Hoover Building?
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| Image Courtesy: Google |
I
didn’t know what this was. I never cared.
This
argument has been around for some time. They say if I should get across the
struggle to possess a permanent job, I would be required to qualify the job
tests, and in order to get through the job tests, one requires General Knowledge.
General
Knowledge?
Yea,
you know what this is, don’t you? A potion that is part buried in the history
and part in the present—science, math, geography and whatever you can think or
imagine about. Well, it also depends on who prepares the question papers. For
some even the date of birth of some dumb old politician is General Knowledge.
Can’t blame them. So is the charm of this phrase—General Knowledge! Sometimes,
this phrase even makes me feel that I am good for nothing.
The
crux of the argument was related to my loves—things that I love the most doing.
Reading is a
skill I possessed in supreme ratios, as a young boy. As I grew up this skill
grew with me, too. But as every gift goes, there is a ‘field of inclination’. I
was inclined more towards reading fiction. Not that I despised non-fiction or
poetry for that matter. Fiction had its hook and we had our own walks to take.
To
put it simple, I was denied the pleasure a couple of times, at least to my
memory, directly, of reading fiction due to the restrictions on living a life
without GK. The question stands, why is fiction considered barren of any GK?
Even
in my book Wall of Colours, I think,
the best part is what you learn about a variety of subjects, and not just a
bunch of stories. In a world, where knowing is controlled and limited by a
criteria set by the ‘rulers’, one cannot read a book just for one purpose.
There should be multiple purposes for a book; otherwise, the majority of
population is reluctant to buy it. I have seen scenes the like in book shops I
visit. There parents or even kids, stand in front of the book shelves, spending
a considerably long time in weighing the ‘usefulness’ in buying a book.
Eventually, it is rare that such people end up in buying fiction. They purchase
Yearbooks and go back home gloomily.
What
I have to tell you here is something that shakes this assumption of the
mainstream middle class homemakers that fiction offers no ‘facts’ or GK, as they
sum up with their parochial and limited sense of understanding. Have you heard
of Hoover
building? I did not know anything about it until I read The Racketeer, the
latest best seller by John Grisham. Yes, the very same book I offered a review
of. And by the way, the review will be published soon, as currently I am still
in the process of reading it.
“…Victor
Westlake was settled back into his routine and office on the fourth floor of
the Hoover building in Washington .” (205)
I
thought a moment for Hoover
building, but remembered nothing of the sort. Like everyone else struck with
something uncommon or unknown, I went to Google.
Built
in the 1960s, the J. Edgar
Hoover Building US , at 935 Pennsylvania Avenue NW
in Washington , D.C.
Here
is a screen shot.
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| Image Courtesy: Wikipedia |
Now
tell me what you learn from it.
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