Re : hi

Camille Scaysbrook (verona_beach@geocities.com)
Mon, 20 Apr 1998 15:22:22 +1000

> > 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