The Slow Read
‘WE at Anorak have always prided ourselves on our close links with the Bangladeshi community and it is with great sadness that we learn how upset they are at their portrayal in Monica Ali’s book Brick Lane.
| ”It took me three days to read the cover” |
However, we are moved to observe that they must be the slowest readers in the world only now to have raised a fuss about a book that was published many months ago.
Kalam Mahmud Abu Taher Choudhury says a team of intellectuals had gone through the book drawing up lines they wanted excised.
”We want to correct the idea that Bangladeshis are uneducated and cannot read,” he said.
Bangladeshis, as we know, can read. They’re just bloody slow at it.
Mr Choudhury should reflect that things could be a lot worse – he could be a shop assistant forced to listen to Christmas jingles over and over and over again.
”Such is the agony of listening to incessantly jolly and invariably awful Christmas hits,” says the Times, ”that some have already reached the brink, just days into the season of goodwill.”
In fact, things have come to such a head that shop assistants in Austria are threatening to sue employers who don’t moderate the playing of Christmas jingles.
”Playing Christmas music such as Jingle Bells and Silent Night from early morning until late in the evening is psychological horror for shop workers,” union boss Gottfried Rieser tells the Times.
”It makes them aggressive and often they develop an allergy to Christmas music.”
Altogether now: ”Tis the season to be jolly, tra la la la la…”’
Posted: 4th, December 2003 | In: Broadsheets Comment | TrackBack | Permalink
