Subject: Re: How many geniuses did JD send to the grave before he finally got it right?
AntiUtopia@aol.com
Date: Fri Feb 18 2000 - 18:58:03 EST
In a message dated 2/18/00 1:51:14 PM Eastern Standard Time,
cecilia.baader@cnh.com writes:
> However, to say that the Old Man (he was a young man then) couldn't have
> planned it at that stage is not, in my mind, as important as the fact that
> later on, he did make that Bananafish-Glass Family-Franny connection. The
> pieces fit together into a coherent whole at the final denouement, and
> _that_, in my mind, is more important than what his original intention was.
> His final intention, now there's the rub... and I could spend hours (and
> have) dissecting it.
>
> I did want to say, since this is more of a non-response than anything else,
> that I've been happily reading your and Matt K.'s Shakespeare/Salinger
posts
> for the last few days-- it's so nice to hear a new voice and become better
> acquainted with an old one.
>
> Regards,
> Cecilia.
I don't know how this is going to come across, but I've written a bit of
fiction myself, including multiple stories that revolve around, or include,
one particular character. I have him in CA at one point and in Bithlo, FL at
another. I added him as an afterthought to the Bithlo story because he
served a purpose.
In other words, the development was somewhat haphazard and piecemeal, and
hardly planned from the start. If I wanted to pull all the stories together
into a continuous narrative, I'd have some real problems.
I see the same thing happening in Saligner's fiction. I think he started out
trying to do with the Caulfield family what he wound up doing with the Glass
family. But the C family stories seem full of narrative inconsistencies and,
for that matter, were a failed enterprise. It's possible he stepped a bit
more carefully and deliberately when drafting the Glass stories, but I agree
with you here. I don't think the "planning" or the "intent" of it all are
all so meaningful as the artifice we're left with.
But at the same time we need to understand that, say, APDFB when first
published and what it means at the close of the Glass family writings are two
completely different things. I don't see why we should favor one writing
over the other, either...
Jim
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