Re: first encounters
AntiUtopia (AntiUtopia@aol.com)
Sun, 25 Jan 1998 17:05:00 -0500 (EST)
In a message dated 1/25/98 4:23:13 PM EST, bowman@mail.indigo.ie writes:
<< Considering my own lifelong & instinctive resistance to books
recommended by teachers I wonder would I have ever got round
to him - even at this late stage in the proceedings.
Scottie B.
>>
ooh, good Salinger post. I think my previous post about Catcher was a bit
misleading. I had never read it because I didn't have to. But was my
experience of Salinger a bit cooler than yours?
hmmmm....
I think so, maybe, at first, until I rediscovered Salinger just about three
months ago. My first experience of him was at 22 or so, when a friend of mine
let me borrow her copy of Franny and Zooey. I read it, found it interesting,
but didn't appreciate it nearly as well as I do now. I think I was too close
to the characters in some ways to learn anything from them...I don't know.
Then I read that page of Catcher about, eh, two years ago. Expository Writing
Class. My first impressions? eh, yep, it was a cooler experience than yours.
I didn't get immediately hooked like you did. The character--Holden's
voice--seemed so self-centered that it put me off. I had no desire to come
back to the book at the time.
Anyway, about three months ago I decided I needed to read Catcher simply
because it is one of the more important works in American fiction. There's
just no denying it. And it did seem a crime that I could be an English major
and not have read it. So I picked up a copy at a local
bookstore--Borders--and started reading it.
But even then my initial experience was cooler than yours, Scottie. I didn't
get hooked in the way you did until about halfway through the novel. But once
it did get me, well, I was hooked all the way. It still only took me about
two days to read it-- working days, mind you, when I have a lot of other
things going on.
And then once I was hooked, I was hooked all the way. I had to read all the
Salinger I could get my hands on. I reread Franny and Zooey, then read Raise
High....and Seymour, then read Nine Stories. All in pretty quick succession.
I appreciated Franny and Zooey to no end, finding characters struggling with
the same issues I had always struggled with, but only recently understood.
Salinger really helped me sort a lot of those
intellectual/aesthetic/acceptance issues out--or, at least, provided guidance
for the sorting out process.
So, I don't think it's that my overall experience of Salinger was cooler than
yours, but that I just took longer to warm up :)
Jim