Re: Universitatlity

Yeah, this is a tough subject. I tend to think people forget that
Europen and Latin American readers have a great deal of cultural context
in common with US readers -- you're right that Holden's world was
narrow, but God, how many movies are shot on the streets of NYC and
distributed around the world? Or for that matter, how much literature
is set in the city? If Holden were wandering around Starke, FL,
well...that'd be a different matter. I think Holden and his environment
wouldn't be that unfamiliar to people around the world -- or at least a
caricature of it. Of course there'd be referents inaccessible to people
who have never visited or lived there.

Here it comes -- the Annotated Catcher.

Jim

"Kozusko, Matthew" wrote:
>
>
> Jim: "I think we need to speak of what about Holden is being communicated by
> _Catcher_, then talk about what can be communicated via translation and
> what's lost."
>
> The translation debate always manages to bustle with smart thinking and keen
> observation, but it usually manages also to forget that there are cultural
> obstacles involved as well as language-specific ones. While many relatively
> affluent Americans and western Europeans today have a cultural background
> that enables them to connect with Holden's emotional odyssey, a reader's
> general familiarty with "American culture" doesn't mean Holden's attitude
> toward and view of the world is accesible in translation.
>
> The story Salinger tells may address more wide-reaching cultural
> issues--things perhaps more worthy of that ridiculous lable,
> "universal"--but that's not what makes the book so lovely. It's his
> attitude toward *his* world that sets the story apart, and *his* world is a
> very small one indeed. No matter how adept the translation, you can't
> translate late 1930s-Manhattan, for instance, or cantankerous ideologues at
> prep schools, or piano bars, or hunting caps, or David Copperfield-style
> "crap." How many angry young readers today really know what David
> Copperfield crap is? I sure don't.
>
> Fantastic Onion recommendation. And a pretty sound "deconstruction," for
> all its tongue-filled cheekiness!
>
> Matt
>
> --
> mkozusko@ursinus.edu
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Received on Sat Dec 6 13:56:33 2003