Re: complex list


Subject: Re: complex list
From: Paul Kennedy (kennedyp@toronto.cbc.ca)
Date: Fri Mar 24 2000 - 12:15:41 EST


I really don't have any big issue here. I suggested that the Glass stories
be read randomly because Jerry contrived a brilliant internal randomness in
stories like S:aI, and certainly "Hapworth".... (Maybe I should have used
Buddy's attic--instead of Franny's--when describing my reasoning yesterday.
Reading the canon should feel like pulling an old snapshot out of this box,
a letter out of that box, and a diary out of another. To use another
metaphor, it's the sort of bus drive along the roads that all lead to Rome
(roam?) that Tim was describing in his eloquent defense of S:aI....) It
wasn't a big issue until Matt (who should start tapping maple trees instead
of desert cacti) pronounced ex cathedra that:
    
>
>If you have a care for the author's relationship to his characters,
>Salinger's stories should be read in the order of publication. If you do
>not, it is probably just as well to read them in that order regardless

>From my perspective, this is not only counter-intuitive, but
counter-logical. Surely, Matt, you meant to say "if you have a care for the
author's relationship to his characters, Salinger's stories should be read
in the order of COMPOSITION. If you do not, f--k off...."

And if anyone here is brave enough to ask Jerry the exact date of
composition for ALL the Glass stories (maybe even including those piles and
piles of pages in the family vault at the heart of the bunker....) I'll be
the first to chip in for bus fare to a certain little New England town....

Most writers of short fiction (then and now) have NO CONTROL whatsover over
publication date. You send something off to a small literary journal (or in
Jerry's case, Redbook or the Saturday Evening Post) and it might appear
during the lifetimes of your great-grandchildren. If you're lucky. The
magazine might just die before you do, with no close kin to inform you of
the passing.... Or, to extend your argument further, Matt, should we stop
altogether reading things that weren't published in an author's lifetime?

I just might have to kill myself because I've already read Anna Karenina
(several times, in fact), but as everybody here knows, I can't seem to crack
War & Peace--or, Matt, is there a corollary to your Papal Bull, whereby some
force prevents me from offending the moral order of publication by even
TRYing to start W&P after having finished AK? (Ignorance of Matt's Law is
no defence!)

Good weekends, all! (try to limit yourself to two litres of cactus juice a
day, Matt....)

Cheers,

Paul

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