Subject: later salinger
From: Kim Johnson (haikux2@yahoo.com)
Date: Wed Jul 17 2002 - 14:27:52 EDT
my personal feeling is that writing 'the catcher' was
imperature for salinger's development. if indeed he
worked on it for ten years, it must have come as some
relief to send it off to little, brown for
publication. it's only after 'the catcher' that
salinger's religious concerns are allowed full play in
his work. 'ddmbp' with everybody is a nun; 'teddy'
with the overt allegiance to vedanta; 'franny' with
the jesus prayer; and then we're on to the glass
family with 'raise high', etc. (i would agree with
updike that franny of 'franny' is not franny glass.)
i believe warren french in his later salinger text,
'j.d.s. revisited' (great title!) remarks that buddy
glass is salinger's second most developed character.
the i voice of buddy is as accomplished, if not more,
than the i voice of 'the catcher'. and as french
remarks, salinger went off the rails when he ventured
into the seymour i voice in 'hapworth'. french says
that salinger's silence began after he realized the
mistake he committed in the last third of
'hapworth'--the book list. it was as though salinger
had done the very thing that he cautioned himself
against in that sarah lawrence class--labelling the
writers he loves, instead of just shouting out their
names. of course, one imagines that the shock of the
inner cirlce upon reading 'hapworth' filtered back to
salinger. if so loyal a reader as william maxwell
could remark that the story displayed a total
cessation of talent ...
ah well, maybe the unpublished texts pick up with the
magnificence of 'seymour: an introduction'
any thoughts?
kim
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