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
> On 25/1/05 10:52 PM, "Dominic Fox" <[log in to unmask]> wrote:
>
>> It's a lot easier to identify Orwell's enemies than it is to identify
>> his "own". He was anti-Tory, anti-colonialist and anti-fascist for I
>> think the same basic set of reasons: loathing of both the deference of
>> the servants and the smug contempt of the masters, the basic Etonian
>> set-up. Socialism for him meant that everyone had to live in the same
>> world. The trouble was that he had to live in it with them.
>
> Typical writerly dilemma, somehow...
>
>
>
> Alison Croggon
>
> Blog: http://theatrenotes.blogspot.com
> Editor, Masthead: http://masthead.net.au
> Home page: http://alisoncroggon.com
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