What I meant by must be seen as is: Don't think just of how the work fit in the days it was written, but also how it holds up. I did not mean to assert that works always had a beneficial effect. >useful way of seeing it. Sometimes, it is more useful to view it as a symptom >of those ailments rather than a treatment. Otherwise, what are we to do with >things like Pound's, Eliot's, Hemingway's, Cather's, and Fitzgerald's racism >and anti-Semitism? I don't believe that their bigotry ADDED to their works or that they are seen a literature BECAUSE of it. Bigotry is today seen as a wart itself, and works as flawed for containing it. But no one ever asserted literature had to be perfect to be great. Dave Gomberg