Re: I luv Holden
Camille Scaysbrook (verona_beach@geocities.com)
Thu, 02 Jul 1998 11:13:16 +1000
> I have just sent a post about this, so I won't go into detail, but: if
> you're suggesting that we know Allie is real because Phoebe indicates
> that he is real, you're missing my point.
This is exactly what I mean when I say we shouldn't be looking at things so
literally. Taking things literally is a way to interpret life, not
literature. Although you can use it for literature, I think you'll find it
very limiting in the end. Authors put things in their books on purpose.
Irrelevancies make for boring books.
> If one wants really to
> interrogate the subject of Holden's sanity, one has to question the
> "veracity" of *everything* in his narrative, including the points at
> which he represents conversations between himself and his sister.
This is asking questions about the reliability of the narrator which I
think we've discussed on bananafish before. I'm of two minds on the subject
- somehow I instinctively trust what Holden says because he seems to be
going out on a limb to tell me it. Other notoriously unreliable narrators -
for example the narrator in Vladimir Nabokov's `Pale Fire' - seem to
somehow indicate their inherent liability early on, and we quickly learn to
question them. Personally I think that again, speculating on Allie as a
construct rather than a character can remain only that - a speculation.
Who's to say DB isn't imaginary too - we never meet him either. Or anyone
in the novel, really. Everything is filtered through Holden. We might like
Sally if we met her. We might think Phoebe is a brat. But because Holden
tells us they're not, we believe him, which is most important to me.
Camille
verona_beach@geocities.com
@ THE ARTS HOLE
www.geocities.com/Hollywood/Theater/6442