Life — January 1, 1920 — page 10: what you’re looking at

What you’re looking at

# Analysis of Life Magazine Page 10 **"Missing Our Mark"** critiques the Department of Interior's reading list of "Thirty Books of Great Fiction," noting it omits major American authors like Mark Twain, James Fenimore Cooper, Huckleberry Finn, and Tom Sawyer—a glaring oversight the writer sarcastically describes as evidence American fiction is "bad as all that." **"Philological"** is a brief joke about language acquisition: someone spent two years in Paris but knows no French, while another lived five years in New York unable to speak English—mocking the difficulty of actually learning languages through mere residence. **"Scales"** humorously depicts three females of increasing age (10, 40, and 39) stepping on scales with progressively absurd excuses for weight gain, satirizing how people rationalize their bodies.