Re: I am Franny!!! / We love Bill

Camille Scaysbrook (verona_beach@geocities.com)
Mon, 20 Jul 1998 10:08:28 +1000 

> No comment on the Johnny Depp praise.  An Oscar nomination?  Anyway, I am
> shocked to hear that a writer such as yourself, who feels that the best
are
> those who "make up their own rules," 

Not necessarily - I think it's important to be an expert on the rules
before you start breaking them, just like Picasso was a consummate realist
artist before he moved on to cubism, and Larry from the Three Stooges was a
classically trained violin player.

No, I've tried to read a lot of those guys - Bukowski, Burroughs ... they
just don't do a lot for me. It's like `Natural Born Killers' - it probably
looked wonderful and made a lot of sense to someone on an acid bender, but
to an ol' soberside like me - blah. Nothing is more boring than watching
someone who is stoned out of their brains to someone who isn't - they're
dull, they ramble, they go off on boring, pointless tangents. One of the
reasons I like Salinger is because he's a great craftsman - he's written
some of the best constructed short stories ever, and even something like
Catcher which appears to ramble is, on closer inspection, pretty well
structured. I prefer it to the later, more boundless things.

> "Each new line is a beginning and has nothing to do with any lines which
> preceded it.  We all start new each time.  And, of course, it isn't all
that
> holy either.  The world can live much easier without writing than without
> plumbing.  And some places in the world have very little of either.  Of
> course, I'd rather live without plumbing but I'm sick."

> --from _The Captain is out to lunch and the sailors have taken over the
> ship_
 
> Anyway. . . would anyone consider the above passage "Salingeresque?"

Hmmm .... it does have the colloquial tone of either Catcher or De-Daumier
Smith, but ... I dunno. I think it was Will who best summed up
Salingeresque - it has a beginning, middle and end - i.e. he's a pretty
hard writer to characterise.

Just for you I may give Bukowski another go (:

Camille 
verona_beach@geocities.com
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