I've got to agree. There's not much about the letters, and it's hardly
"news" that Pound kept a Bible and a copy of Confucius at the DTC. Kenner
himself told us that years ago. But calling that "news" offers the pretext
for an apologia that seems untenable at this stage of the game. I almost
laughed out loud at the conclusion of the essay, since it reworks the old
"I have a Jewish friend" line in a particularly dismal way.
 
And thanks to Bill Wagner for posting the review.
 
Bill Freind
 
 
On Wed, 17 Feb 1999, Jonathan Gill wrote:
 
> Glad to see Kenner's review of what looks like an important volume.  We
> all owe Kenner so much, but I'm afraid that his agenda is showing again.
>
> Most of us agree that Pound's anti-semitism was constitutive, not
> intermittent--it's hard to get through a single page of a single
> broadcast without some form of judeophobia, explicit or implicit.  And of
> course Leon Surette has shown us all that Pound's ideas about Jews
> changed not at all after the war--he always had Jewish friends, even
> during his most openly anti-semitic periods.
>
> I'll stop there, so anxious am I to see what is erupting on the list even
> as I write.
>
> And thanks to Hugh W. for alerting us to this review.
>
> Jonathan Gill
> Columbia University
>