R’s Interview with Big Brother

Big Bro:  On Facebook, you posted a note entitled 17 Books in 17 Minutes.  I find it curious that you only managed to list 6 American titles.

1. The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn – Twain
2. Kim – Kipling
3. Heart of Darkness – Conrad
4. Bird of Life, Bird of Death: A Political Ornithology of Guatemala – Maslow
5. The Magic Mountain – Mann
6. Native Son – Wright
7. Pather Panchali – Bandopadhyay
8. Pedagogy of the Oppressed – Freire
9. One Hundred Years of Solitude – Garcia Marquez
10. The House of the Spirits – Allende
11. Hopscotch – Cortazar
12. Aunt Julia and the Scriptwriter – Vargas Llosa
13. To Kill a Mockingbird – Lee
14. A Confederacy of Dunces – Kennedy Toole
15. Germinal – Zola
16. An American Tragedy – Dreiser
17. Crime and Punishment – Dostoevsky

R:  Well, I was an English major.

Big Bro: How is that relevant?  There are no Englishmen on the list.

R:  English majors don’t just read books by the English…but you are wrong: Kipling was an Englishman and Conrad, a British citizen.

Big Bro:  Your choice of books makes me question your loyalty to this country?

R:  Can’t I have a world view?

Big Bro:  (Pause)….I’ll have to check the regulations, but your books are radical.

R:  I don’t know about radical, but they are books of substance to be sure and touch on topics of universal interest – the death penalty, civil rights, capitalism, racism, workers rights, class struggle, imperialism, political repression, magical realism and the like.

Big Bro:  You posted this on your twitter account : Wribbie ‏@wribbie 8 Feb “reports of a flying garbage barrel had commuters terrified this morning in Boston.”