Re: Seymour an Introduction

Literary criticism always applies -- you're doing criticism now. It may
not be appropriate, though, to apply short story conventions to S:AI.
It does read to me more like a fictional journal entry or memoir more
than a short story along the lines of Esme or Bananafish. This isn't
really "outside literary convention" when you consider that "literary
convention" includes works like Finnegans Wake, Ulysses, Woolf's _The
Waves_, a lot of Stein...God, you should read Stein. She elevates
babbling to an art form sometimes.

Sometimes she doesn't :).

On that basis we can still love it or hate it, though, without
misunderstanding what it's trying to do.

I totally agree we need to read it on its own terms before we decide we
love it or hate it.

Jim

Paul Miller wrote:

> After years of reading and re-reading Salinger I'm going to reverse
> myself on SaI which I have always derided. I think Seymour an
> Introduction has been misunderstood by many readers because they
> approach it as a short story. Buddy Glass, Seymour's brother and
> narrator of this Introduction has this to say: "I'm anything but a
> short-story writer where my brother is concerned. What I am, I think,
> is a thesaurus of undetached prefatory remarks about him." Salinger is
> writing outside literary convention and I don't feel literary
> criticism as we know it is appropriate here, of course fire away if
> you must. I don't know it kind of strikes me as a personal note to his
> readers from J D Salinger. Paul

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