What views do Salinger's characters hold about the importance of memory? Take for example, Buddy's photographic memory, Zooey's comments about a freak and compulsively remembering to say the sacred vows, or Seymour's Eliot quote of about how that name comes up, mixing memory and desire. Or, particularly, the bananafish as us bloated, burdened with memories... The following quote comes from a critical article by Wiegand, "The cures for Banana Fever", in the Grunwald book. __________ What is unbearable is not that some people are bad, but that experience is fleeting. Everything must be retained. The image Holden has for himself of being "the catcher in the rye" is the perfect metaphor for this objective. He wants to guard the children from falling off the edge of the rye field; likewise he tries to guard each experience from falling into oblivion. __________ Any comments here?? Are Salinger's children spontaneous and unburdened by such memories? One response from a friend to this topic (without Salinger reference) was: I think that reflecting on the past and anticipating the future lets us hope and teaches us to appreciate. If we were to live solely in and for the moment we would have no true appreciation of it, that is no comparative points. I don't think this detracts from spontaneity or immediacy at all - I think it adds another dimension to it. It deepens our sense of that moment and then we get to reflect back on it too. ______________________________________ Jonathan Moritz School of Education (Hobart), University of Tasmania GPO Box 252-66, Hobart TAS 7001, AUSTRALIA Telephone (03) 62 26 2545, Fax (03) 62 26 2569 WWW (Working again!!): http://www2.educ.utas.edu.au/~Jonathan.Moritz/