SHORT PASSAGE (MOST LIKELY TO AGREE) For the last six months I have been working on a new novel in which I modeled one of the main characters on myself. At one point, an agent from the Federal Bureau of Investigation asks this character’s permission to install cameras around his house and park a surveillance van down the street. “I assumed you were already doing that,” he tells her. The agent, a hint of contempt in her voice, says, “You’ve been writing spy novels too long.” My novels are full of people who believe in the infinite awareness of intelligence agencies, certain not only that Big Brother is able to surveil them, but also that he is actively doing so -- as if intelligence agencies had nothing better to do. When I give characters these beliefs, it isn’t because I think there are agents wearing headphones and sitting in front of computers monitoring all of us, but because I want the reader to understand how paranoid my characters have become by operating in the world I’ve created. In the case of my latest character, a writer of spy fiction, I wanted to show how paranoid a steady diet of such novels can make us. Q. The author is most likely to agree with which of the following? 1) Intelligence agencies are infinitely aware. 2) The FBI agent was quite impressed with the author’s awareness. 3) Reading spy novels can give one a distorted sense of being watched by the intelligence agencies. 4) Intelligence agencies have to keep a watch to check terrorism.
Posted on: Sat, 02 Nov 2013 12:28:50 +0000
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