Subject: Huck & Holden
From: Scottie Bowman (rbowman@indigo.ie)
Date: Sun Jul 01 2001 - 12:47:28 GMT
I’d be grateful if someone could suggest where to look
for the Will article. In the past, I’ve felt an instinctive
sympathy with his attitudes as expressed in such of his stuff
as I’ve read. But this certainly does sound a duff shot,
all right.
Is it possible that Will’s generation & the preceding ones
(mine, for example) grew up that tiny bit closer to a rural
world than, say, the post war ones where, increasingly,
young people have had their being along the concrete canyons?
Although I could identify effortlessly with Holden’s
world-weariness as reflected in the vocabulary of a New Yorker
- in all senses of the phrase - (cynicism about Hollywood,
the class distinctions to be found in luggage, cocktails for two,
the phoneyness of the Lunts, etc.); yet I came to it carrying
a very different set of associations & memories. From the age
of, say, 10 to 15 my free time was spent almost wholly in
wellington boots, roaming open country & the river & the beach
with my chums & my dog - in a way that, in my imagination,
wasn’t altogether light years from the Mississippi. I look back
on those days with the nostalgia of old age, a nostalgia which
is founded, of course, absolutely solidly ìn reality. I can see
the world my own grandchildren & their friends occupy &
I feel they have lost a great treasure - in exchange for a few
rather glib cybernetic diversions that seem to stale as quickly
as they’re replaced.
I certainly wouldn't share Will’s take on Holden as conveyed
by John. But I can perhaps understand why he looks back
on that raft going down the great stream & sees it carrying
more magic (& within its own idiom, just as much comedic
truth) than the desperate odyssey back to the apartment &
old Phoebe.
Scottie B.
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