Re: critical approaches to teaching catcher
Peggy F. Jean-Louis (pfj6868@is.nyu.edu)
Thu, 11 Dec 1997 12:57:06 -0500 (EST)
On Wed, 10 Dec 1997, WILL HOCHMAN wrote:
> holden needs, or encourage stories written in holden/salinger dialect
When I attended high school and college, we were often given this type of
assignment and it always frustrated me because not only did I find it
incredibly difficult to do ( I particularly remember trying to argue
both sides of the death penalty issue in the Socratic style - brutal) but
everyone always ended with badly written stories that were only faintly
evocative of the original work. I always wondered what the point of this
type of exercise was. Is it just to get us to think the way the author
thinks or to get us to really examine and understand the work the better
to try and copy it? Is it supposed to be fun? Maybe Will can shed some
light on this.
Peggy