Yeah, I was hoping some of the scholars on this list would reply :) I didn't mind his conversational style (that's the main thing that commends the book as a good intro to Salinger scholarship, besides the fact that he seems to at least touch all the bases), but when he was going through the "underpublished" fiction he sounded like (at times) the Only reason for reading a story was to be able to say, "and the moral of the story is..." or, "and the point of the story is..." -- as if every short story were to be read as one of Grimm's Fairy Tales. THAT'S what sounded stupid to me. The other thing that bothered me was that, in a work like his, I prefer to have "all the different views" presented objectively, rather than having one more view presented--as if the introduction I was reading was intended to be the last word. I would have trusted the intro more if it were more review and less criticism. I guess I just wanted him to Sound more objective :) On the other hand, while I hadn't read any of the stories he was reviewing in that section, I did trust his judgment that they were flawed stories and I understood more why Salinger wouldn't want at least some of them republished. And I'm glad I read this intro before I read any of Salinger's other works with Holden Caulfield in it--I think it'd be confusing as Anything to try to see a consistent Holden through all Salinger's works, and that would have been what I was trying to do. I understand that if I was more familar with Saligner scholarship, it's quite possible I'd be praising French's restraint :) Jim ___________________________________________________________________ You don't need to buy Internet access to use free Internet e-mail. Get completely free e-mail from Juno at http://www.juno.com/getjuno.html or call Juno at (800) 654-JUNO [654-5866]