Attorney General Alberto Gonzalez
U.S. Department of Justice
950 Pennsylvania Avenue, NW
Washington, DC 20530-0001
Dear Attorney General Gonzalez,
Please let me introduce myself. I am a thirty-five year old attorney from Boston who has had an ongoing correspondence with John Ashcroft over the last three years. Although, I should qualify the last part of that statement I suppose. I have written letters similar to this one and sent them to Mr. Ashcroft three times previously, however, he has yet to respond to my letters. I hope that you are more conscientious about your correspondence.
In any event, I am now writing to you given that you acceded to the office that Mr. Ashcroft previously held. This list is a little early -- I tend to send them in December -- but I thought I would get an early start this year given that the House of Representatives has voted to make permanent the provisions of the USA PATRIOT Act scheduled to expire at the end of the year (except for section 215 which gives the FBI access to my library and bookstore purchase records, which in an uncharacteristic display of concern for civil liberties, was only extended for the next ten years). Therefore, in order to save you and your Department a little time I include below my reading list for the first half of the year so that you would not have to track down my Borders and Amazon.com receipts (normally I would have some library records too, but I've been avoiding paying a couple of overdue charges I racked up late last year when the snow kept me from getting down to Copley Square).
Here are the books I have read so far this year (sorry the list is so long - I read really fast and a couple were comic books):
- Hitler's Willing Executioners: Ordinary Germans and the Holocaust by Daniel Jonah Goldhagen
- Smile, You're Traveling by Henry Rollins
- The Lovely Bones by Alice Sebold
- The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy by Douglas Adams
- The Restaurant at the End of the Universe by Douglas Adams
- Persepolis 2* by Marjane Satrapi
- Pornogami** by Master Sugoi
- The Blue Girl by Charles De Lint
- Lucifer: Devil in the Gateway through Lucifer: Exodus by Mike Carey (seven volumes of the collected edition of the comic series)
- Stiffed: The Betrayal of the American Male*** by Susan Faludi (reread)
- Bangkok 8 by John Burdett
- Down Here by Andrew Vachss
- The Tattooed Girl by Joyce Carol Oates
- The Second Bill of Rights: FDR'S Unfinished Revolution and Why We Need It More Than Ever by Cass R. Sunstein
- Has Man a Future?*** by Bertrand Russell
- Trader by Charles DeLint
- At Hell's Gate: a Soldier's Journey by Claude Anshin Thomas (currently reading)†
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*I know. I did this last year too with Persepolis 1. I'm sorry. I know she's an Iranian living in France, but I am assuming that whole Axis of Evil thing is off the table like "Osama Bin Laden wanted-dead-or-alive". I mean, we've already kicked one-third of the Axis' asses (say that five times fast), and since North Korea has the big whoop-do bomb and we might have to face down China over Taiwan, well, a little ex-pat Iranian comic lit can probably be forgiven, right? If it makes you feel any better, Reading Lolita in Tehran by Azar Nafisi is still on the to-read list. I don't want to push my luck.
** Since a friend gave me this book as a gift, I suppose it will show up on his record search results and not mine. But I want it to be very clear that I am the one folding currency into little penises and vaginas to leave as tips in restaurants. Just a little homage to your predecessor's appreciation of the human figure.
*** By all rights this listing should be grandfathered off of my list since the copy I bought was a used edition from the 1960s (25¢ at a tag sale). But since the DOJ probably considers it subversive atheistic pinko anti-nuke propaganda, I am including it in the spirit of good will.
† Just FYI, I started reading The Devil's Apocrypha: There are Two Sides to Every Story by John A. De Vito, but the book was such a poorly written piece of derivative dogshit that I sold it on Ebay before finishing. I was looking forward to having a conversation about this with your predecessor, but I guess now I'm doubly disappointed. I will let it suffice to say if I ever run into the author during one of my trips to New Haven, I'll be giving him a piece of my mind.
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Normally, as you will find if you review my previous letters, I read a lot more political and religious (Buddhist) material. But this year it seems that I have been on a real fiction kick. I hope you're not disappointed. I am still very engaged politically, but since it is not an election year, Michael Moore, Al Franken, and James Carville haven't put out anything new for me to read. I'll seek something out though, so as not to disappoint.
In the interim, please accept my thanks for being so vigilant and keeping our libraries and Waldenbooks terrorist free. If there is anywhere in the world I feel completely safe (and I know you don't approve of that, but I need a break from Orange Alert from time to time) it is on the subway with a book in my hand.
Patriotically yours,
Bracken M.
P.S. Sorry you didn't get the nomination to the SCOTUS you were looking for. I'm sure you're on the shortlist for when C.J. Rehnquist retires for the dirt nap.
2 comments:
Lovely Bones...great book.
I loved the book as well. Have you read her first one, Lucky? It's a memoir and considerably harsher in tone than The Lovely Bones, but an excellent read, nonetheless.
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