Re: poetic allusion in salinger
Sundeep Dougal (holden@giasdl01.vsnl.net.in)
Wed, 09 Jul 1997 00:13:59 +0500 (GMT+0500)
Will, hi!
It's questions like this which keep delaying my putting the as yet
incomplete FAQ up on the page, but I struggled with this quite some time
back myself when I thought I was onto something longback before
discovering this list, and was later pleasantly surprised to find that
there was a full essay in my old, hardback Joel Salzberg edited _Critical
Essays on J.D.Salinger's The Catcher in The Rye_ The essayist is one John
M.Howell who apparently originally published in Modern Fiction Studies 12,
#3. The essay is called _Salinger in The Wasteland_ who claims that JDS
consciously derived the controlling metaphor of CITR from Wasteland. He
also ofcourse appends three epigraphs to his essay from JDS ---two obvious
ones, the _memory and desire_ quote from APDFBF and the bit from Inverted
Forest ---one of which --- funnily enough the one on my mind ---and in my
last post about D.B. being aprostitute in Hollywood --- is very, very
tenously and strenuously attempted to connect D.B. to the impotent Fisher
King. I have been rather unimpressed by the overall tone and tenor of the
essay and had then atleast thought it to be a perfect case of examiner's
bias and subjectively interpreting, or indeed, holding any two things to
be corresponding to each other. That the Wasteland was important enough
for JDS to atleast get two direct allusions from JDS however is an
unescapable fact and like the _Notes from Underground_ parallel, and the
Rilke's Sonf of Suicide, much can definitely be made in terms of
attributing inspirational modelling by anybody with some time on his
hand...How can _anybody_ be immune to all their that they have read?
Even if one tried to, consciously, not let any allusion to a writer one
has read and been impressed by, creep in to one's writing, I'm sure it'd
be quite a task...Oh, I better organise my thoughts..Sonny
---------------------------------------------------------------------
Sundeep Dougal (Sonny, to friends) Holden Caulfield, New Delhi, INDIA
On Tue, 8 Jul 1997, WILL HOCHMAN wrote:
> sonny, not only does he use that line from the wasteland, but I think one
> of the reasons I love "The Inversted Forest" is how he plays with the
> wasteland in it...I wonder if anyone has studied eliot's affect on
> salinger...will
>
>