Subject: Roth and Salinger
From: Graham Preston (ac109@sfn.saskatoon.sk.ca)
Date: Tue Jan 25 2000 - 19:40:51 EST
B-Fish-ites,
I guess after putting off resubscribing until a few days ago, an
introduction is needed. I'm Graham, and I've been lurking around on the
list since perhaps 1996 or so back in tha day when 500 messages from the
list was a 2 month operation, instead of 1!
Anyways, I was reading a book on Philip Roth's "Portnoy's Complaint" (I
forgot the title- I was actually supposed to be writing an essay on
William Golding [ack!]), and the author said that Portnoy may become a
literary hero in the tradition of Holden, Huck, and a few others. I got
to thinking about if Holden read the novel, what would he think of it, and
so on. Is Portnoy a nice person or a phony (in Holden's mind)?
Also, judaism is a always brought up, and while Salinger is (was?) a jew,
the only mentions of any jew characters in his stories was Les Glass
(excluding "Down at the.."). Does this tell us of ol' Jerry's views into
his roots at all, or is my mind blocking out major jewish charcters in
Salingeria ( forget about Babe et al. if they are jewish or not).
And, when Holden says se makes him crazy- it seems to do the same with
Portnoy.
Here's to looking at you, list!
Graham
"Just because some of us can read and write and do a little math, that
doesn't mean we deserve to conquer the Universe." Kurt Vonnegut
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