Re: if the elevator operators are arch-enemies

I follow you about 99% of the way, there, Scottie, but wasn't Hapworth supposed
to be Buddy's typing out of a letter Seymour sent home from camp as a kid? So
it's Buddy drooling over Seymour, isn't it?

Well, except for what Seymour says about Buddy in the letter.

You may have something there.

Jim

Scottie Bowman wrote:

> 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 12:22:59 2003