The Caribbean
In Doctor No, James Bond travels to Crab Key: a horrid little island, the base for a vicious tycoon who rules over the guano trade. Ah, the Caribbean. It would be nice to go back there (I was in Jamaica in 1993). I think of the various Caribbean books in my library. Cambridge’s Concise History of the Caribbean. Biographical and autobiographical writings about Marcus Garvey. A collection of Haitian revolutionary documents. A book about Fidel Castro’s wars in Africa. A book about the Cuba of José Martí. A Caribbean Mystery. A High Wind in Jamaica. Wide Sargasso Sea. V.S. Naipaul. Juan Bosch. Sweetness and Power: The Place of Sugar in Modern History.
The telephone rings: I’ve been selected for two cruise tickets to the Bahamas! The condition is that I answer a brief survey.
All rightie.
Should the United States make it a priority to get over its dependency on fossil fuels?
Yes!
If there were an electric car, sold for such-and-such a price, rechargeable every-so-many miles, would you buy it for the primary driver in your household?
Yes!
(I can’t remember the third question, but it, too, is an environmental one. Yes!)
Thank you. Now someone will take your personal information. Please stay on the line.
But I don’t actually wish to go to the Bahamas.
Besides, would Karin wish to go to the Bahamas? Could she take off from work to go to the Bahamas?
Besides, traveling on a cruise ship is, like, the worst thing that an ordinary person could do to the environment.
I feel a pang of guilt. I hang up.
Where were we, ah yes, the literary Caribbean. Better than the literary Middle Ages. Last week I talked to a guy who liked medievalish fantasy fiction so well that he enrolled in a Ph.D. program in medieval literature. He specialized in the late-medieval poets who were “responding to” Chaucer. I asked him which literature of the period he might recommend to me, to someone whose interest was very casual; and with a straight face he told me Game of Thrones. No, I said, something from the period. He told me I might like Beowulf or The Canterbury Tales. Later I told Mary about this. She was not impressed.
The telephone rings: I’ve been selected for two cruise tickets to the Bahamas! The condition is that I answer a brief survey.
All rightie.
Should the United States make it a priority to get over its dependency on fossil fuels?
Yes!
If there were an electric car, sold for such-and-such a price, rechargeable every-so-many miles, would you buy it for the primary driver in your household?
Yes!
(I can’t remember the third question, but it, too, is an environmental one. Yes!)
Thank you. Now someone will take your personal information. Please stay on the line.
But I don’t actually wish to go to the Bahamas.
Besides, would Karin wish to go to the Bahamas? Could she take off from work to go to the Bahamas?
Besides, traveling on a cruise ship is, like, the worst thing that an ordinary person could do to the environment.
I feel a pang of guilt. I hang up.
Where were we, ah yes, the literary Caribbean. Better than the literary Middle Ages. Last week I talked to a guy who liked medievalish fantasy fiction so well that he enrolled in a Ph.D. program in medieval literature. He specialized in the late-medieval poets who were “responding to” Chaucer. I asked him which literature of the period he might recommend to me, to someone whose interest was very casual; and with a straight face he told me Game of Thrones. No, I said, something from the period. He told me I might like Beowulf or The Canterbury Tales. Later I told Mary about this. She was not impressed.