Subject: Re: 2 Q's
AntiUtopia@aol.com
Date: Mon Feb 21 2000 - 19:45:51 EST
In a message dated 2/21/00 7:00:17 PM Eastern Standard Time,
invertedforest@angelfire.com writes:
> Of course it is. That's just what Salinger wants. He wants to walk down
> through history - tear it from every page of every Nine Stories and every
New
> Yorker - and start the whole thing again. It's metaphorically what he does
to
> both it and `Teddy' in Seymour: An Introduction. The latter he describes as
`
> unsuccessful' (is it even `entirely unsuccessful'?), the former he decries
as
> mere speculative fiction; he even admits that the Seymour of his tale is
more
> himself acting the role of Seymour, just like the ventriloquising phone
call
> in (is it?) Raise High The Roof Beams. And what I'm saying is that this
does
> ask questions, and asks them in an interesting way.
>
> ---
> Louise Z. Brooks
Never trust what a writer says about his own work. You're falling into the
trap by taking Buddy too seriously here.
Beyond this, what I've been saying is that this thread (what do the stories
mean when we read them in the light of Buddy's authorship?) asks questions on
a level other than the questions asked by the stories themselves.
I think the Buddy as Author reading sheds light on Buddy as a character, and
perhaps on the Glass family as a whole, and even on Salinger's view of
fiction (perhaps I wouldn't trust this too much) but not on the stories
themselves.
I think the story you were referencing was Franny and Zooey. Zooey called in
imitating Buddy.
Jim
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