That? You think that's special?
This seems as good a place as any to recall (again)
the essay The Argentine Writer and Tradition by Jorge Luis Borges. In this
essay Borges attempts to define what is authentic and what isn't in the Argentinean
literary tradition. He tells us that
Gibbon observes that
in the Arabian book par excellence, in the Koran, there are no camels; I believe
if there were any doubt as to the authenticity of the Koran, this absence of camels
would be sufficient to prove it is an Arabian work.
This of course suggests that the ability to take something for granted, to hardly
notice something that an immigrant would see as special, that an outsider would
perceive as out of the ordinary, is a quality reserved for natives. But of course
I have no argument with that - I only question whether possessing that quality
is always such a desirable thing.
Go to: But does she really have to remind us?,
or
Go to: Carrying cognitive baggage from the old
country