Re: Salinger & Burns (NOT George!)actually not, but Gatsby
AntiUtopia@aol.com
Mon, 20 Dec 1999 22:32:12 -0500 (EST)
In a message dated 12/20/99 8:35:49 PM Eastern Standard Time,
kennedyp@toronto.cbc.ca writes:
>
> I think you did just FINE!
>
> Far be it from a Canadian to venture onto the muddy waters of the mighty
> Mississippi, but there's something almost transcendentally American (if
> Emerson, and Thoreau, and Hawthorne and Alcott will allow me to borrow the
> term...) about the image of a white boy and a black man floating as
> fugitives down the river that runs through the heart of the country....
> Beautiful Innocence... Ugly Experience.... Metaphorically meaningful
> geography.
>
> (Aside from which, HUCKLEBERRY FINN--not unlike The CATCHER in the RYE--is
> very frequently the target of fundamentalist book burners-and-banners up
> here north of the 49th, which is reason enough to read it, as far as I'm
> concerned.)
>
> Cheers,
>
> Paul
Dittos, Paul, to what you had to say about Tim's posts :) They've been
wonderful.
I think Gatsby is better written and better told, but both Twain and Gatsby
present different Americas, both equally true. Huck Finn is less
self-consciously a novel than Gatsby, and for its purposes it's almost
perfect in that regard...
Jim