Racism, Sexism, Antisemitism.
Dealing with Bigotry in Our Favorite Authors.
Charles Dickens’ Oliver Twist. Anthony Trollope’s Phineas Redux.
Burton Weltman
To read or not to read, that is the question.
Bigotry: An arbitrary prejudice against a person or people based on their membership in a particular group, most often a racial, gender, religious, or ethnic group.
Bigotry among the Literati.
Nathaniel Hawthorne.
Charles Dickens.
Anthony Trollope.
Henry James.
Agatha Christie.
What do these five disparate authors have in common? Racism, sexism, and antisemitism. Their books are peopled with demeaning stereotypes of blacks, women, and Jews. If you read much Anglo-American literature that was written during the nineteenth and early twentieth centuries, you cannot avoid coming across demeaning images of blacks, women and Jews, and overtly hostile sentiments toward blacks and Jews. Bigotry of this sort was a common element in most literature of that time. And, of course, it was not confined to blacks, women and Jews. Prejudice against Catholics, Muslims, Asians, Native Americans, and minority groups of almost all sorts was almost pervasive. It was a great age of bigotry in literature.
Many factors fueled this explosion of literary bigotry in England and America. Aggressive imperialism. Massive migrations and immigrations. Misconceptions of evolutionary theory. Cynical political manipulation. Increasing social class conflicts. Declining traditional elites. Declining traditional values. Intractable social problems. All of these and other factors contributed to social and cultural turmoil, and to ethnic resentments and scapegoating all around.
Social movements of the left and the right contributed to bigotry during this period through personalizing social problems rather than systematizing them. Social movements also tended to focus more on the negative than on the positive, on their enemies rather than their goals. On the left, for example, social activists tended to focus on the evil of capitalists rather than the evils of capitalism. On the right, they tended to be anti-liberals or anti-socialists rather than anti-liberalism or anti-socialism. Focusing on their opponents, on who they were against instead of what they were against or what they were for, it was easy to slide into demonizing and scapegoating minority groups that they identified with their enemies. Not unlike today.
Bigotry among the literati was widespread, almost pervasive, but not entirely, and that is important. There were successful authors who did not write bigotry into their works. It was even possible for highly successful authors such as William Dean Howells, the dean of late nineteenth century American writers, to explicitly oppose bigotry. It will not do, therefore, to excuse bigoted authors on the grounds that their prejudices were part of the culture of the times, and that everyone was similarly guilty, because not everyone was similarly guilty. That makes it hard for those of us who love the literature of the period but hate the bigotry in it.
I have been a lifelong fan of the novels of this period. The nineteenth century was the great age of long social and sociological novels, as distinguished from the more introspective and psychological fiction that became popular during the twentieth century. They are books in which you can reside in a society of some other time and place, and which you can wish would never end. And they are books from which you can learn a lot about other people and about yourself. Therefore, it galls and angers me when I find bigotry in books and in authors that I otherwise admire. As a Jewish person, it also depresses and demoralizes me to find antisemitism in books and among writers where I hoped to find hope. What is one to do?
Antisemitism in Late-Nineteenth and Early-Twentieth Century Novels.
Although antisemitism had been endemic in Europe for almost two thousand years, it was ironically heightened during the nineteenth century by the abolition of most of the ghettos in which Jews had been for the most part confined since the Middle Ages. Jews were now free to go almost anywhere, and prejudice against them followed. Also ironically, antisemitism fitted in with both left-wing antipathy to capitalists and right-wing antipathy toward socialists. Jews were condemned as both greedy capitalists and sinister socialists. Not unlike today.
While most of the leading novelists of the nineteenth and early twentieth centuries wrote at least some antisemitism into their books, not all did. In a rough survey of leading authors based on my reading and recollections over the years, Hawthorn, for example, did, but Melville did not. Dickens and Trollope did, but George Eliot did not. Henry James, Henry Adams and Hamlin Garland did, but William Dean Howells did not. Frank Norris, Stephen Crane, Jack London, Theodore Dreiser, and Edith Wharton did, but Abraham Cahan did not (Of course, Cahan was Jewish). John Dos Passos, F. Scott Fitzgerald, Ernest Hemingway and Willam Faulkner did, but James T. Farrell did not. Agatha Christie and Dorothy Sayers did, but Rex Stout did not.
In the books of the bigoted authors, Jews were generally portrayed through conventional stereotypes. These included the sinister big-time banker, the greedy small-time moneylender, the crooked petty peddler, and the fraudulent shyster. In point of fact, these stereotypical Jews loomed much larger in the imaginary worlds of the novelists than they did in real life. It has been estimated that less than one percent of the populations of England and the United States was Jewish during the nineteenth century. Given their insignificant numbers, there was really no good reason to mention Jews at all in the novels of the period.
Like most stereotypes, these Jewish stereotypes had a quarter-grain of truth to them. Historically, Jews had generally been forbidden to own land in most European countries or practice any of what were considered the respectable professions, and they had frequently been expelled from wherever they were living. As a result, Jews tended to take up occupations that they could carry with them. This included banking, money lending and peddling. But it also included medicine, various skilled crafts and, for most Jews, unskilled labor.
As such, although Jews were somewhat disproportionately overrepresented among financiers, money lenders and peddlers, the overwhelming majority of Jews were not involved in high finance, money lending or peddling. Very few were bankers. Jews were also disproportionately overrepresented among doctors, artisans and craftspeople, a fact that was rarely represented in novels of that time. In turn, the overwhelming majority of financiers, money lenders and peddlers were not Jewish. You would not guess this from reading most novels of the time.
Dealing with bigotry: Forgiving and Forgetting?
Novels of the time were mostly bigoted to a greater or lesser extent. Bigotry is bad. It is the common practice for teachers and commentators to excuse the bigotry in novels of this period on the grounds that the authors were merely reflecting their society. I think this is very wrong. Bigotry can be explained but it should not be excused both because it is bad in and of itself and because it was eminently avoidable. Bigotry was a writer’s choice. Not every late-nineteenth and early-twentieth century author was a bigot. And there was enough evidence available for an intelligent person to see through the demeaning stereotypes that were commonly circulating. As such, writing bigotry into their books was a choice that authors made, and an inexcusable choice.
Bigotry also went against the ethical ideals of the time. Whatever their backgrounds, writers of that time were taught what we call the Golden Rule. In its most common formulations, the Golden Rule enjoins us to “Do unto others as you would have them do unto you” and to “Love thy neighbor as thyself.” Bigotry violates the Golden Rule and, in so doing, it is harmful not only to its victims but to its perpetrators. Because the Golden Rule is not just an ethical proposition, it is also a psychological principle. It is a statement of fact and not merely an aspiration. It teaches us that if you think well of yourself, you will likely treat others well. If you treat others poorly, you will likely think poorly of yourself. Bigots demean themselves even as they denigrate others.
Bigotry also went against the social ideals of the time, especially the democratic ideals that were predominant in the United States and were becoming prominent in England. It has been said that the basic principle of democracy is majority rule with minority rights, the most important of which is the right of the minority to possibly become the majority. From this statement flow all of the rights and duties prescribed in the United States Constitution and, especially, in the Bill of Rights. A corollary of that democratic principle is the principle of tolerance which can be stated as tolerance for the tolerant, and intolerance for the intolerant. This principle is the core of the freedoms guaranteed by the First Amendment. Bigotry contravenes principles of democracy and tolerance and, as such, bigotry should not be excused.
It is also commonplace for devotees of the bigoted writers and books to insist that even if we cannot excuse the bigotry, we should get over it. Bigotry was wrong but, given the value of the works, we should forgive and forget the bigotry. I think this is also very wrong. Literary bigotry should not be forgiven or forgotten, and one should not expect the victims of bigotry to just get over it. “Just get over it” has become a mantra for those who have done something wrong and want it to be forgiven and forgotten. That is an unfair and unrealistic expectation, especially if you have been the victim of someone’s prejudice.
As a Jewish person, there is no way I am going to get over the shock and embarrassment when I was six years old and the grandmother of my best friend who lived next door said to me “There is only one thing worse than having a (n-word) living next door to you and that is having a Jew.” Or the anguish when I first read Oliver Twist as an assigned book at school and found it filled with antisemitism. I am approaching seventy-seven years of age and those memories are as fresh as if the events happened yesterday.
Likewise, I don’t see how black people can be expected to get over the racism that permeates novels of the nineteenth and early twentieth century in which they were generally caricatured as stupid and shiftless, and in which the “N” word was commonplace. Significantly, even in Huckleberry Finn, for which Mark Twain has been praised for portraying Jim the black slave as an intelligent, sensitive and caring person, the book opens with a caricature of Jim as a superstitious fool and closes with him reverting to that same character.
And I don’t see how women can be expected to get over the overwhelmingly sexist portrayal of women in novels of the period, especially including those by Charles Dickens. Even Anthony Trollope, who criticized the oppression of women, portrayed women as being less intelligent, having poorer executive skills, and being overly emotional compared to men.
Getting over bigotry is not something that any ethical person should be able to do even if the person has not been the target of prejudice. Getting over bigotry implies that your feelings against it will be neutralized and you will henceforth treat it with indifference. The fact that an author has espoused bigotry will no longer matter to you. That is not a position with which an ethical person should be comfortable.
Bigoted books convey and encourage bigotry. The fact that they are well-written, enjoyable and, in many cases, otherwise enlightened and enlightening makes their bigoted impact even more invidious. That is not something one should be able to just dismiss. But does that mean we must dismiss – or “cancel” in the currently popular term for shunning someone or something – most of the best novelists of the late-nineteenth and early-twentieth centuries? That is not an easy question, but in the case of most authors of the period, I think not.
I think the question is not whether one should excuse bigoted authors or get over their bigotry, but whether one can get by the bigotry. That is, can one acknowledge that an author is bigoted but still accept the author’s works as worthwhile? Can one recognize that a book espouses bigotry but still accept the book as otherwise worthwhile? Should bigotry in an author or a book be an insuperable obstacle to reading and appreciating that author or book? Toward answering those questions, I think it is helpful to try to distinguish different types and degrees of bigotry.
Gradations of Bigotry: From Bad to Worse.
Given that any expression of bigotry is hurtful and harmful, I think one can identify different types and levels of prejudice, and can conceive of a range of bigotry with some forms worse than others. For purposes of distinguishing between more and less objectionable prejudices, and determining whether I can get by the bigotry in a book, I try to make and apply three distinctions.
These distinctions or tests respectively focus on whether the prejudice is portrayed as a function of cultural differences or supposed racial differences, whether the prejudice is conveyed in the form of distaste and snobbery or fear and hatred, and whether the prejudice is extraneous to the main themes of the book or is integral to them. Between each of the poles of these distinctions is a variety of possible prejudices, ranging from the relatively gentle and genteel to the outright vile and vicious.
The first distinction is based on whether the prejudice is presented in terms of cultural differences between peoples or alleged racial differences between them. Culture is learned and it can be unlearned, changed, and compromised. As such, cultural differences can theoretically be amicably bridged. Cultural prejudices usually take the form of snobbery, looking down on members of the demeaned group and avoiding them. They are often seen as the core of gentility.
Biological differences, in contrast, are generally portrayed as inherent and permanent. They are seen as genetic and can seemingly not be overcome. Biological prejudice, in turn, often takes the form of fearing members of the demeaned group, hating them, attacking them, and trying to eliminate them. The opposite of genteel.
There is a range of prejudice between these two poles of ostensibly genteel cultural antipathies and vicious racial hatreds. Cultural prejudices are generally less noxious than racial prejudices. It is one thing to portray one’s own culture as better than others. It is another to portray a group of people as biologically inferior or genetically evil. In my estimation, the closer the author or book is to the cultural snobbery pole, the less noxious the prejudice and the easier to otherwise accept that author or the author’s book. The closer to the genetically evil pole, the viler the prejudice and the greater difficulty in accepting an author or a book.
A second distinction that follows from the first is whether the author’s prejudice consists solely of distaste for the disparaged people and calls merely for avoiding them, or whether it is based on fear and loathing of the disparaged people, possibly including conspiracy theories about the evils intended by the disparaged people, and concluding in calls for their elimination and possibly annihilation. The closer an author is to the snobbish position, the less offensive. Any resemblance or connection of a book to the genocide position makes that author and book unacceptable.
A third distinction is between prejudices that are incidental and distinguishable from a book’s main messages and prejudices that are integral to the book’s central purposes. Whether, for example, the book is promoting the prejudices or merely reporting prejudices of the characters or society that the book is portraying. And whether the bigotry is unintentionally hurtful or is deliberately hurtful and harmful. The less integral and deliberate the prejudices, the easier to get past them. If a book is deliberately promoting hurtful and harmful prejudices, it is unacceptable.
Antisemitism in Trollope and Dickens: Guilty and Guilty with an Explanation.
I will try to demonstrate the way in which my algorithm of bigotry works in considering the antisemitism in two popular mid-nineteenth century novels by two popular nineteenth century authors: Anthony Trollope’s Phineas Redux (1873) and Charles Dickens’ Oliver Twist (1839). Trollope’s book was clearly antisemitic. So was Dickens’ but he supposedly didn’t mean it.
Anthony Trollope. Anthony Trollope was a prolific writer and popular novelist of the mid-to-late nineteenth century. He wrote some forty-seven novels and dozens of short stories. He is perhaps best known for two series of six novels each, the Barchester series that centers around the politics and policies of the Anglican Church and the Palliser series that centers around the politics and personalities of the English Parliament.
I have read the Barchester series over the years, several of the books more than once, and liked them very much. They are not antisemitic in my view. In the six Barchester books, there are some six references to Jews. Two are inconsequential references to Jewish moneylenders and constitute what I would term genteel prejudice. The other four are facetious references to Jewish religious practices that are inconsequential and that I would term genteel, and that pale in comparison with the large number of facetious references to Christian religious practices that go to the core of the books’ themes.
The Palliser novels tell a different story. I have only recently come to read the Palliser books and was not prepared for what I found. Most of the Palliser books were written after the Barchester novels – only one book overlaps. There are dozens of references to Jews in the Palliser books and they are all derogatory. The antisemitism builds through the first five books.
In the first two books, there are only a few disparaging references to Jews, more in the second than in the first, and they are mainly inconsequential and could be considered of the genteel type. Then in the third book, The Eustace Diamonds, a villainous Jewish character plays a secondary but important role. He reflects a turn toward a virulent racism. This same villainous Jew then plays a primary role in Phineas Redux. And in the book that follows Phineas Redux in the series, The Prime Minister, the main villainous character is also Jewish, though he denies it. In the context of the Palliser series, that is just what a sneaky Jew would do
Phineas Redux is the fourth book in the Palliser series. It is mainly about the ups and downs of the love-life and the political career of a young man named Phineas Finn. The book is a wryly humorous send up of British politics and the British Parliament, a fictional mimicking and mocking of actual people and events of Trollope’s day. It also takes off on the pretensions of the British aristocracy and the social climbing of the middle classes. It is wonderfully facetious.
Trollope was relatively progressive when it came to women, and the book incorporates a critique of the oppression of women, especially married women trapped in a legal system that enforced the principle that a husband and wife are one and the husband is the one. The book is one among a number of late-nineteenth and early twentieth century novels in which women were portrayed as struggling against traditional constraints, especially the stranglehold that husbands had over their wives. Middlemarch by George, Eliot, Anna Karenina by Tolstoy, Portrait of a Lady by Henry James, The House of Mirth by Edith Wharton are other examples, just to name a few.
Phineas Redux is a well-written and engaging novel. It is well-plotted, full of twists and turns, suspense and surprise, interesting character development, engaging descriptions of scenes and situations, and empathetic portraits of persons and personal relationships. It is also interesting, informative and insightful about British politics. So far, so good.
But then seemingly out of nowhere and for no good reason, the villain of the book turns out to be a Jew named Emilius. And not just a Jew but a Jew pretending to be a Christian clergyman who succeeds in attracting a gullible following and marrying a rich and beautiful Christian woman. It turns out, however, that Emilius is a practiced swindler, a bigamist who already has a Jewish wife, and a cold-blooded murderer who tries to pin the murder on the hero Phineas Finn.
It is not clear what it means that Emilius is Jewish. He neither says nor does anything that is in any way Jewish, and he is noted for his pious preaching as a Christian minister. Nonetheless, he is constantly called “the Jew” or “that Jew” by the narrator and the characters in the book, and usually with some derogatory comment attached thereto. His being Jewish has nothing to do with the plot and adds nothing to the story except a large gratuitous dollop of antisemitism. There was no reason for Trollope to make Emilius Jewish other than either to express some prejudice that Trollope just had to vent or to play to the prejudices of his intended audience. It was seemingly either a function of a vicious personality trait or a vile marketing ploy.
Significantly, Emilius is frequently referred to as a “converted Jew,” as though his becoming a Christian does not make him any less of a Jew. That is, Jewishness is seemingly a racial thing for Trollope and not a cultural or religious phenomena. Once a dirty Jew, always a dirty Jew and, even worse in this case, a dirty Jew in the guise of a Christian. Emilius is portrayed as a loathsome character and a dangerous imposter with his vile Jewishness at his core.
The antisemitism in the book is not confined to Emilius. Jews as a group are described in demeaning terms throughout. The general attitude of the author toward Jews is exemplified on the third page of the novel when one of the main characters with whom we readers are expected to identify as being a good person says to her friend “You would be worse than a Jew if you did not believe me.” Jew is also repeatedly connected with loan sharking and money gouging.
Applying my algorithm of bigotry to Phineas Redux, I conclude that Trollope fails the first test in that he seems to think of Jewishness as a genetic racial curse that even conversion to Christianity cannot erase. Trollope also fails the second test because his objection to Jews is presented not merely as distaste but as loathing. And not mere loathing but as a conspiratorial threat to British society. Finally, Trollope fails the third test in that the actions of the Jew Emilius, and the reactions of other characters to him, permeate the book. Although the novel is largely concerned with Parliamentary matters and Phineas’ ups and downs, it is the evil Jew Emilius who haunts the book. To the charge of antisemitism in Phineas Redux, Trollope must be found guilty, and guilty of a particularly vicious kind.
Charles Dickens. With respect to antisemitism, Trollope was benign in his earlier books, then vile later. Dickens went the other way. He was vile early and aimed to be benign later. Dickens wrote some fifteen novels, if you count The Pickwick Papers, which is actually a picaresque conglomeration of stories, and The Mystery of Edwin Drood, which was unfinished at his death. Oliver Twist followed The Pickwick Papers and was Dickens’ first actual novel, that is, a lengthy complex and coherent story. He was new at the game, ambitious to succeed as a novelist, and full of himself as a result of the success of The Pickwick Papers. Seemingly, when Dickens went looking for a villain for his novel, one that might command the attention of a wide audience, he decided that his best bet was to caricature a Jew and he created the evil Fagin.
The portrait of Fagin in Oliver Twist is a disgusting instance of antisemitism in an otherwise interesting book. The character of Fagin and the way he is continually referred to as “the Jew,” usually with derogatory comments attached thereto, made the book disturbing to me when I was forced as a child to read it for school and has made it unreadable for me ever since. And that’s even after Dickens excised some of the antisemitic language from the original version.
The story is that sometime after the book was published, Dickens was confronted by some Jewish acquaintances who complained that the book was antisemitic. At first, Dickens tried to deny that the portrayal of Fagin was antisemitic. He claimed that Fagin was modeled after an actual Jewish criminal named Ikey Solomon who had run a gang of young thieves similar to that of Fagin. In effect, pleading guilty to antisemitism with an explanation.
As a means of supporting this plea, Dickens excised some of the antisemitic rhetoric from later editions of the book. There had been some 257 negative references to Fagin’s Jewishness in the original and Dickens removed 118 of them. He also created some sympathetic Jewish characters in his later book Our Mutual Friend to try to prove that he wasn’t antisemitic.
But Dickens did not excise all of the antisemitic rhetoric from Oliver Twist. It is still incredibly offensive. Having read the expurgated version, I find it hard to imagine how offensive the original must have been. And Dickens still included casual antisemitic remarks made by characters in most of his other books, mostly connecting Jews with money lending and debt collecting.
“We would make him as rich as a Jew if we knew how,” intones John Jarndyce, a main character in Bleak House. Similar references to Jewish wealth and Jewish business practices appear once or twice in each of Dickens’ novels. But they are infrequent and inconsequential, almost as though they were unthinking commonplaces in Dickens’ repertoire. They are examples of what I would call genteel prejudice. Despite himself, and maybe despite his good intentions, Dickens’ bigotry showed through in his later works. If he had been more thoughtful, he might have avoided it.
Applying my algorithm to Oliver Twist, I conclude that the character of Fagin has to be considered a racist caricature rather than a cultural prejudice. There is nothing Jewish about what Fagin says or does, and the book focuses on his physical characteristics – especially his hooked nose – which echo the antisemitic stereotype of Jews. I conclude that the book also portrays Fagin’s Jewishness as a threat to British society and as not merely distasteful. The book implies that he and his ilk must be exterminated, as he is at the end of the book. Finally, I conclude that antisemitism is integral to the main theme of the book, that is, that there are cunning Jews out there who are warping our children and turning them into criminals. In sum, Dickens, despite his disclaimers, must be found guilty of antisemitism in Oliver Twist, and a particularly vicious form of the prejudice at that.
Getting by Bigotry: What is to be done?
The conclusion that Trollope and Dickens are guilty of vicious antisemitism leaves me with a load of cognitive dissonance and emotional ambivalence. And it’s not just the antisemitism in their works that as a Jewish person gets me down. I am also bothered by the racism, sexism and prejudice against other ethnic groups that are written into their books and most of the novels of that time. I think that almost any decent person would experience cognitive dissonance and emotional ambivalence in reading Dickens, Trollope and the other bigoted authors.
In my case, I have read The Warden and Barchester Towers, the first two books of Trollope’s Barchester series, several times each, and enjoyed them each time. I have read most of Dickens’ novels many times, albeit Oliver Twist only twice and part of a third time. Over the last forty or so years, I have almost always been reading one of Dickens’ books in addition to whatever else I have been reading. And the aforementioned Bleak House is one of my favorite novels.
So, what is one to do? Do I shun all of Trollope’s books, the earlier Barchester books along with the later Palliser books, because he was clearly and vilely antisemitic even if it showed only in the later books? Or do I try to block out the fact that Trollope was antisemitic and ignore the antisemitism in his books while continuing to read them? Or do I boycott some of his books, the clearly antisemitic Palliser novels, while continuing to read some of the others? And the same questions arise as to Dickens.
As I am writing this essay in October, 2021, we are living through another period of virulent racial, religious, ethnic and gender bigotry on the part of a significant and powerful segment of the American population. The resurgent bigotry coincides with a surging human rights movement that aims to end that bigotry. Both sides are targeting books and other cultural artifacts as symbols of their ideas. That has created a lot of conflict between rightwing racists and liberal human rights activists, and between more and less militant supporters of the human rights movement.
Even as right wingers, racists and misogynists are trying to eliminate books and curricula from our schools that promote racial, religious, gender, and ethnic equality, some liberal social activists are trying to eliminate books and historical figures who could be considered racist and misogynist. While I am adamantly opposed to the efforts of the right wingers, I think that we on the liberal side need to draw some distinctions between authors and books that are just plain unacceptable and those that are acceptable with an explanation. That is the purpose of my algorithm. It is a guide to making these decisions.
It is in my opinion neither necessary nor proper to condemn and shun anyone who ever did anything wrong. That would leave us with preciously few people we could accept. If we accept only perfection, we will be left with “Only me and thee, and I am not so sure about thee,” as the saying goes. We must be willing to appreciate the good in people who were in some respects and to some extent racist, sexist, antisemitic and prejudiced against other social groups.
We must condemn their bigotry and neither forgive nor forget the bad they did. But we should be able to appreciate the good in their works while critiquing the bad. That is the function and goal of critical reading and critical thinking that we should be teaching our young people and practicing ourselves as adults. Reading things that we conclude are wrong is a good way to help get things right.
At the same time, we should not hesitate to condemn and shun those authors and books that are beyond the Pale, as the saying goes, and that are thoroughly and viciously bigoted. I think there is a difference between people who have done bad things and bad people. There is a point at which people have done so many bad things that they become bad people, but there are people who have done bad things without becoming bad people. The same goes for books. Some contain bad things but are still worth reading. Others are too thoroughly bad and are not worth reading except either for historical purposes or for purposes of exposing and condemning them.
That condemnation goes for Phineas Redux and Oliver Twist in my opinion. They are antisemitic at their core and are not worth reading except as historical documents that exemplify nineteenth century bigotry. I would shun them. The condemnation does not go for Trollope’s Barchester novels or for Dickens’ other novels. The prejudices in those books, which includes sexism, racism and ethnocentrism as well as antisemitism, fall within what I characterize as categories of cultural snobbery and personal distaste, genteel bigotry, and they are not integral to the main messages of those books. With a critical and historical reading as to why and how prejudices could seem genteel to some people at some times and places, I think those are worthwhile novels.
So, how does one deal with the bigotry in our favorite authors and books? It’s hard. Because it is not something one can simply ignore or excuse. The distinctions and explanations that I have offered herein do not provide a foolproof formula for deciding who and what to read and who and what to condemn. They are an attempt to apply the principle of tolerance for the tolerant without rigidly enforcing the complementary principle of intolerance for the intolerant. We cannot shun everyone who has done some bad things. Within the framework of my algorithm, I think it is necessary to extend some extra level of tolerance to authors who exhibit a modest level of what might be deemed inadvertent intolerance, who are in essence genteel bigots, thereby turning the other cheek to them so long as it doesn’t then lead to a punch in the nose.
BW 10/21
historyaschoice 