TRP anti/pro-semitic? (was Re: GRGR Kristallnacht)

[RICHARD_WILSON at udlp.com]

greetings,

Mark Wright wrote:
> In "V" P is anti-rhinoplasty, clearly. 
 
not so sure - it's certainly not a celebration of the joys of being a cosmetic
surgeory patient; but the (lovingly-rendered?) minute level of clinical detail
the author goes into (as well as his careful avoidance of gross-out-imagery)
suggests, imho, that the he sees a certain beauty in the procedure itself.
almost reads like the description of a ballet... (at any rate TRP seems to have
warmer regards for plastic surgeons than he does for shrinks and dentists)

> I think that it is *pro*
> semitic to suggest that the nose God gave you is beautiful, not some
> (paraphrasing here) ridiculous little turned-up retrouse number.   

but he could have suggested this with less emphasis on the demographics, nicht
wahr? did TRP absolutely need to disclose that esther was jewish (which had
little or nothing to do with anything subsequent in the text of V - that i'm
aware of at any rate)?

now i personally don't see much anti-semitism in any of this (TRP's obs about
ny-jewish girls as a group tending to want and pay high-priced manhattan
surgeons for irish-looking nose-shapes around the time he wrote V). 

(as Mark notes, TRP explicitly states that everyone should be happy with the
noses their genes dealt them. this could either indicate that TRP feels that 'a)
everyone-is-beautiful-love-power-etc' - or - it might be construed as saying:
'b) shame on the jews for being so vain about appearance as to spend all this
money in order to have unnecessary intensive surgeory performed on their noses
practically as a female rite of passage')

(personally i suspect it's somewhere around 80% a) & 20% b) but more at "shame
on us humans in general for being vain" than "shame on the jews..." in
particular)

but a short while back someone on the list mentioned that TRP supposedly had an
anti-semitic reputation at some point during his career (i think this was
offered as a possible explanation of why the now-infamous millisonic "the
holocaust! The Holocaust!! THE HOLOCAUST!!!" reading of GR was plausible - ie
that GR was TRP's way of proclaiming once and for all that he was NOT
anti-semitic). so lately i've been racking my memory banks trying to recall
scenes which might seem to support any notion that he was. esther's nosejob has
been the best i could do (and an admittedly weak case for TRP being
anti-semitic).

cheers,

--rwilson

"i know the zoos protect my species / they give me food / collect my fecies"
--adrian belew