Bobby Hull and Ezra Pound

Bobby Hull was Ezra Pound on skates, a combination of extraordinary talent and odious behavior. Hull benefitted from the fig leaf that comes with the term “alleged.” Otherwise, he and Pound could have shared a prison cell somewhere. Pound put his stamp on modern literature in the first decades of the twentieth century as both poet and critic. He was also a fascist and antisemite, so much so that he lived in Italy before and during WWII, doing radio broadcasts for the Axis cause. Unlike Hull, Pound spent thirteen years in prison. Hull is alleged to have said that Hitler had good ideas. Pound said pretty much the same thing, but he said it over the air in wartime, which earned him a conviction for treason. Hull is alleged to have abused two of his wives, and he was convicted of assaulting a police officer during one of those incidents. In 1998, he was quoted in a Moscow publication that Hitler “had some good idea. He just went a little bit too far,” which begs the question of what Hull considered more than a little bit. In the interview, Hull also expressed concerns that the Black population of the U.S. was growing too fast along with support for eugenics, the selective reproduction—perhaps you say “breeding”—of human beings. Hull later sued the publication, but there’s no indication that the suit went to trial. Me, if I’m accused of making such statements, I’d spend the rest of my life trying to clear my name. Hull scored 610 goals in his career. That has to be balanced against everything alleged. Unlike Hull, Ezra Pound never claimed he was misquoted.