I. B. Singer, as I recall, said he wouldn't cross the street for Dostoevsky. Or maybe it was Tolstoy. Whatever. I know the point he was making. Don't get too close to your heroes, for you will only be disappointed.
That goes for all heroes, political, literary, the whole gamut. Give them a nudge and they topple over.
The latest hero to go toppling over is Harry Truman, and the nudge comes from those newly discovered diaries. Who knew he had such disdain for the Jewish people? But who can deny that Truman qualifies as among the founders of the Jewish State? By a stroke of the presidential pen, he delivered.
So now what happens? Is he suddenly a villain? This is very complicated, and I do not have the answer, except to say that heroes are best left alone. Don't get too close.
What we face here is something akin to the Richard Wagner syndrome; the music, yes, the man, no. But that's not true, either, because this composer's reputation now precedes his music. When we hear Wagner (and many of us try not to) we remember his ferocious 1850 missive "Jewishness in Music" and imagine millions of Jews being led to slaughter accompanied by "Tannhauser." In other words, we've merged the two -- the man and his work -- and dumped him into everlasting disgrace and hoped-for oblivion. (As we say about such people: "May his name be erased.")
But what about good guys gone bad? Must we sour on them completely? We are not talking about men who are suspect from the start, like Richard Nixon. No, we're talking real heroes, people we root for. Charles Lindbergh was welcomed back with the biggest ticker-tape parade of all time, and then what happened? What happened was that he fell for Adolph Hitler, and still today biographers are trying to square the early Lindbergh with the later Lindbergh; a thankless job, this task of reconciling good and evil in the same man.
We humans are complex. We are more than three-dimensional. There is always that fourth dimension that breathes devilishly inside our souls.
Ben Hecht, who shook the foundations of the earth to deliver his people from Europe into Israel, had the same problem with FDR that today we face with Truman. Hecht, in his autobiography, tells us that he loved FDR, but that he also hated FDR for failing to take action that could have saved thousands, perhaps millions, of Jews who were trapped throughout Nazi Europe. Hecht was confounded, and this confusion shows in his book. He never resolved himself to the two different Roosevelts -- just as today we have two different Trumans.
We have the same problem with so many other men whom we've raised above our heads. If you're a chess afficionado, you've got the Bobby Fischer problem. For a time there, he went into seclusion, and this was helpful in creating the mystique, but then he came bursting out of the closet as a raving hatemonger. Does this make him less of a chess genius?
What do we do with these people? Do we say "may their names be erased?"
Maybe the best answer comes from F. Scott Fitzgerald. Here is his most brilliant quote: "The test of a first-rate intelligence is the ability to hold two opposed ideas in the mind at the same time, and still retain the ability to function."
This brings us to Hemingway. For artistic Jews and non-Jews alike, he was our master, our king of prose, but then read carefully from his breakthrough novel, The Sun Also Rises, and this is what you'll find: "Well, let him not get superior and Jewish... that Cohn gets to me... he's got that Jewish superiority..."
As I write this, I find that Hemingway's "superiority" is much the same as Truman's "selfishness" as regards the Jewish people.
Is it possible that I am right when I say that anti-Semitism is genetic, that everyone carries this disease, that this disease is coded into our DNA? If so, there should be no more surprises.
Still, the best advice is Fitzgerald's, about our having to live with contradictions. As for Fitzgerald, if you?re a fan of his, be careful when you read Tender is the Night.
My favorite living author is J. D. Salinger. Thank goodness he remains a recluse, for I would not want to cross the street for him, either.
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Jack Engelhard is the author of the international bestseller Indecent Proposal (ComteQ Publishing) and is completing his latest novel, The Uriah Deadline, a fictional thriller involving Mideast news manipulation. His columns can be read online at http://www.comteqcom.com/jackcolumn.php and he can be reached at JackEngelhard@ComteQcom.com.
That goes for all heroes, political, literary, the whole gamut. Give them a nudge and they topple over.
The latest hero to go toppling over is Harry Truman, and the nudge comes from those newly discovered diaries. Who knew he had such disdain for the Jewish people? But who can deny that Truman qualifies as among the founders of the Jewish State? By a stroke of the presidential pen, he delivered.
So now what happens? Is he suddenly a villain? This is very complicated, and I do not have the answer, except to say that heroes are best left alone. Don't get too close.
What we face here is something akin to the Richard Wagner syndrome; the music, yes, the man, no. But that's not true, either, because this composer's reputation now precedes his music. When we hear Wagner (and many of us try not to) we remember his ferocious 1850 missive "Jewishness in Music" and imagine millions of Jews being led to slaughter accompanied by "Tannhauser." In other words, we've merged the two -- the man and his work -- and dumped him into everlasting disgrace and hoped-for oblivion. (As we say about such people: "May his name be erased.")
But what about good guys gone bad? Must we sour on them completely? We are not talking about men who are suspect from the start, like Richard Nixon. No, we're talking real heroes, people we root for. Charles Lindbergh was welcomed back with the biggest ticker-tape parade of all time, and then what happened? What happened was that he fell for Adolph Hitler, and still today biographers are trying to square the early Lindbergh with the later Lindbergh; a thankless job, this task of reconciling good and evil in the same man.
We humans are complex. We are more than three-dimensional. There is always that fourth dimension that breathes devilishly inside our souls.
Ben Hecht, who shook the foundations of the earth to deliver his people from Europe into Israel, had the same problem with FDR that today we face with Truman. Hecht, in his autobiography, tells us that he loved FDR, but that he also hated FDR for failing to take action that could have saved thousands, perhaps millions, of Jews who were trapped throughout Nazi Europe. Hecht was confounded, and this confusion shows in his book. He never resolved himself to the two different Roosevelts -- just as today we have two different Trumans.
We have the same problem with so many other men whom we've raised above our heads. If you're a chess afficionado, you've got the Bobby Fischer problem. For a time there, he went into seclusion, and this was helpful in creating the mystique, but then he came bursting out of the closet as a raving hatemonger. Does this make him less of a chess genius?
What do we do with these people? Do we say "may their names be erased?"
Maybe the best answer comes from F. Scott Fitzgerald. Here is his most brilliant quote: "The test of a first-rate intelligence is the ability to hold two opposed ideas in the mind at the same time, and still retain the ability to function."
This brings us to Hemingway. For artistic Jews and non-Jews alike, he was our master, our king of prose, but then read carefully from his breakthrough novel, The Sun Also Rises, and this is what you'll find: "Well, let him not get superior and Jewish... that Cohn gets to me... he's got that Jewish superiority..."
As I write this, I find that Hemingway's "superiority" is much the same as Truman's "selfishness" as regards the Jewish people.
Is it possible that I am right when I say that anti-Semitism is genetic, that everyone carries this disease, that this disease is coded into our DNA? If so, there should be no more surprises.
Still, the best advice is Fitzgerald's, about our having to live with contradictions. As for Fitzgerald, if you?re a fan of his, be careful when you read Tender is the Night.
My favorite living author is J. D. Salinger. Thank goodness he remains a recluse, for I would not want to cross the street for him, either.
--------------------------------------------------------
Jack Engelhard is the author of the international bestseller Indecent Proposal (ComteQ Publishing) and is completing his latest novel, The Uriah Deadline, a fictional thriller involving Mideast news manipulation. His columns can be read online at http://www.comteqcom.com/jackcolumn.php and he can be reached at JackEngelhard@ComteQcom.com.