Multiculturalism

I can't understand all the heavy weather that is being made about multiculturalism. Everybody knows that birds of a feather flock together so that money, taste, class, shared prejudices tend to help humans, as well as birds, to settle in self-appointed comfort zones.

And some of the best books deal with the hilarious confusion that is caused when cultures meet.

Mark Twain, who is being hauled over the coals at the moment for his lack of political correctness, had a good eye for the horrors of Waspish society.
In real life he was forever trying to bunk off to get away from his very neat wife and her snotty friends, rejecting all efforts to 'sivilize him.

"An American Yankee in the Court of King Arthur" is a joyful exposure of all the little differences that make for daily confusion both in real life and online.

Henry James made a life study of the emotional death caused all round when the need for American money met the cynicism of a dying European nobility.

But a favourite has to be "Three Men on the Bummel" explores what happens when a repressed and obdurate Englishman meets a shy but eager German schone mullerin.

More romances have started by people's inablity to speak one another's languages than have ever been recorded.

I'm now off to make a literary list and please feel free to share your favourites here.

(And I know there should be umlauts in that post. I hate umlauts and all dots and splotches that slow my typing up. Call it prejudice...)

Read on by hitting the title bar...