No, Tim. I'M the guy with the closed mind. My phone keeps eating my dimes
and demanding more, and Tim the operator keeps assuring me that that can't
be happening.
 
But let me help with the reading one more time. No, Pound didn't believe
that the intelligent and talented Jew was the exception. That inference
can't be drawn from the letter to Olivia Agresti, and it can't be drawn
from his other writings either. On the contrary: "the yidd is a stimulant."
Psychologists would characterize Pound's antisemitism as a superego
stereotype, not the id stereotype you seem to have in mind. To get an idea
of the difference, compare a Scotchman joke with a Polack joke. Or listen
in on the conversation of Pound's compeer Jason Compson as he remarks:
 
"You think the man that sweats to put it into the ground gets a red cent
more than a bare living," I says. "Let him make a big crop and it wont be
worth picking; let him make a small crop and he wont have enough to gin.
And what for? so a bunch of dam eastern jews I'm not talking about men of
the jewish religion," I says. "I've known some jews that were fine
citizens. You might be one yourself," I says.
 
"No," he says. "I'm an American."
 
"No offense," I says. "I give every man his due, regardless of religion or
anything else. I have nothing against jews as an individual," I says. "It's
just the race. You'll admit that they produce nothing. They follow the
pioneers into a new country and sell them clothes."
 
"You're thinking of Armenians," he says, "aren't you. A pioneer wouldn't
have any use for new clothes."
 
"No offense," I says. "I dont hold a man's religion against him."
 
"Sure," he says. "I'm an American. My folks have some French blood, why I
have a nose like this. I'm an American, all right."
 
------
 
And you see: Faulkner did it without once uttering the word "waal." But
Tim, what do you plan to buy with my dimes?
 
Jonathan Morse