New security risk: any book with “terrorist” in the title
In a world where terrorists can strike anytime, anywhere, eternal vigilance is a must. This is why we must applaud the initiative of a Cairns, Australia, bouncer who, according to this story in The Independent, kicked a man out of a pub for reading Richard Flanagan’s novel The Unknown Terrorist. (The novel, by the way, is about a woman who is wrongly identified as a terrorist.)
You might say this is the inevitable result of post-9/11 paranoia; you might even say that no self-respecting terrorist would be dancing in a pub and reading a book with the word “terrorist” in the title – but that’s exactly what they want you to think! It’s called reverse psychology.
Some other suspect books to look out for: Boom, Bust and Echo by David K. Foot, Crash by J.G. Ballard, No One Here Gets Out Alive by Jerry Hopkins and Danny Sugerman, Blow-Up and Other Stories by Julio Cortazar, At the Mountains of Madness and Other Tales of Terror by H.P. Lovecraft, Explosion in a Cathedral by Alejo Carpentier, and The Violent Bear It Away by Flannery O’Connor.
Feel free to suggest your own suspect books in the comments section – if we are to defeat these casual reading terrorists, we must all do our part!
I’m probably on some government watch list for publishing a review of The Reluctant Fundamentalist.
I’m hiding my copy of James Morrow’s This Is The Way The World Ends.
[…] Quill & Quire looks for other books that bouncers should be on the lookout for. Funny. technorati tags: quill and quire, richard flanagan, unknown […]
Terrific ideas, thanks for the laughter. i like your reverse psychology notion.
You’ve got me thinking .. apparently William Blum’s Rogue State and Emmanuel Todd’s After the Empire came recommended by public enemy number one? Or was that just a joke?
.. and i’ve heard that public Almanacs are also on the danger list in the USA?
in future i’ll stick to ordinary danger like De Sade, or Darwin’s Evolution of the Species.
yes - i’ve got a book, and i’m not afraid to use it :)
regards, michale