demned illusive Pimpernel
Scottie Bowman (bowman@mail.indigo.ie)
Sun, 08 Feb 1998 18:36:31 +0000
As someone whose teases are not always as elegant as he
should like, I take my hat off to a master - "John Symons",
whoever & wherever he may be.
With one exquisitely phrased enquiry he has had more outraged
elderly ladies clutching skirts to ankles & leaping onto tables than
most of us have witnessed in a month of afternoon cream teas.
It's possible that behind that devoutly protected fence Salinger has
been labouring away for the past forty years completing the mother
of all books. He'd better be. For no other significant writer in
the history of western literature has carried on in quite this
manner - & then gone on to produce the goods. Many, of course,
after an initial brief sunburst, realised there was no more in the
well & decided their best hope was a prolonged mystification.
Who was it (Wilson ? - the scholars will tell us) who said:
`There are no third acts in American lives.' ?
Scottie B.