Re: Seymour an Introduction

I'll not only hop on Scottie's iceberg in imagistic hopes of pointing
out that good literature often makes us go beyond love/hate or yes/no
responses to it...much that is there but seemingly "submerged" in a
text may or may not be revealed. Contrary to Salinger and many on
this list, I will stand up and THANK critics for making me a better
reader. I've never read a piece of Salinger criticism (and I've read
most of the books and widely published essays and articles) that made
Salinger's fiction less than what it is for me. In other words, I
love the world of ideas and even bad ideas get me going so why blame
critics for weak minds of readers? I'm not saying criticism is
necessary for literature to happen well, but in my life I've learned
from other readers (like on this list!!!) and I'm not afraid to
learn. Not only do I justify lit crit from this point of view, but
I'll also point out that criticism is necessary when new forms or
innovation in art appear (which is hopefully most of the time but not
necessarily so...). For example, SAI was pretty strange when it
appeared, but previous to it's publication Wayne Booth in his book,
The Rhetoric of Fiction discusses what he calls "unreliable
narrators." This idea (Booth cites Holden as a prime example) helps
make me a better reader of SAI, where the narration seems to be not
quite Salinger's and not quite Buddy's...

not quite, will

-
* Unsubscribing? Mail majordomo@roughdraft.org with the message
* UNSUBSCRIBE BANANAFISH
Received on Fri Aug 9 10:06:35 2002