Author's bigotry a disturbing mystery, yet educational

Houston Chronicle ^ | Sept. 19, 2002, 7:09PM | By BARBARA BROTMAN

[weegee]

Copyright 2002 Chicago Tribune

I was walking the dog and listening to a book on tape when I heard the brutal words.

"Jew boys."

There were no anti-Semites lurking on the sidewalk. The words were in my ears -- in my headphones, read matter-of-factly by the narrator of the book I was listening to contentedly a moment before, Dorothy L. Sayers' Unnatural Death, published in 1927.

I love Sayers' mysteries. Aristocratic sleuth Lord Peter Wimsey pursues evildoers with debonair wit, assisted by his manservant Bunter. I adore Sayers' literate style, her slow unwrapping of the truth, her theological asides. And I love the world she so richly depicts of English landed gentry with their clubs and morning coats and bafflement at the world of work -- so quaint, so charming in its outdated way, so ...

So bigoted, I had to admit, after replaying the line several times because I couldn't believe I had heard right.

[snip]

What was a previously admiring reader to do?

[snip]

Sayers' unconstrained bigotry is a mystery. But she still writes a fine one.

[weegee]

Note: I am only including an excerpt because the byline indicates copywrite Chicago Tribune.

Basically the author tries to come to terms with political correctness during banned book week. Perhaps next she'll take on a less controversial work and press for Disney to release Song Of the South to a ready public. Oh wait, that was a movie based on a book. I guess that they can go ahead and ban it (even though it was released to video in England, Ireland, Japan, and Hong Kong).

[hellinahandcart]

Sherlock Holmes used the N word in one story (forget which). It was a bit rattling to read in the present, but it was not written in the present, so...I got over it...

[curmudgeonII]

You're apparently not old enough to know the anti-Jewish bent in our society which existed up until sometime after the Second World War. Jews could not play in most country clubs, were barred from almost all of the better hotels, there were quota systems in most of the medical schools limiting the number of Jews that could be admitted, etc. My grandfather joined the Ku Klux Klan [in Detroit, of all places] because of the anti-Jewish feelings of the Klan.

Sayers was merely reflecting the sentiments of society as a whole at the time that she wrote.

[Grut]

Sayers was writing seventy five years ago, for pity's sake! Her characters make the racial slurs their real life counterparts would have made, but Sayers herself sometimes throws in a plot element (the white family's negro cousin from overseas in Unnatural Death, for instance) which makes it clear she thought bigotry was ill-bred and unchristian.

[Paul Atreides]

This woman is only just now shocked over things written in, and attitudes of, the past? The problem is, that most people try to view the past through the eyes of the present. That is why we get twaddle, passing for literature/entertainment, such as feminists in the court of King Arthur, minorities being treated as if it was the twentieth century, etc.

[Drango]

Note: I am only including an excerpt because the byline indicates copywrite Chicago Tribune.

I think I understand what you are trying to say but so what? As far as I know, the Chicago Tribune wasn't part of the consent decree. Except for the Wash Post, The LA Slime and their related toadies, FreeRepublic and as well as other forums have a "fair use" right to post a full article and discuss it.

[AnAmericanMother]

"It's an English thing, you wouldn't understand."

It's not really racism . . . just an insular Englishwoman's distaste for the "different." The English of that era reflexively disliked and suspected anyone who didn't fit in that "world of English landed gentry." The poor little architect in Whose Body? who finds the dead body in his bath is pilloried for his working class accent that he tries unsuccessfully to hide. The social climbers in the world of advertising in Murder Must Advertise. Americans (in more novels than I can count). Orientals. Doubtful professional dancers/gigolos in Have His Carcase. Vaguely "Red" bohemians in Strong Poison.

But, like most English, if she knew you Ms. Sayers would always make an exception. In fact, IIRC she treats a Jewish family most sympathetically in Whose Body?

IMHO this is much ado about nothing at all. Chesterton did it too (used the "N" word in one of the Father Brown stories), so did Hilliare Belloc. Too darned many PC writers act as though their ideas are the pinnacle of civilization and every other age must conform or be case into outer darkness. . . . talk about throwing out the baby with the bathwater . . .

[sweetliberty]

" I guess that they can go ahead and ban it (even though it was released to video in England, Ireland, Japan, and Hong Kong)."

I was talking awhile back to the owners of a shop of Confederate novelties and memorabilia and the subject of "Song of the South" came up. They had the Japanese release on video with subtitles. Perhaps you are aware of how the original came to be taken off the market. I was not until one of the gentlemen explained it to me. He said that the rights to the movie were actually purchased by the NAACP so that they had absolute control over its distribution in the United States. Personally, I thought it was a delightful movie. Sometimes I wonder if the NAACP types don't hate these kinds of movies because they portray the "poor oppressed black victims" of racism as being well-adjusted, often even happy, men and women of faith and that image is counterproductive to their agenda.

[sweetliberty]

"Sherlock Holmes used the N word in one story (forget which). It was a bit rattling to read in the present"

I think that the majority of us only react to certain words because the PC crowd has conditioned us so well to do so. Personally, it bothers me more when stories and programs are sanitized to remove all potentially offensive words. That is not an accurate way of telling the stories.

A good example is one of my favorite TV shows, In the Heat of the Night, which portrays the racial changes taking place in the south at the time the show was created. I have probably seen every episode numerous times, as it was origianally done and with the *N* word edited. Having grown up in the south, listening to the edited versions are laughable, and in my opinion a really sorry effort to revise history.

[white rose]

If this delicate flower of a columnist is shocked by Dorothy Sayers, she'd better stay away from Agatha Christie, it'd probably kill her. Ol' Aggie's novels are full of what would today be considered shocking anti-Semitic remarks. ("Lord Edgware Dies" is a twofer--several nasty comments about Jews AND the "N" word.)

[Oztrich Boy]

Sayers was merely reflecting the sentiments of society as a whole at the time that she wrote.

Actually she wasn't. For one thing she probably knew litte about the anti-Jewish bent in American society, and cared even less.

Secondly, in context, the trigger phrase for the easily offended
"seemed to possess rather narrow feet and to wear the long-toed boots affected by Jew boys of the louder sort."
is no more evidence of "so-bigoted" than the use of the description "gangsta-style" would be.

[willyboyishere]

One of Joseph Conrad's greatest books was "The Nigger of the Narcissus".

[yarddog]

Speaking of Agatha Christie are you aware of the original title of "Ten Little Indians"? Of course we are so PC now that I expect another title change shortly.

[Twodees]

My grandfather joined the Ku Klux Klan [in Detroit, of all places] because of the anti-Jewish feelings of the Klan.

Because of media distortions of history, the KKK is thought of as a strictly Southern phenomenon, when the organization was revived and made a national movement in the northern states of Michigan, Illinois and Indiana. Most of the klan activity in this country takes place in those and other former union states. Go figure.

[aculeus]

Even the "saintly" Eleanor Roosevelt wrote some anti-Jewish stuff -- in personal letters which were quoted a few years ago.

[x]

It's not really racism . . . just an insular Englishwoman's distaste for the "different."

I think that's basically true. There was a generalized dislike of the "other" and Jews were one of the most common "others" encountered at the time, but "Orientals" or "Asiatics," "Mediterraneans" or "Levantines" and other foreigners were treated in similar fashion.

Many who used language like Sayers and Christie were nonetheless appalled by Nazi brutality and atrocities. Using one word, like anti-semitism, for both discomfort or dislike and brutal and murderous atrocities doesn't convey the situation at the time. It seems to be more of a polemical, than a strictly descriptive usage. The fact that one word serves both, though, is a sign of how unfashionable such feelings have become, at least when expressed in public.

Our own contemporaries are aware of today's "acceptable" or "politically correct" prejudices and hold fast to them, but would be shocked and appalled if anyone acted violently upon them. So it was then.

Also, we have one side of the story. Sometimes the prejudices on the other side were strong as well, but not expressed in writing that is still popular.

[white rose]

Speaking of Agatha Christie are you aware of the original title of "Ten Little Indians"? Of course we are so PC now that I expect another title change shortly.

You know, I had no idea what you were talking about until I did a google search of the title just now. Oh my. If the book is ever reprinted, of course, I suppose it will be known as "Ten Vertically-Challenged Anglo-Saxon Ruling-Class Oppressors And How They Got Theirs." Can't wait.

[AnAmericanMother]

Gosh, I just remembered the Hillaire Belloc "Cautionary Tale" about "Rebecca, Who Slammed Doors for Fun and Perished Miserably." Unless you know which neighborhoods in London were Jewish at the time, it isn't IMMEDIATELY obvious that Rebecca's family are Jewish. But the original illustrations make it quite clear (of course, everybody else is caricatured in the illustrations too, including the British upper, middle, and working classes -- but the PC offense-takers won't notice that.)

The poem is a hoot. All the "Cautionary Tales" are, such as "Jim, Who Ran Away from his Nurse, and Was Eaten by a Lion", or "Matilda, Who Told Lies and Was Burned to Death."

As a friend (and employer) of mine said, the real problem with all this PC garbage is that we miss so many good jokes . . .