What's the Catch?

Camille Scaysbrook (verona_beach@geocities.com)
Sat, 11 Jul 1998 10:10:18 +1000 

I was just looking through some old papers when I was delighted to 
come across an article I clipped out of the Sydney Morning Herald of 
Saturday March 1st 1997 entitled `What's the Catch?'. I think it's 
an adaptation of an overseas article (it doesn't mention if it's a 
reprint or not - it only says it's by `Alan Atwood, in New York'). I was
even 
more delighted to find a familiar name quoted : `Will Hochman, a Salinger
expert at the University of Colorado ...' (ah, finally I can point to the
newspaper and tell my parents `Hey! I *know* that guy!' (: You probably
remember the interview(s) you gave around this time Will but I don't know
if you knew your words made it to 
Australia! I was particularly interested in the fact that you described
Hapworth a postmodernist text. I'd never thought of Salinger in those 
terms before (although we did have Pynchon on our curriculum in 
Postmodernism last year), but it's certainly got my mind ticking 
over. When I think about it though ... a lot of the debates that have 
been raging lately have basically been postmodern but no one's 
actually named them as such.

As far as I can remember this article is substantially the same as 
many that came out in those heady days when we actually believed 
Hapworth was going to be published ... (seriously - this is Salinger 
we're talking about, did any of us expect it to all go on without a 
hitch?) If I can find the Sydney Morning Herald web archives (and 
there are probably some on the net somewhere) I'll post a URL so you 
can all read this.

There's also a caricature of Salinger sitting in front of a boarded 
up window looking rather chagrined (and rather, it must be said, like 
his picture on the Catcher sleeve which is the only one of him most 
of us have ever seen) at a wastepaper bin into which a 1924 calendar 
is crumpled ... nicely symbolic.

Camille 
verona_beach@geocities.com
@ THE ARTS HOLE
www.geocities.com/Hollywood/Theater/6442
THE INVERTED FOREST
www.angelfire.com/pa/invertedforest