Buddy Glass
WILL HOCHMAN (hochman@uscolo.edu)
Sun, 02 Aug 1998 22:11:54 -0600 (MDT)
Buddy Glass isn't Salinger, but part of what Salinger has created to
establish layers of fictive voices and personas...he thrives with
"text-within-text" layering ("Laughing Man" is one of my favorites, but
Seymour's Diary in RHRBC and his Dear Tyger letter in SAI also tickle me
a great deal with the way salinger "speaks" through his characters.)
In mathmatical terms I once imagined salinger equaling buddy plus seymour
divided by holden (JDS=BG+SG/HC) but only to play with what I ultimately
realized...Buddy Glass is Buddy Glass. That doesn't stop me from
imagining Salinger like him, or me like him for that matter, but what we
construct of him in our imaginations is still a fictional character...
I don't think trying to measure how much of a writer is in a character is
very doable...but I do think that great characters in lit have a "life
force" from their authors that often draws from the author's essence in
conscious and unconscious ways.
BTW, one of the things I like about Buddy Glass is that he's a narrator
with no lack of love for his subject...will