Re: RARA-AVIS: Re: Maltese Falcon

From: Patrick King ( abrasax93@yahoo.com)
Date: 21 May 2008


--- jacquesdebierue < jacquesdebierue@yahoo.com> wrote: If you
> apply a stringent revisionism, you would have to
> condemn a lot of old
> literature and art.
***************************************************** I think a lot of "great literature" from the United States in any case, is condemned or at least assigned warning label at this juncture. Antisemitism and racist stereotypes abound in Hemingway, Fitzgerald and Henry Miller (who was, himself, Jewish). Writers from this era seem to take it as a given that certian people by dint of what they are, not who they are, are naturally inferior. Mark Twain, who is often singled out as racist, is, as I read it, misunderstood. His racism is always ironic and more critical of the character making the comment than the one commented on. His novel, PUDD'NHEAD WILSON, states as clearly as we could wish how absurd he thought segregation was in 1894. Twain was also a champion of the openly gay Walt Whitman.

Patrick King

      



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