I've disliked Schama ever since he quoted a Nazi sympathizer, appropriately named, KNUT Hamsun, to attack the United States:
http://www.humanevents.com/article.php?id=129&c=1&tb=1&pb=1&gd=04172003
Amid page after gleeful page of European venom toward Americans, Columbia University professor Simon Schama quoted the anti-American bile of Norwegian writer and renowned Nazi sympathizer Knut Hamsun. Schama admiringly cited Hamsun's contempt for American boosterism, neglecting to mention that Hamsun went for Hitler boosterism in a big way.
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He is a presumptuous a**, isn't he? Most Americans don't know what they were voting for or why. But Simon is going to tell us what we voted for.
ReplyDeleteI don't know if you're right about Hamsun. I've never read him. But if he was a good writer, Auden says history will forgive him most anything.
Hamsun purportedly gave his Nobel prize medal to Goebbels, which is why he is viewed ambivalently in his home country, Norway:
ReplyDeletehttp://findarticles.com/p/articles/mi_qn4158/is_20000211/ai_n14288935
"The story of Knut Hamsun remains one of the sorriest tales in the history of both Norway and the Nobel Prize, which he was awarded in 1920 (later giving the medal to Goebbels as a present)."