Teaching Salinger
AntiUtopia@aol.com
Fri, 31 Dec 1999 09:36:42 -0500 (EST)
Happy New Year's to you too, Tim, and to the rest of the list.
To the guy from Berkeley getting ready to teach Salinger for the first time...
there's a couple people on here who could answer your question with some
background in doing just that. They outta speak up :)
But if I were going to teach a Salinger class, I'd teach everything he has
published in book form, and do it in chronological order. I may violate this
by saving Catcher for the last book -- and cover it in two weeks. People who
take a Salinger class- 90% of them, probably - will be most interested in
Catcher. That's the way it was with my online Salinger reading group,
anyway. It'd be really interesting to see people reconcile the Seymour of
Bananafish to the Seymour of the later stories. And since four little slim
books isn't really all that much to cover in a semester...well, maybe I'd
throw in some criticism on alternate weeks to cover the reading. And make
everyone keep a journal and then MAKE THEM SUBSCRIBE TO THIS LIST :)
bwah-hahahahaaaa....
Jim