Re: what, exactly...?
Pasha Paterson (gpaterso@richmond.edu)
Mon, 07 Dec 1998 00:44:39 -0500
At 18:02 12/05/98 -0500, Paul Janse wrote:
>The question of who Holden is addressing seems to me very uninteresting.
>The fact that he *is* addressing *someone is*. To me it is just Holden
>Caulfield's and Salinger's variant of the very old literary device: "Listen
>to this, I am telling you a tale", which gives the story a special kind of
>truthfullness, well, I don't know whether this is the right word, in any
>case it gives the story a special tone. Did anyone ever read Tolstoy's
>'Kreutzer Sonate'? This story is told in a train by a man to his accidental
>fellow passenger. Same effect. The question who this other man is, is
>beside the point.
Certainly, one would expect that a narrative presented more as a
transcription of oral history than a written novel would be more engaging
for the reader. On reading _Catcher_ last summer as part of my research
for my summer school course, I couldn't help but read the first paragraph
and hear the words sung: "Just sit right back and you'll hear a tale, a
tale of a fateful trip..."
Simulated recordings of oral narratives are much more prevalent in
literature of the American South. (I mention this partly because that's
what my English course this term has been designed around: literature of
the South.) If anyone else is interested in how some other contemporary
(and a bit past) authors have used this technique, I would suggest the
following:
Eudora Welty, _The_Golden_Apples_
Josephine Humphreys, _Rich_In_Love_
Walker Percy, _Lancelot_
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G.H.G.A.Paterson (804)662-3737 gpaterso@richmond.edu
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