Subject: RE: How many geniuses did JD send to the grave before he finally got it right?
From: Baader, Cecilia (cecilia.baader@cnh.com)
Date: Fri Feb 18 2000 - 13:14:32 EST
> Louise Z. Brooks [invertedforest@angelfire.com] wrote:
>
> How do you know that? If you picked up the book, clean as a
> whistle, never heard of JDS, never heard of a Glass in your
> life - if you were an amateur reader, as JDS puts it - would
> you really be able to say that?
>
Louise,
You've stumbled upon the question that has been a favorite of our fellow
listmembers for some time now. There's the camp that posits that as
Salinger developed, so did Seymour, and then there's the camp that believes
that he planned the whole thing all along, giving himself license to change
history with the creation of Buddy when he changed his mind.
And then there's the camp that hasn't really decided, and changes her
opinion weekly.
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.
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