Re: if the elevator operators are arch-enemies

    I think it must, as ever, be the extremely high saccherine
    content that puts my teeth on edge.

    When writing about young children, it's almost impossible
    to avoid, on the one hand, condescension; or, on the other,
    sentimental idealisation. Only the greatest writers - ? Tolstoy,
    Dickens? - have ever managed it. Salinger cloyingly embraces
    both.

    Most little boys at some time or other fantasise themselves
    as secret agents, finger-pistoling teachers, mothers & sisters
    & perhaps even accompanied by a canine partner. Nothing droll
    or unusual about that. What little boys do NOT attribute
    to their antagonists is 'mediocrity'. That's a concept that only
    appears with the insecurities of adolescence.

    Remember, the narrator is actually drooling affectionately over
    the nine year old version of HIMSELF. He is dismissing what
    he (now in his ?twenty-ninth? year) thinks of as the great mediocre
    majority - the words put retrospectively into his own lisping, lovable,
    ickle mouss. That's what makes its arrogance especially embarrassing.

    Scottie B.

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Received on Sun Aug 3 09:07:44 2003