Subject: Re: bananafish faq
From: Josh Kramer (joshk6@earthlink.net)
Date: Wed Jun 04 1997 - 15:12:50 GMT
Hi all. New subscriber in search of the unpublished here.
On Becky's comment:
> It worries a lot of us. If we are college students, are we Franny or
> are we Lane? If we are parents, are we Boo Boo Tannenbaum or
> Mr. McArdle? If we are children, are we Esme or Sybil? Salinger
> makes an effort to like the common people--the Fat Lady, the girls
> in Buddy's classroom--but most of the time, if you're not a member
> of the Glass family, you're Muriel or Mrs. Snell or those women
> sitting behind Buddy on the plane to Florida. Salinger's view of the
> world seems to have a lot "we" and "they" in it. Shining your shoes
> for the fat lady is more like condescending to her than including her.
>
It's true that Salinger's characters can be pretty brutal on the rest of
the world, but I always thought that the point of the fat lady was not so
much for us to ask ourselves "are we 'we'" or are we "they", but that each
of us is someone else's fat lady. (like for instance to Salinger, everyone
on this list is probably are the fat lady!). I never imagined that the fat
lady had any desire to be more 'included', she just thought kids on radio
shows should have nicely shined shoes.
Josh
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