> > i was wondering if people think salinger is a realist or an > > idealist... i've finished all his stories.. and i'm a little > > unsure.. if anyone has an opinion one way or the other and can > > support it.. Like I've said in another post recently, the thing I like most about Salinger, and the reason I think that we regard him in such a personal, godlike way, are that his ideological standpoints seem uniquely his own. He doesn't write within a genre or a particular literary movement (now there's two concepts I'm not fond of). People ask me sometimes if, when I write a story or play I think `Okay, these are the themes, this is a symbol for that ...' And I don't. 90% of that I discover later. Likewise, I don't think JDS sits down and thinks `Now ... will I write a realist or idealist story today ?' - especially when you consider how un-Zen it is to categorise things like that. I guess if you *had* to squeeze him into one of these categories, (which to me is no fun at all) he'd tend towards realist rather than idealist. But not real in the Zola sense - Zola is realist because he tries to be real, whereas Salinger just IS ... I definitely wouldn't call him an idealist - TCIR is really about the tearing down of Holden's idealism (you could say that - controversially - about Seymour's suicide). Stories like `The Laughing Man' and `Before the War With the Eskimos (or is it `After ?' - if in all unlikelihood that JDS CD ROM does come out PLEASE send me a copy - my computer room's turning into a veritable library here!) are about the death of idealism. `To Esme With Love and Squalor' is sort of about how the concept is really irrelevent, when it comes down to it. Things just happen, and you must force significance out of them - you could say that about most of JDS's stories (after all, that's why we're sitting here interpreting them!) So yeah, I guess you can argue that anyone could fit in any category, but like I said - I'd rather just read it and enjoy it and not worry about it (: Camille Scaysbrook verona_beach@geocities.com @ THE ARTS HOLE www.geocities.com/Hollywood/Theater/6442