As I told you a while back, Katie and I are reading Oliver Twist aloud. Still. Yeah, it’s been a little slow. I think we’re finally about on page 80.

I have been taken aback, I must admit, by Dickens’ constant use of “the Jew” in referring to Fagin. I have to also admit that as I’ve read it aloud, I’ve done some normally forbidden p.c. adjustments – I don’t say it. I say “the old man” or “Fagin.” I mean, there were paragraphs in which he refers to him as “the Jew” in every single sentence. I literally couldn’t bear to say it as written there, because, although I’ll freely admit that I’m not an expert of the portrayal of Jews in literature, I’ll just guess that in using the phrase, Dickens is employing a sort of shorthand that will communicate a certain image – perhaps like the image of the moneylender in Cocteau’s Beauty and the Beast – right out of the Protocols of Zion, it seemed.