FICTION TO READ AFTER GRADING EXAMS, BUT BEFORE SUMMER RESEARCH BEGINS

cos-mop-o-lite, n, a person who is cosmopolitan in his ideas, life, etc.; citizen of the world.cos-mo-pol-i-tan, adj. 1. belonging to all the world; not limited to just one part of the political, social, commercial, or intellectual world. 2. free from local, provincial, or national ideas, prejudice, or attachments. 3. of or characteristic of a cosmopolite. -n. 4. a person who is free from local, provincial, or national prejudices, etc.; citizen of the world; cosmopolite.

Amis, Martin, House of Meetings (New York: Knopf, 2007).

Andersen, Kurt, Heyday (New York: Random House, 2007).

Bolano, Roberto, The Savage Detectives translated from the Spanish by Natasha Wimmer (New York: Farrar, Straus & Giroux, 1998, 2007) ("I'm not really sure what visceral realism is. I'm seventeen years old, my name is Juan Garcia Madero, and I'm in my first semester of law school. I wanted to study literature, not law, but my uncle insisted, and in the end I gave in. I'm an orphan, and someday I'll be a lawyer. That's is what I told my aunt and uncle, and then I shut myself in my room and cried all night. Or anyway for a long time. Then , as if it were settled, I started class in the law school's hallowed halls, but a month later I registered for Julio Cesar Alamo's poetry workshop in the literature department, and that was how I met the visceral realists, or viscerealists or even vicerealists, as they sometimes like to call themselves." Id. at 3.).

Englander, Nathan, The Ministry of Special Cases (New York: Knopf, 2007).

Gombrowicz, Witold, Ferdydurke translated from the Polish by Danuta Borchardt (New Haven & London: Yale U. Press, 2000).

Johnston, Wayne, The Custodian of Paradise (New York: Norton, 2007).

Kirino, Natsuo, Grotesque translated from the Japanese by Rebecca Copeland (New York: Knopf, 2007).

McCann, Colum, Zoli (New York: Random House, 2006).

Murakami, Haruki, After Dark translated from the Japanese by Jay Rubin (New York: Knopf, 2007).

Restrepo, Laura, Delirium translated from the Spanish by Natasha Wimmer (New York: Doubleday, 2007).

Schine, Cathleen, The New Yorkers (New York: Farrar, Straus & Giroux, 2007).

Vida, Vendela, Let the Northern Lights Erase Your Name (New York: Ecco, 2007).

Wallner, Michael, April in Paris translated from the German by John Cullen (New York: Doubleday, 2007).

"Self-righteousness [ ] spawns arrogance, selfishness, indifference.... Don’t let the weight of things numb you. Read, think, disagree with everything, if you like – but force your mind outward." Anton Myrer, Once an Eagle (Carlise, Pa.: Army War College Press, 1977), at 194.