What's the catch
Camille Scaysbrook (verona_beach@geocities.com)
Mon, 10 Aug 1998 22:18:58 +0000
I was just looking through some old papers when I was delighted to
come across an article I clipped out of the Sydney Morning Herald of
Saturday March 1st 1997 entitled `What's the Catch?'. I think it's
an adaptation of an overseas article (it doesn't mention if it's a
reprint - it only says it's by `Alan Atwood, in New York') I was even
more delighted to find a familiar name quoted : `Salinger expert Will
Hochman, a Salinger expert at the University of Colorado ...' (ah,
finally I can point to the newspaper and tell my parents `Hey! I
*know* that guy!' (: You probably remember the interview(s) you gave
around this time but I don't know if you knew your words made it to
Australia! I was particularly interested in the fact that you named
Hapworth a postmodernist text. I'd never thought of Salinger in those
terms before (although we did have Pynchon on our curriculum in
Postmodernism last year), but it's certainly got my mind ticking
over. When I think about it though ... a lot of the debates that have
been raging lately have basically been postmodern but no one's
actually named them as such.
As far as I can remember this article is substantially the same as
many that came out in those heady days when we actually believed
Hapworth was going to be published ... (seriously - this is Salinger
we're talking about, did any of us expect it to all go on without a
hitch?) If I can find the Sydney Morning Herald web archives (and
there are probably some on the net somewhere) I'll post a URL so you
can all read this.
There's also a caricature of Salinger sitting in front of a boarded
up window looking rather chagrined (and rather, it must be said, like
his picture on the Catcher sleeve which is the only one of him most
of us have ever seen) at a wastepaper bin into which a 1924 calendar
is crumpled ... nicely symbolic.
Camille Scaysbrook
verona_beach@geocities.com
THE ARTS HOLE
@ www.geocities.com/Hollywood/Theater/6442