Starting from the following excerpt from David Lodges The Art of Fiction and, supporting your arguments

with
references to concrete examples, discuss the extent to which intertextuality is an important feature not only of literary
texts but of numerous other forms of human endeavour (artistic or not):

Some theorists believe that intertextuality is the very condition of literature, that all texts are woven from the
tissues of other texts, whether their authors know it or not.

Starting from the following excerpt of Harold Blooms The Anxiety of Influence, discuss the often difficult relationship
between writers (and indeed all artists) and their precursors and the extent to which intertextuality can provide a
solution:

Poetic history, in this book's argument, is held to be indistinguishable from poetic influence, since strong poets make
that history by misreading one another, so as to clear imaginative space for themselves. My concern is only with strong
poets, major figures with the persistence to wrestle with their strong precursors, even to the death. Weaker talents
idealize; figures of capable imagination appropriate for themselves. But nothing is got for nothing, and self-
appropriation involves the immense anxieties of indebtedness, for what strong maker desires the realization that he has
failed to create himself?

Oscar Wilde sublimely remarked that "all bad poetry is sincere." Doubtless it would be wrong to say that all great
poetry is insincere, but of course almost all of it necessarily tells lies, fictions essential to literary art. Authentic, high
literature relies upon troping, a turning away not only from the literal but from prior tropes. Like criticism, which is
either part of literature or nothing at all, great writing is always at work strongly (or weakly) misreading previous
writing.

In ways that need not be doctrinal, strong poems are always omens of resurrection. The dead may or may not return,
but their voice comes alive, paradoxically never by mere imitation, but in the agonistic misprision performed upon
powerful forerunners by only the most gifted of their successors. Ibsen loathed influence more perhaps than anyone
else, particularly since his authentic forerunner was Shakespeare, much more than Goethe.

Coleridge spoke of the ever-living men and women, the canonical writers, a most archaic way of speaking in this
present age, when students are taught to scorn the Dead White European Males, or again, most simply William
Shakespeare. The largest truth of literary influence is that it is an irresistible anxiety: Shakespeare will not allow you to
bury him, or escape him, or replace him.

One cannot think through the question of influence without considering the most influential of all authors during the
last four centuries. I sometimes suspect that we really do not listen to one another because Shakespeare's friends and
lovers never quite hear what the other is saying, which is part of the ironical truth that Shakespeare largely invented us.
The invention of the human, as we know it, is a mode of influence far surpassing anything literary.

Most of our understandings of the will are Will's, as it were, because Shakespeare invented the domain of those
metaphors of willing that Freud named the drives of Love and Death. Our true relation to Shakespeare is that it is vain
to historicize or politicize him, because we are monumentally over-influenced by him. No strong writer since
Shakespeare can avoid his influence.

Contextualize and comment:

Philip believed that there were only a limited number of plots in the world (reality was finite, after all) and no doubt it
was inevitable that they would be reproduced in a variety of contexts. The fact that two of Harriet Scrape's novels
resembled the much earlier work of Harrison Bentley might even be coincidental. He was less inclined to criticise her,
also, because of his own experience. He had once attempted to write a novel but he had abandoned it after some forty
pages: not only had he written with painful slowness and uncertainty, but even the pages he had managed to complete
seemed to him to be filled with images and phrases from the work of other writers whom he admired. It had become a
patchwork of other voices and other styles, and it was the overwhelming difficulty of recognising his own voice among
them that had led him to abandon the project. So what right did he have to condemn Miss Scrope?

There were pools of light among the stacks, directly beneath the bulbs which Philip had switched on, but it was now
with an unexpected fearfulness that he saw how the books stretched away into the darkness. They seemed to expand as
soon as they reached the shadows, creating some dark world where there was no beginning and no end, no story, no
meaning. And, if you crossed the threshold into that world, you would be surrounded by words; you would crush them
beneath your feet, you would knock against them with your head and arms, but if you tried to grasp them they would
melt away. Philip did not dare turn his back upon these books. Not yet. It was almost, he thought, as if they had been
speaking to each other while he slept.

Charles stopped writing for a moment, and looked up at her. Why should the aged eagle?
What?
Its a quotation from Eliot.
It sounded like Shakespeare to me.
It was Eliot.
Well, you know these writers. Theyll steal any And her voice trailed off as she looked down at her trembling
hands.
Anything, thats right. He leant back in his chair, and smiled benevolently in her general direction. Its called the
anxiety of influence.

But why should I be haunted by an anxiety so ridiculous, so laughable, that I can smile at myself later for entertaining
it? Nevertheless it always comes back this fear that whatever I happen to be writing comes from some other source,
that I am stealing someone elses plot or words, that I am relying upon the themes or images of other novelists. That is
why there are occasions when I leave the house and travel to the London Library in St Jamess Square. The shelves of
English fiction there are both my terror and my consolation: I search for evidence to convict me, but I find nothing.
And yet, even in that moment of relief, I am still haunted by the fear that somewhere among these volumes will be
discovered the same novel I myself am writing. My obsession is most extreme when I have finished a book, and am
waiting impatiently for its publication. In those moments the essential fear is recapitulated in a variety of forms that I
have used dialogue from the work of another novelist, that a plot comes from a book I have read and forgotten, that I
have simply written down the words of someone else. And this is the strangest anxiety of all what if that other person
were actually within me all the time?

I was overtaken by the old fear. My book had been written before. I was convinced of it. I did not understand the
process involved (I presumed there was a name for such phenomena) but I knew that, somehow, I had copied another
novel word for word. Even the title was the same. I cannot describe the horror which the realization provoked in me; it
was as if my entire identity had been taken from me, as you would take a net out of water, and I was left with nothing
of my own. I left the house at once and took the tram to High Holborn; from there I walked to the library of St Jamess
Square. I happened to see Tom Eliot by the issue desk, and I had enough civility left to greet him before I hurried up
the stairs to the shelves of fiction. Then I began what I knew to be a fatal search fatal in the sense that if I found the
book and confirmed my fears, then my life as a writer would be at an end. I would no longer be able to trust any of my
words, or believe anything which I fondly thought I had imagined. It would always come from some other source. And
then I found it. There was a book here with the title I had only recently chosen. It had been published two years ago
London, 1922 was on the spine and as soon as I opened it, I saw the same words as I had manufactured on my
typewriter. This was the novel I had just written. I am nothing, I said out loud. Nothing can come of nothing. I came
back to this house, which unaccountably I consider the cause of all my woe, and I chose to sit here at my desk. But am
I, even now, writing what others have written down before me? And if this is so, what am I to do? Thus do we see in
every line an Echoe, for the truest Plagiarism is the truest Poetry.

Chatterton knew that original genius consists in forming new and happy combinations, rather than in searching after
thoughts and ideas which had never occurred before. True, murmured Philip gloomily. And this, Charles went
on, was the foundation of his everlasting fame.
With a grimace he flung the pamphlet at Philip; then he tore another strip from a page of Great Expectations, rolled it
into a ball and popped it into his mouth. He settled back into his warm seat and murmured to himself, with increasing
cheerfulness. New and happy combinations. Does that mean, he asked as he chewed, that we just need to switch
around the words?
Provide a short definition of the term pastiche / parody / adaptation / allusion / plagiarism / collage.

Discuss the ways in which postcolonial writers and critics use intertextuality as a means of dealing with canonical
texts.

Discuss the ways in which postcolonial writers and critics use intertextuality as a means of dealing with canonical
texts.

Identify the common feature shared by the following protagonists and discuss the nature of their interaction with works
of fiction: Frederick Clegg The Collector, John (The Savage) Brave New World, John Arnold DeMarco in Don
Juan DeMarco.

Identify the common feature shared by the protagonists of The History Boys and Azar Nafisis Reading Lolita in
Tehran and discuss the nature of their interaction with works of fiction.

Starting from the paragraph below, discuss the intertextual relationship between the 20 th century literary work and the
older text used in its elaboration.

Come along and meet Mark, Una Alconbury sing-songed before Id even had time to get a drink down me. Being set
up with a man against your will is one level of humiliation, but being literally dragged into it by Una Alconbury while
caring for an acidic hangover, watched by an entire roomful of friends of your parents, is on another plane altogether.
The rich, divorced-by-cruel-wife Mark quite tall was standing with his back to the room, scrutinizing the contents
of the Alconbury`s bookshelves: mainly leather-bound series of books about the third Reich, which Geoffrey sends off
for from Reader`s Digest. It struck me as pretty ridiculous to be called Mr Darcy and to stand on your own looking
snooty at party. Its like being called Heathcliff and insisting on spending the entire evening in the garden, shouting
Cathy and banging your head against a tree.

Mark, you must take Bridget's telephone number before you go, then you can get in touch when you're in London.
I couldn't stop myself turning bright red. I could feel it climbing up my neck. Now Mark would think I'd put her up
to it.
I'm sure Bridget's life in London is quite full enough already, Mrs. Alconbury, he said. Humph. It's not that I
wanted him to take my phone number or anything, but I didn't want him to make it perfectly obvious to everyone that
he didn't want to. As I looked down I saw that he was wearing white socks with a yellow bumblebee motif.

Mother, I do not need a blind date. Particularly not with some verbally incontinent spinster... who smokes like a
chimney, drinks like a fish... and dresses like her mother.

I dont think youre an idiot at all. I mean, there are elements of the ridiculous about you. Your mothers pretty
interesting. And you really are an appallingly bad public speaker. And you tend to let whatevers in your head come out
of your mouth without much consideration of the consequences. I realize that when I met you at the turkey curry buffet
that I was unforgivably rude and wearing a reindeer jumper that my mother had given me the day before. But the thing
is, um what I'm trying to say very inarticulately is that, um, in fact perhaps despite appearances, I like you very much.

The first time I saw Mrs Rochester she was in a deep sleep. She'd been given some calming drugs by the apothecary
and I saw with her for twelve hours straight till she woke up. I had plenty of time to study her in those hours. Her skin
was the colour of a smooth brown egg - black hair - and her eyes, when they opened, were black too - velvet-black not
shiny-black. She was no trouble, just confused, and she spoke some words in a language I didn't understand. The next
few visits were much the same, except I found she could speak English. Once when she woke up she was upset
because there was a tear in her dress so I found her sewing basket and did an invisible mend for her. She seemed very
pleased. I didn't see her for a while, but then one day Dr Munro asked if I would consider becoming her personal
keeper at the family home up north. When he said how much they were willing to pay I nearly fell over. Five times
what I was getting! And only one woman to look after!

If she was a child she was not a stupid child but an obstinate one. She often questioned me about England and listened
attentively to my answers, but I was certain that nothing I said made much difference. Her mind was already made up.
Some romantic novel, a stray remark never forgotten, a sketch, a picture, a song, a waltz, some note of music, and her
ideas were fixed. About England and about Europe. I could not change them and probably nothing would. Reality
might disconcert her, bewilder her, hurt her, but it would not be reality. It would be only a mistake, a misfortune, a
wrong path taken, her fixed ideas would never change. Nothing that I told her influenced her at all.

Shell not laugh in the sun again. Shell not dress up and smile at herself in that damnable looking-glass. So pleased, so
satisfied. Vain, silly creature. Made for loving? Yes, but shell have no lover, for I dont want her and shell see no
other. [] She said she loved this place. This is the last shell see of it. Ill watch for one tear, one human tear. Not that
lank hating moonstruck face. Ill listen. If she says good-bye perhaps adieu. Adieu like those old-time songs she
sang. Always adieu (and all songs say it). If she too says it, or weeps, Ill take her in my arms, my lunatic. Shes made
but mine, mine. What will I care for gods or devils or for Fate itself. If she smiles or weeps or both. For me. Antoinetta
I can be gentle too. Hide your face. Hide yourself but in my arms. Youll soon see how gentle. My lunatic. My mad
girl.

I tell her so, she said. Always it dont work forbk. Always it bring trouble So you send me away and you keep
all her money. And what you do with her? I dont see why I should tell you my plans. I mean to go back to Jamaica
to consult the Spanish Town doctors and her brother. Ill follow their advice. That is all I mean to do. She is not well.
Her brother! She spat on the floor. Richard Mason is no brother to her. You think you fool me? You want her money
but you dont want her. It is in your mind to pretend she is mad. I know it. The doctors say what you tell them to say.
That man Richard he say what you want him to say glad and willing too, I know. She will be like her mother. You do
that for money? But you wicked like Satan self! I said loudly and wildly, And you think that I wanted all this? I
would give my life to undo it. I would give my eyes never to have seen this abominable place.

Her name oughtnt to be Grace. Names matter, like when he wouldnt call me Antoinette, and I saw Antoinette drifting
out of the window with her scents, her pretty clothes and her looking-glass. There is no looking-glass here and I dont
know what I am like now. I remember watching myself brush my hair and how my eyes looked back at me. The girl I
saw was myself yet not quite myself. Long ago when I was a child and very lonely I tried to kiss her. But the glass was
between us hard, cold and misted over with my breath. Now they have taken everything away. What am I doing in
this place and who am I? [] She looked at me and said, I dont believe you know how long youve been here, you
poor creature. On the contrary, I said, only I know how long I have been here. Night and days and days and nights,
hundreds of them slipping through my fingers. But that does not matter. Time has no meaning. But something you can
touch and hold like my red dress, that has a meaning. Where is it?

"What's your name?" she said. Clegg, I answered. "Your first name?" Ferdinand. She gave me a quick sharp look.
"That's not true," she said. I remembered I had my wallet in my coat with my initials in gold I'd bought and I showed it.
She wasn't to know F stood for Frederick. I've always liked Ferdinand, it's funny, even before I knew her. There's
something foreign and distinguished about it. Uncle Dick used to call me it sometimes, joking. Lord Ferdinand Clegg,
Marquis of Bugs, he used to say. It's just a coincidence, I said. "I suppose people call you Ferdie. Or Ferd." Always
Ferdinand. "Look, Ferdinand, I don't know what you see in me. I don't know why you're in love with me. Perhaps I
could fall in love with you somewhere else. I . . ." she didn't seem to know what to say, which was unusual ". . . I do
like gentle, kind men. But I couldn't possibly fall in love with you in this room, I couldn't fall in love with anyone here.
Ever." I answered, I just want to get to know you.

I said I'd like some French perfume the other evening -- it was just a whim, really, but this room smells of disinfectant
and Airwick. I have enough baths, but I don't feel clean. And I said I wished I could go and sniff the various scents to
see which I liked best. He came in this morning with fourteen different bottles. He'd ransacked all the chemists' shops.
It's mad. Forty pounds' worth. It's like living in the Arabian Nights. Being the favourite in the harem. But the one
perfume you really want is freedom. [] Emma. The business of being between inexperienced girl and experienced
woman and the awful problem of the man. Caliban is Mr. Elton. Piers is Frank Churchill. But is G.P. Mr. Knightley?
Of course G.P. has lived a life and has views that would make Mr. Knightley turn in his grave. But Mr. Knightley could
never have been a phoney. Because he was a hater of pretence, selfishness, snobbism. And they both have the one
man's name I really can't stand. George. Perhaps there's a moral in that. [] I'm reading Sense and Sensibility and I
must find out what happens to Marianne. Marianne is me; Eleanor is me as I ought to be.

After supper (we're back to normal) Caliban handed me The Catcher in the Rye and said, I've read it. I knew at once by
his tone that he meant -- "and I don't think much of it." I feel awake, I'll do a dialogue.
M. Well? C. I don't see much point in it. M. You realize this is one of the most brilliant studies of adolescence ever
written? C. He sounds a mess to me. M. Of course he's a mess. But he realizes he's a mess, he tries to express what he
feels, he's a human being for all his faults. Don't you even feel sorry for him? C. I don't like the way he talks. M. I don't
like the way you talk. But I don't treat you as below any serious notice or sympathy. C. I suppose it's very clever. To
write like that and all. M. I gave you that book to read because I thought you would feel identified with him. You're a
Holden Caulfield. He doesn't fit anywhere and you don't. C. I don't wonder, the way he goes on. He doesn't try to fit.
M. He tries to construct some sort of reality in his life, some sort of decency. C. It's not realistic. Going to a posh
school and his parents having money. He wouldn't behave like that. In my opinion. M. I know what you are. You're the
Old Man of the Sea. C. Who's he? M. The horrid old man Sinbad had to carry on his back. That's what you are. You get
on the back of everything vital, everything trying to be honest and free, and you bear it down.

One day (John calculated later that it must have been soon after his twelfth birthday) he came home and found a book
that he had never seen before lying on the floor in the bedroom. It was a thick book and looked very old. The binding
had been eaten by mice; some of its pages were loose and crumpled. He picked it up, looked at the title-page: the book
was called The Complete Works of William Shakespeare. [] What did the words exactly mean? He only half knew.
But their magic was strong and went on rumbling in his head, and somehow it was as though he had never really hated
Pop before; never really hated him because he had never been able to say how much he hated him. But now he had
these words, these words like drums and singing and magic. These words and the strange, strange story out of which
they were taken (he couldn't make head or tail of it, but it was wonderful, wonderful all the same)they gave him a
reason for hating Pop; and they made his hatred more real; they even made Pop himself more real. []Remorseless,
treacherous, lecherous Like drums, like the men singing for the corn, like magic, the words repeated and repeated
themselves in his head. From being cold he was suddenly hot. His cheeks burnt with the rush of blood, the room swam
and darkened before his eyes. He ground his teeth. "I'll kill him, I'll kill him, I'll kill him," he kept saying. And
suddenly there were more words.

The young man drew a deep breath. "To think it should be coming truewhat I've dreamt of all my life. Do you
remember what Miranda says?" "Who's Miranda?" But the young man had evidently not heard the question. "O
wonder!" he was saying; and his eyes shone, his face was brightly flushed. "How many goodly creatures are there here!
How beauteous mankind is!" The flush suddenly deepened; he was thinking of Lenina, of an angel in bottle-green
viscose, lustrous with youth and skin food, plump, benevolently smiling. His voice faltered. "O brave new world," he
began, then-suddenly interrupted himself; the blood had left his cheeks; he was as pale as paper. "Are you married to
her?" he asked. "Am I what?" "Married. You knowfor ever. They say 'for ever' in the Indian words; it can't be broken."
"Ford, no!" Bernard couldn't help laughing. John also laughed, but for another reasonlaughed for pure joy. "O brave
new world," he repeated. "O brave new world that has such people in it. Let's start at once." "You have a most peculiar
way of talking sometimes," said Bernard, staring at the young man in perplexed astonishment. "And, anyhow, hadn't
you better wait till you actually see the new world?"

In the first years of the 21st century...a third World War broke out. Those of us who survived knew mankind could
never survive... a fourth... that our own volatile natures could simply no longer be risked. So we have created a new
arm of the law the Grammaton Cleric, whose sole task it is to seek out and eradicate the true source of man's
inhumanity to man. His ability... to feel. Libria... I congratulate you. At last... peace reigns in the heart of man. At last,
war is but a word whose meaning fades from our understanding. At last...we...are...whole. Librians... there is a disease
in the heart of man. Its symptom is hate. Its symptom...is anger. Its symptom is rage. Its symptom... is war. The
disease... is human emotion. But Libria... I congratulate you. For there is a cure for this disease. At the cost of the
dizzying highs of human emotion, we have suppressed its abysmal lows. And you as a society have embraced this cure.
Prozium. Now we are at peace with ourselves, and humankind is one. War is gone. Hate, a memory. We are our own
conscience now. And it is this conscience that guides us to rate EC-10 for emotional content all those things that might
tempt us to feel again... and destroy them. Librians, you have won. Against all odds and your own natures... you have
survived.

From nearby Westminster, Mrs Dalloways clock boomed out the half hour. It partook, he thought, shifting his weight
in the saddle, of metempsychosis, the way his humble life fell into moulds prepared by literature. Or was it, he
wondered, picking his nose, the result of closely studying the sentence structure of the English novelists? One had
resigned oneself to having no private language any more, but one had clung wistfully to the illusion of a personal
property of events.

As soon as Sir Sagramor got well, he notified me that there was a little account to settle between us, and he named a
day three or four years in the future; place of settlement, the lists where the offense had been given. I said I would be
ready when he got back. You see, he was going for the Holy Grail. The boys all took a flier at the Holy Grail now and
then. It was a several years' cruise. They always put in the long absence snooping around, in the most conscientious
way, though none of them had any idea where the Holy Grail really was, and I don't think any of them actually
expected to find it, or would have known what to do with it if he had run across it. You see, it was just the Northwest
Passage of that day, as you may say; that was all. Every year expeditions went out holy grailing, and next year relief
expeditions went out to hunt for them. There was worlds of reputation in it, but no money. Why, they actually wanted
me to put in! Well, I should smile.

ARTHUR: I am your king! WOMAN: Well, I didn't vote for you. ARTHUR: You don't vote for kings. WOMAN:
Well, how did you become king then? ARTHUR: The Lady of the Lake,... [angels sing]... her arm clad in the purest
shimmering samite, held aloft Excalibur from the bosom of the water signifying by Divine Providence that I, Arthur,
was to carry Excalibur. [singing stops] That is why I am your king! DENNIS: Listen, strange women lying in ponds
distributing swords is no basis for a system of government. Supreme executive power derives from a mandate from the
masses, not from some farcical aquatic ceremony. ARTHUR: Be quiet! DENNIS: Well, but you can't expect to wield
supreme executive power just 'cause some watery tart threw a sword at you! ARTHUR: Shut up! DENNIS: I mean, if
I went 'round saying I was an emperor just because some moistened bint had lobbed a scimitar at me, they'd put me
away! ARTHUR: Shut up, will you. Shut up! DENNIS: Ah, now we see the violence inherent in the system.

LAUNCELOT: Have we got bows? ARTHUR: No. LAUNCELOT: We have the Holy Hand Grenade. ARTHUR:
Yes, of course! The Holy Hand Grenade of Antioch! 'Tis one of the sacred relics Brother Maynard carries with him!
Brother Maynard! Bring up the Holy Hand Grenade! ARTHUR: How does it, um-- how does it work? LAUNCELOT:
I know not, my liege. ARTHUR: Consult the Book of Armaments! BROTHER MAYNARD: Armaments, Chapter
Two, verses Nine to Twenty-one. SECOND BROTHER: And Saint Attila raised the hand grenade up on high, saying,
'O Lord, bless this thy hand grenade that with it thou mayest blow thine enemies to tiny bits, in thy mercy.' And the
Lord did grin, and the people did feast upon the lambs and sloths and carp and anchovies and orangutans and breakfast
cereals and fruit bats and large chu-- MAYNARD: Skip a bit, Brother.

PRINCE CHARMING: Wicked Witch. The Seven Dwarves saved Snow White and then what happened? [] They
left you the un-fairest of them all. And now here you are, hustling pool to get your next meal. How does that feel? []
And you? Your star puppet abandons the show to go and find his father.[] And Hook... Need I say more? And you!
Frumpypigskin. [] Wheres that first-born you were promised, hey? Mabel, remember how you couldnt get your
little fat foot into that tiny glass slipper? Cinderella is in Far Far Away right now, eating Bon Bons, cavorting with
every little last Fairy-tale Creature that has ever done you wrong. Once upon a time, someone decided that we were the
losers. But there are two sides to every story. And our side has not been told. So who will join me? Who wants to come
out on top for once? Who wants their happily ever after?!

I often teasingly reminded my students of Muriel Spark's The Prime of Miss Jean Brodie and asked, Which one of you
will finally betray me? For I am a pessimist by nature and I was sure at least one would turn against me. Nassrin once
responded mischievously, You yourself told us that in the final analysis we are our own betrayers, playing Judas to our
own Christ. Manna pointed out that I was no Miss Brodie, and they, well, they were what they were. She reminded me
of a warning I was fond of repeating: do not, under any circumstances, belittle a work of fiction by trying to turn it into
a carbon copy of real life; what we search for in fiction is not so much reality but the epiphany of truth. Yet I suppose
that if I were to go against my own recommendation and choose a work of fiction that would most resonate with our
lives in the Islamic Republic of Iran, it would not be The Prime of Miss Jean Brodie or even 1984 but perhaps
Nabokov's Invitation to a Beheading or better yet, Lolita.

"It is a truth universally acknowledged that a Muslim man, regardless of his fortune, must be in want of a nine-year-old
virgin wife." So declared Yassi in that special tone of hers, deadpan and mildly ironic, which on rare occasions, and this
was one of them, bordered on the burlesque. "Or is it a truth universally acknowledged," Manna shot back, "that a
Muslim man must be in want not just of one but of many wives?" [] It was a tribute to the degree of intimacy that
had developed among us that we could easily shift from light banter to serious discussions of the novels. What we had
with all the writers, but especially with Austen, was fun. Sometimes we even went wild-we became childish and
teasing and just plain enjoyed ourselves. How could one read the opening sentence of Pride and Prejudice and not
grasp that this was what Austen demanded of her readers?

He had a complaint. Against whom, and why me? It was against Gatsby. I asked him jokingly if he had filed any
official complaints against Mr. Gatsby. And I reminded him that any such action would in any case be useless as the
gentleman was already dead. But he was serious. No, Professor, not against Mr. Gatsby himself but against the novel.
The novel was immoral. It taught the youth the wrong stuff; it poisoned their minds-surely I could see? I could not. I
reminded him that Gatsby was a work of fiction and not a how-to manual. Surely I could see, he insisted, that these
novels and their characters became our models in real life? Maybe Mr. Gatsby was all right for the Americans, but not
for our revolutionary youth. For some reason the idea that this man could be tempted to become Gatsby-like was very
appealing to me. There was, for Mr. Nyazi, no difference between the fiction of Fitzgerald and the facts of his own life.
The Great Gatsby was representative of things American, and America was poison for us; it certainly was. We should
teach Iranian students to fight against American immorality, he said. He looked earnest; he had come to me in all
goodwill. Suddenly a mischievous notion got hold of me. I suggested, in these days of public prosecutions, that we put
Gatsby on trial: Mr. Nyazi would be the prosecutor, and he should also write a paper offering his evidence.

You know, he murmured, that the painting needs it, the light that the pearl reflects. It wont
be complete otherwise. I did know. I had not looked at the painting longit was too strange
seeing myselfbut I had known immediately that it needed the pearl earring. Without it there
were only my eyes, my mouth, the band of my chemise, the dark space behind my ear, all
separate. The earring would bring them together. It would complete the painting. It would also
put me on the street. I knew that he would not borrow an earring from van Ruijven or van
Leeuwenhoek or anyone else. He had seen Catharinas pearl and that was what he would
make me wear. He used what he wanted for his paintings, without considering the result. It
was as van Leeuwenhoek had warned me.

The painting was like none of his others. It was just of me, of my head and shoulders, with no
tables or curtains, no windows or powder-brushes to soften and distract. He had painted me
with my eyes wide, the light falling across my face but the left side of me in shadow. I was
wearing blue and yellow and brown. The cloth wound round my head made me look not like
myself, but like Griet from another town, even from another country altogether. The
background was black, making me appear very much alone, although I was clearly looking at
someone. I seemed to be waiting for something I did not think would ever happen. He was
rightthe painting might satisfy van Ruijven, but something was missing from it. I knew before
he did. When I saw what was neededthat point of brightness he had used to catch the eye in
other paintings I shivered. This will be the end, I thought. I was right.

FRANZ KAFKA tries to keep up with the world of Mr Gates

Hans T awoke one morning after a troubled dream to find his right hand had turned into a large mouse. Good boy,
Hans, said his mother when she came into his bedroom. Now you can book our holiday on the Internet. Two large
men in raincoats sat Hans in front of a screen. Who sent you? he asked. Never mind, said the first man. Click your
fingers. Mmm, said the second man. Microsoft Word has experienced an unexpected error. What? said Hans. Did
your browser stop working? said the first policeman. Or did you restart your computer without shutting it down first?
Or, said the second man, did you recently add a new item to your active desktop? I dont know, said Hans. But
what shall I do now?