To get way off topic: When I was in fourth grade or so, my
mother found out I'd been reading all the Earl Stanley
Gardners in the town library, and for a time I was relegated
to reading Grace Livingston Hills. I didn't notice anything
wrong with them at the time, other than that they were
insipid, boring Christian romances for girls, written early
in the 1900s, less interesting than ketchup labels.
Fast-forward some decades, and I
found myself proofreading a Grace Livingston Hill reprint,
"edited for modern audiences." Chunks of what seemed to be
gratuitous racism had been copyedited out, but I personally
found unacceptable the classism that still permeated the
book. The good guys were well-groomed, and the villains were
manual laborers. Unmanicured hands were evidence of bad
character. (And of course females were wimps.)
The racism, sexism, classism, and
every other variety of bigotry of books from bygone eras
(even much of the Old Testament) bother me, and I avoid
them.
Joy
JIM DOHERTY wrote.
> I don't think there's a lot of casual
> racism of misogyny in Hammett's work, but I infer
that
> it's not Hammett's work, per se, but the era, and
the
> attitudes of that era, you object to. That's too
bad,
> because you're denying yourself a hell of a lot
of
> good reading, from Shakespeare to Dickens to Twain
to
> Austen. To say nothing of all the great pulp
writers
> who flourished between the wars.
------------------------ Yahoo! Groups Sponsor
--------------------~--> Get fast access to your favorite
Yahoo! Groups. Make Yahoo! your home page
http://us.click.yahoo.com/dpRU5A/wUILAA/yQLSAA/kqIolB/TM
--------------------------------------------------------------------~->
RARA-AVIS home page: http://www.miskatonic.org/rara-avis/
Yahoo! Groups Links
<*> To visit your group on the web, go to:
http://groups.yahoo.com/group/rara-avis-l/
<*> To unsubscribe from this group, send an email
to:
rara-avis-l-unsubscribe@yahoogroups.com
<*> Your use of Yahoo! Groups is subject to:
http://docs.yahoo.com/info/terms/
This archive was generated by hypermail 2b29 : 13 Nov 2005 EST