushdie's own.”]

Anybody who hates Toto in The Wizard of Oz is my man. In his witty and vivacious appreciation of the film, [The Wizard of Oz,] Salman Rushdie gives the little terrier a severe dressing down. “Toto,” he writes with self-evident glee, “that little yapping hairpiece of a creature, that meddlesome rug!”

It's about as negative as Rushdie gets in his shrewd and joyous assessment of a film that has played such a large part in the imaginative landscape of America, and in his own. Rushdie's first short story, aged ten, was called “Over the Rainbow”, and...