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