Hi Stephen
Interesting questions, Stephen. Reminds me of my discomfort in reading
Djuna Barnes sometimes, her aristocratic preferences or the anti Semitism
which seem sometimes shocking, in amongst all that incredible prose. Would
we feel better about Stein's writing if she and Alice had been interned, or
if they had not been loyal to their friendship with Fay?
Re Bush & Co: are they anything more than indifferent to the literary word?
- I suppose Musil, speaking of the Nazis, is horribly clear about how brute
power crushes the possibility of rational argument and the complexities of
cultural life.
Best
A
On 26/1/05 5:58 AM, "Stephen Vincent" <[log in to unmask]> wrote:
> To put a curious wrap on "Who Tells the Story" try this little can of warms:
>
> In the Thirties, The Making of Americans, was translated by Bernard Fay into
> French. When Stein first heard Fay read the translation aloud, she wrote
> that it was better in French than in English. (Stein, I think, was most
> ambitious to be accepted as a Modernist by the French in the same manner as
> Picasso, etc.) Later, during the war, Gertrude and Alice escaped persecution
> probably because of their friendship to Bernard Fay, a gay collaborator with
> the Vichy regime with connections to the Gestapo. When Bernard Fay was
> sentenced to hard labor for life after the war, Gertrude and Alice
> campaigned for his release. Several years later, Alice would contribute
> money to Fay's escape from prison.
>
> And yet how many of us read Stein with a certain deliciousness and
> influence? Why do conservatives - zenophobes and class snobs - make such
> good writers? Why did Fay not turn G and A over to the Nazis? Why did they
> persist in his defence and his escape. What thinking fed this/their seeming
> concept of a 'higher law'?
>
> Does this mirror anything we know of great writers in the present? Or has
> the above story outed that possibility? Are those writers who are
> complicitous with Bush & Company indeed minor and of no literary interest -
> more of a bureaucratic gov nuissance - possibly steering grants away from
> 'us' Who protest? An implied censorship by tone across the globe.
>
> Stephen Vincent
Alison Croggon
Blog: http://theatrenotes.blogspot.com
Editor, Masthead: http://masthead.net.au
Home page: http://alisoncroggon.com
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