Subject: Bleah. The Subconscious.
From: Jim Rovira (jrovira@drew.edu)
Date: Sat Jun 22 2002 - 15:10:57 EDT
The impression I get reading Salinger's fiction is that the only thing
he may have hated more than literary critics were psychoanalysts...and
he probably really disliked literary criticism because so much of it was
influenced by psychoanalysis.
It seems to me attributing authorial intent to the "subconscious" (can
anyone show me a subconscious? Has anyone every really proven it
exists?) is just a way of tagging all kinds of things on an author while
keeping the critic above criticism or question. Yes, it is possible
that some numbers had some recurring significance in Salinger's fiction
that Salinger himself was not aware of. But then, the way to
demonstrate that is to go through Salinger's fiction and actually
describe the significance of numbers and how they work in the story.
Funny, though, you can do all this without referring to any bogies :).
I mean, if the meaning is there in the stories, does it really matter if
Salinger was aware of that meaning or not?
Jim
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