Re: who he ?

Camille Scaysbrook (verona_beach@geocities.com)
Tue, 04 Aug 1998 15:22:06 +1000

> 	The only possible answer is also the most trite.  Buddy is 
> 	J.D.Salinger.  As is Seymour, Sergeant X., Bessie, Phoebe, 
> 	Sybil.... 

The neverending debate rolls on ... naturally, there isn't a single
character in an author's ouevre which does not contain some part of that
author, but ...

>	 In a very high proportion of cases, I believe, the fictional 
> 	character is prompted by memory of the actual.  

The MEMORY is the keyword here. I'm not saying that Sybil for example was
not inspired by some flesh and blood Sybil out there still running away
from her flesh and blood Seymour with equally little regret. In fact a lot
of evidence would point to this, and of course to something similar in `To
Esme ...' The simple fact of the matter is, though, that as I said, this is
irrelevent. No matter whether or not Salinger aimed to portray some real
person - as soon as this other person becomes a character in a fiction
rather than a character of life, he or she is injected inextricably with
some essence of his or her creator - namely, the author. 

> 	It's when there's no such germ that you get the cardboard cutout, 
> 	the universally applicable, the intractably lifeless character.

I don't believe that's wholly true. Naturally every character an author
creates has some spark of otherworldly life in them - you could say all
characters are a huge jigsaw puzzle of impressions of people gained over an
entire lifetime - yet I don't believe that one need deliberately assemble
characters from real life for them to be as vital and true to life as any
other. The dullest books I've ever read - Sylvia Plath's `The Bell Jar' for
example - are those ones most obviously and unswervingly based on reality.

Camille 
verona_beach@geocities.com
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