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Virginia Woolf? Snob! Richard Wright? Sexist! Dostoyevsky? Anti-Semite!

I was describing the gist of this article to my spouse, reading out to her a specific passage, then tried to summarize by saying "Would you still read writers that are no longer politically correct?". In truth, some of these authors' ideas a far from what we mean by, or is used as in insult as, politically correct. But then I realized the aptness of the term politically correct, regarding the appropriateness of modern belief.

That said, in many ways, we hardly realize the people behind the words. I certainly did not realize the vapidness of Ayn Rand when I was reading her novels as a teen. I thoroughly enjoyed V.S. Naipuls Literary Occasions. unaware of him as a person. A more recent irritating author is David Foster Wallace, his Infinite Jest wonderfully written, line after unending line. I will finish it, but I have put it down once before when I found out more about him.

Then again, how many of us would turn our noses up at people if we knew of their pasts or their beliefs, particularly of men, so many such flawed human beings toward others?

 https://www.nytimes.com/2019/01/08/books/review/edith-wharton-house-of-mirth-anti-semitism.html?comments#permid=30082933

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