Re: buddy as author

Emily Moore (evmoore@hotmail.com)
Wed, 18 Feb 1998 14:24:44 -0800 (PST)

jim wrote:
>Now, I have a question.  Just what the heck **is** F and Z?  We have a
>fictional author--Buddy Glass--writing a "real" history (real to him, 
that
>is).  But Buddy is himself a fictional character, so his "real" history 
is, to
>us, fiction.  How do we approach this work?  

So, I don't remember this too well, but last semester I studied Barthes 
and the Mythologies, and the teacher mentioned the "vanishing author" 
theory really briefly. Does anyone know more about this? Seems it could 
apply here in kind of an interesting way. Looking at the stories as 
written by Buddy, with the knowledge we have of his character and 
family, contrasts with looking at them as just another story by 
Salinger, but also with the awareness of Salinger's other stories about 
the Glasses. What about looking at it in an authorial vacuum, as it 
were? Is that what Barthes was all about?

emily

john, how did you like my use of your "intellectual" phrase? i thought i 
pulled it off rather nicely, as it were.

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