Antisemetic Writing is Odious, but it is Not New.
Maybe think twice before interjecting your current hatred of Jews into your fiction.
Or do what you usually do and accuse Jews of everything that those trying to destroy Israel have done for years and continue to do.
Yesterday, I was in the middle of reading The Layton Court Mystery by British author Anthony Berkeley Cox (1893–1971), who used a variety of pen names in his writing and published this first novel under, “Anthony Berkeley, when this obnoxious paragraph appeared:
“Roger sat through the first part of lunch in a species of minor trance. It was not until the necessity for consuming a large plateful of prunes and tapioca pudding, the two things besides Jews that he detested most in the world, began to impress itself upon his consciousness, that the power of connceted thought returned to him.
I’d already started to guess the ending — and thought about putting the book in my Return-to-Library pile because there are plenty of delightful mysteries by wonderful authors, that keep me guessing to the very end. This sentence inspired me to jump to the end of Layton Court, confirm my guess, and write this essay to warn thoughtful mystery lovers away from the author. Or read him if you want — I don’t care.
Of course, some readers will be titillated by the very blatant Jew-Hatred. It’s similar to what has lately filled their days with meaning as they demand a ceasefire from only one side, claim that all Jews are white settlers (despite over half of Israel being composed of those whose families have lived there for over 3,000 years, those who returned after being expelled during the Arab Conquest, and Middle Eastern or African refugees), and blame Jews for Israel’s retaliation against a murderous and well-funded jihadi terror group.
If you’re in the titilated group, help yourself to Anthony Berkeley Cox.
And if you’re a writer, itching to say something nasty about Jews, the IDF, or Zionists in general, based on your solid TikTok education, you should know that Berkeley’s seven or so novels are still available. I’m not sure how often he spouts his antisemitic ideas, but once was enough for me to add him to my list of “Authors-I-Have-No-Desire-to-Continue-Reading.”
His first novel sold well when it came out in 1925, and Berkeley claimed to have wanted his amateur sleuth, Roger Sheringham, who was based on someone he knew, to be an odious person that offended everyone. I found him officious and very British, but not particularly offensive until the aforementioned sentence.
A founder of the Detection Club with many great mystery authors of the time, like Agatha Christie and Dorothy Sayers, “Berkeley’s personality was a strange mixture of arrogance and over-sensitivity, and it seems clear that he suffered from an sense of inferiority due to his relationship with his strong-minded mother and his inability to match the formal educational achievements of his siblings.”
From what I know of him by speed reading his first book, Berkeley was simply pandering to the rising pre-Holocaust Jew-hatred popular at the time. Those authors who jump on that bandwagon today will probably either achieve a modicum of success with fellow haters, or be relegated, like Berkeley, to the bin of history labeled, “Jew Hating Antisemites.”
