Subject: Re: L. Manning Vines
From: Louise Z. Brooks (invertedforest@angelfire.com)
Date: Wed Feb 16 2000 - 18:12:49 EST
A friend of mine who is a film critic has an answering machine message that says `You have reached the home of P.G. and A.J.' - both of whom are of course the same person, himself. There is something immensely attractive about the idea of creating another persona behind which you may hide. I remember seeing Kenneth Branagh's 1993 `Much Ado About Nothing' and being fascinated by the idea of masquerade and license; of crossing borders and straying into `Staff Only' areas, of removing such factors as sex, status or reputation from the line of questioning - of coming as close as possible to picking at another person's mind. (The modern application is of course at my father's factory where the imaginary CEO Kevin Wells gets weekly letters from Get Rich Quick!!! and You May Have Already Won!!!)
Here's a question: what do you believe is the place of the mask in Salinger? There is of course the literal mask of the Laughing Man but there is also the pretence of Zooey when he pretends to be Buddy on the phone, or the masquerading of Salinger himself as JDS. There are the Glass kids, trained in vaudeville - but was vaudeville a theatre built on pretence or genuineness, given its focus on personality rather than artificiality?
--- Louise Z. Brooks "Invention my dear friends is 93% perspiration, 6% electricity, 4% evaporation and 2% butterscotch ripple." - Willy WonkaOn Wed, 16 Feb 2000 16:42:05 Tim O'Connor wrote: >On Wed, Feb 16, 2000 at 09:58:36AM -0800, citycabn wrote: > >> For more on the secret life of Mr. Vines, go to: >> >> http://www.nyu.edu/acf/staff/oconnort/pgphow.html >> >> and scroll to the section "PGP in Action". > >Dang it, Bruce, it's like having Sherlock Holmes as a subscriber! 8-) >I've been using that as a pseudonym for years in different contexts. > >I wrote an article with that by-line once, when I was working as a >freelance writer, and after about a week of publication, my publisher >received a letter from a financial institution that wanted to hire Mr. >Vines to do some freelance writing for them! So, I quickly had >letterhead prepared by a typesetting friend, and had to graciously >decline due to overwork, etc. > >God knows where that letter has ended up.... > >Good catch! > >--tim > >- >* Unsubscribing? Mail majordomo@roughdraft.org with the message >* UNSUBSCRIBE BANANAFISH >
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