Subject: RE: Yes, we have no .....
ZazieZazie@hetnet.nl
Date: Sat Aug 18 2001 - 21:57:05 GMT
1. is this the song that goes like "we have no bananas, we have no bananas TODAY" ?
2. However did such a short, sleazy SF writer with a Napoleon complex like Harlan Ellison make it on ' Letters to Salinger???? Yes, you've guessed it, he is one of my favourite writers :) I just love his short stories ...
3. A Stutz, is that a Studebaker? I was sitting in a bar just now and I heard some guys talking about it, coincedences, coincedences ... Actually, this happens to me a lot: from two totally unrelated parts in my life i hear
things about the same subject, if u know what i mean? I also might need a checkup in the headdept. who knows ....
-----Original Message-----
From: "owner-bananafish@roughdraft.org"
<owner-bananafish@roughdraft.org> on behalf of "Will Hochman"
<hochman@southernct.edu>
Sent: Sat, 18 Aug 2001 08:14:21 +0800
To: "bananafish@roughdraft.org" <bananafish@roughdraft.org>
Subject: Re: Yes, we have no .....
Zazie may be confused by not knowing Jimmy Durante singing "Yes, we have
no bananas" but I believe it was a hit song in the early-mid part of the
20th century. Beaver coats were the stlye in the l920s, "Ernie" I
imagine as Ernest Hemingway, "Zelda" can only by F. Scott's wife, a
Stutz was the nickname for a car that is no longer made, a rumble seat
was a seat in the rear of a car (instead of trunk) and a "uke" is a
Hawaiian string instrument that is a bit smaller than a mandolin. In
other words, Scottie has the imagination and talent to make this list
reach back to a time before Salinger was born to consider his roots in
what was called "The Lost Generation." But Will is here to make the
point that list life reaches across generations...no one here needs to
get lost in the rye, will
PS: Scottie as Jimmy Durante or F.Scott Fitzgerald makes me smile this
Saturday morning. I'm not smiling at the NYTimes who chose not to print
my letter in response to a 7/29/01 end paper by Judith Shulevitz...they
didn't publish any letters in response to her piece but I'm still
feeling almost upset...I really thought this letter would make it into
the NYTimes book review even though I know it's silly to hope for such a
thing...
However, in the spirit of Scottie singing about no bananas and throwing
us back in time, here's the letter the Times should have published:
7/29/01 Dear Editor,
As a student of J.D. Salinger's work and the critical response to it
(NYU dissertation, l994), I appreciated Judith Shulevitz's remarks in
"Holden Reconsidered and All." I would additionally like to note that
there is such a variety of critical response in what George Steiner
called "the Salinger Industry" that it is important to get a sense of
diversity in the criticism and life of Salinger's work.
Ms. Shulevitz provokes fine issues and mentions some of my favorite
Salinger readers. I enjoyed mention of Alfred Kazin's criticism of
Salinger but want to emphasize that Kazin was largely positive
concerning the author. As represented in "Holden Reconsidered and All,"
I can almost hear Kazin saying to Salinger, "I know the writer, and
you're no F. Scott Fitzgerald!" I wrote in my dissertation ("Strategies
of Critical Response to the Fiction of J.D. Salinger") that "by l973,
Kazin had upgraded Salinger's craft to 'genius' and accepted as
'specialized' and 'right' what his l961 essay attacked."
I would like to invite Ms. Shulevitz to send a letter to J.D. Salinger
for the forthcoming Letters to Salinger
(http://members.aol.com/jdsletters/). I'm co-editing the book with
Chris Kubica and it will be published later this year by the University
of Wisconsin Press. Ms. Shulevitz's critical work on Salinger makes me
believe that she deserves to join such Salinger critics as Eberhard
Alsen, Warren French, Elizabeth Kurian, Gerad Rosen and Sanford Pinsker
in our book. Letters to Salinger will also include letters from such
writers as Lee K. Abbott, Donald Anderson, Harlan Ellison, Don De
Grazia, Jim Harrison, Adrian C. Louis, W.P. Kinsella, Cris Mazza, Stuart
O'Nan, Molly Peacock, Tom Robbins and Melanie Rae Thon. In addition to
critics and writers, we have collected letters to Salinger from readers,
students and teachers from around the world. In other words, there is a
book on the Salinger horizon that will collect international and
intergenerational reading responses that are too alive with critical and
creative insights to be overlooked. The flood of responses we have
received serves as a counterpoint to Ms. Shulevitz's disappointed
revisitation to The Catcher in the Rye. In fact, its 50th anniversary is
not only about remembering the novel. It's about all of the people
reading it for the first time, revisiting it, and living with the words
of J. D. Salinger.
Sincerely,
*****
will
--
Will Hochman
Assistant Professor of English
Southern Connecticut State University
501 Crescent St, New Haven, CT 06515
203 392 5024
http://www.southernct.edu/~hochman/willz.html
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