L thanks -gosh must be tricky to know what our own prejudices are (-esp 
as in my case I do not meet many people these days)

and I suppose we rationalise prejudices them -perhaps not all right wing 
Tories are bad ???:-) or neo Nazi's and as for Trump eek


On 12/09/2017 10:29, Lawrence Upton wrote:
> I like benamored
> even if it's not in the dictionary
> or I assume it's not
>
> I remember, sort of, Pound's regretting, in his old age, some aspects of
> his behaviour -- though not, as I remember, the anti-semitism, more his
> spreading his talent too thin
>
> likewise, Eliot, I think, never retracted
>
> but... but... not to excuse but
>
> My father worked when young for a Jewish firm -- this would have been the
> 1920s -- fixing their vehicles
> and he told me once that, on that experience, Jews were wonderful people
> etc etc -- he was explaining to me the meaning and occurrence in his speech
> of some Yiddish phrase that he'd picked up; and then maybe a decade or more
> later when I mentioned that I was going to Poland for the summer (70s)
> asking somewhat suspiciously "Poland... aren't they all Jewish there"...
>
> I might explain his poor geographical / racial knowledge by saying he left
> school at 14 and never went further south and east than Dover (a Londoner:
> my mother told me that he once stopped the car at a pub in Devon to buy
> cigarettes and went back to her to say he couldn't understand them - they
> were all foreigners... He'd never met that accent somehow
>
> None of that explains the inconsistency
>
> But... but... I suspect all that wasn't that unusual.... certainly the
> contradiction is common still; look at the nonsense that passes for debate
> going on in UK now... NB attacks on Eastern Europeans by the self-righteous
> English
>
> And... My mother -- also an Edwardian birth -- would say "I don't know; I'm
> only a woman" even if she could cope with Devon accents
>
> And as DHL -- the writer, not the transport company -- has been mentioned,
> somewhere he wrote something like having sex with a black woman would make
> a man feel dirty... Can't remember where that was; but I remember turning a
> page and stumbling on it and being dumbfounded
>
> Ignorance... prejudice... oy vey... A London Jewish friend who lived in
> Israel for some years, asked me to go with him to a Yiddish film festival.
> (That festival was a 'revelation'.) And during our visits he communicated
> his belief that Yiddish was a C19 invention made in response to Zionism!
>
> I told him what I knew and he was a little gobsmacked
>
> I of course am free of ignorance and prejudice
>
> L
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> On 12 September 2017 at 10:05, Bill Wootton <[log in to unmask]>
> wrote:
>
>> enamoured, whoops
>>
>> On Tue, 12 Sep 2017 at 5:58 pm, Bill Wootton <[log in to unmask]>
>> wrote:
>>
>>> Yes, that's how I would take it, L. Also even a dickhead may not always
>>> have been a dickhead or some gems might emerge despite their dickheadry.
>> I
>>> do recall Larkin's poem about the toad, work, squatting on your life and
>>> being benamored of that expression.
>>>
>>> B
>>>
>>> On Tue, 12 Sep 2017 at 2:45 PM, Lawrence Upton <[log in to unmask]>
>>> wrote:
>>>
>>>> I don't recall reading that; but if I understand it, then sure -- the
>>>> writer's writing is more reliable than their commentary
>>>>
>>>> L
>>>>
>>>> On 12 September 2017 at 04:27, Andrew Burke <[log in to unmask]>
>> wrote:
>>>>> I particularly liked having a small discussion about Larkin as a
>> focus.
>>>> So
>>>>> I thought I'd throw in something else to discuss - from Poetry Daily's
>>>>> Newsletter:
>>>>>
>>>>> DH Lawrence’s advice to 'never trust the artist; trust the tale',
>>>>>
>>>>> Over to you ...
>>>>>
>>>>>
>>>>> Andrew
>>>>> http://hispirits.blogspot.com/
>>>>> Books available through Walleah Press
>>>>> http://walleahpress.com.au
>>>>>