and was expecting 2 to tell me that Howard's 1500s ancestors were, I don't know, Cossacks or something.
Just mostly Ashkenazi Jews! His father was an immigrant from what would then have been Austria-Hungary; his mother's family were British and assimilated but originally from East Prussia. (I have no sense that they were otherwise observant, but his parents were married in the West London Synagogue, which I did not realize until I looked it up just now is the oldest Reform synagogue in the UK.) Some of his forebears might have been in England for Tilbury, but the majority I assume were somewhere in Central or Eastern Europe. I was just trying to draw attention to the fact that once again he's speaking as a kind of national Everyman.
It reminds me of Tom Stoppard's Arcadia.
That's a really good connection and I hadn't made it. Thank you.
Part of the reason I don't understand why so many people bounce off A Canterbury Tale is that it's such a forgiving film. It has incredible kindness toward its characters, weird, lost, and hurt as they may be. It doesn't pat anyone on the head. It just says, look: it's not all gone. And look: you didn't see it before, but it's there.
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Just mostly Ashkenazi Jews! His father was an immigrant from what would then have been Austria-Hungary; his mother's family were British and assimilated but originally from East Prussia. (I have no sense that they were otherwise observant, but his parents were married in the West London Synagogue, which I did not realize until I looked it up just now is the oldest Reform synagogue in the UK.) Some of his forebears might have been in England for Tilbury, but the majority I assume were somewhere in Central or Eastern Europe. I was just trying to draw attention to the fact that once again he's speaking as a kind of national Everyman.
It reminds me of Tom Stoppard's Arcadia.
That's a really good connection and I hadn't made it. Thank you.
Part of the reason I don't understand why so many people bounce off A Canterbury Tale is that it's such a forgiving film. It has incredible kindness toward its characters, weird, lost, and hurt as they may be. It doesn't pat anyone on the head. It just says, look: it's not all gone. And look: you didn't see it before, but it's there.