Subject: Re: who's Seymour?
From: Cheryl Cline (ccline@uclink4.berkeley.edu)
Date: Thu Jun 15 2000 - 19:05:30 GMT
> JJ Flikweert wrote:
> <snip>
> > Then I thought: isn't it completely obvious that all the Glass family
> > members are intended to portray aspects of Salinger's own
> > personality? To me this started to seem indeed completely obvious.
>
Joshua Stott wrote:
> Part of Salinger's genius, whether recognized by the reader or not, is
> that he does not "project" himself into his characters or as you put it
> "members are intended to portray aspects of Salinger's own personality".
>
I don't remember where I read it, but I remember seeing something where
Salinger said that Catcher is about his boyhood/adolescence and that it was
a relief to finally tell someone about it. I think that every author
injects an element of the autobiographical into their work, to varying
extents. It's fun to speculate about how much a work and its characters are
autobiographical, but I just don't think it's safe to read a fictional work
and assume that any particular event in the text happened in the author's
life. For example, if I ever met Salinger, I wouldn't ask, "So, who was
this Jane Gallagher in real life?" Even though Salinger has already stated
that Catcher was about himself, I wouldn't confidently link any event or
idea in the novel with his personal life.
But JJ was talking about aspects of personality, not concrete events, so I
think I'm on the wrong track. If it's hard to correlate events in a text
with an author's real life, it's even harder to speculate about the division
of a personality into its composite aspects or parts. Besides, to break
down a complex personality into separate components would have left Salinger
with much more one-dimensional characters. Each member of the Glass family,
contrary to a one-aspect view of their characters, has at least a few
personality contradictions. Seymour's supposed to be a great guy, but he
devastates his family and Muriel by his suicide. Franny gets upset at the
idea that she is superior to the "fowls of the air" but orders a chicken
sandwich. A bit cannibalistic, if she truly thought she was on the same
part as the "sweet, lovely chickens and geese." But now I'm making an
argument that a single aspect of one's personality must be uniform, not
riddled with contradictions.
However, I've always suspected that Mr. Antolini and Zooey represent the
more mature Salinger conversing with the less mature Salinger as
characterized by Holden and Franny. I agree with Josh's statement, but
still occasionally speculate about Salinger's life as it might be portrayed
in his work.
Cheryl
-
* Unsubscribing? Mail majordomo@roughdraft.org with the message
* UNSUBSCRIBE BANANAFISH
This archive was generated by hypermail 2b25 : Thu Jul 13 2000 - 23:22:21 GMT