Dear Carrol,

I never wrote "making a point." I said the typist passage has a point.  
I never said it only makes a single point either.

I think it's a bit harsh to judge every post to the list as if it were  
published in a scholarly journal. Many are written in a rush on a  
mobile. Certainly I could have used a better term to indicate what I  
see as the main raisin d'être for the typist passage and surely would  
if I were sending a critical essay to an editor. But some tolerance  
from you for the nature of posts to a listsrv would be welcome.

Diana

Sent from my iPod

On May 13, 2010, at 12:49 PM, Carrol Cox <[log in to unmask]> wrote:

>> Nancy Gish wrote:
>>
>> Dear Carrol,
>>
>> It was, though, Eliot who said that without a spiritual meaning sex
>> was no more than the coupling of animals.  He didn't, one might note,
>> know much about sex or passionate sexual experience--unless maybe  
>> long
>> after with Valerie.  All those pontifications came from someone who
>> was still a virgin at 26,  married suddenly, had a horrific  
>> experience
>> of sex, and then took up celibacy.
>>
>> So that he called it animals only tells us how he saw it, but it did
>> come from him.
>
> I guess my response was mostly to the crudity of "making a point."
> "Spiritualized sex" was a 20th c invention that was rapidly  
> disappearing
> even at mid-century. It was probably an improvement of "Close your  
> eyes
> and think of England," but not by mucy. And I think Eliot was a better
> poet than he was a moral critic.
>