Subject: Re: complex list (Beam me down, Scottie!)
From: Scottie Bowman (rbowman@indigo.ie)
Date: Sat Mar 25 2000 - 18:34:53 EST
'... Here's a really nice guy, makes a parable about bananas
and worldy things and then shoots himself in the head?
It says a little something, just not aything really great
or interesting ...'
Not a universal view.
A party in 68 Highfield Road, Rathgar, Dublin in the autumn
of 1951. The decidedly pissed Seamus Kelly, then literary
editor of the Irish Times, is discussing an acquaintance whose
taste in writing he had hitherto dismissed as totally risible.
'I said to him: ''Go on. Name me one short story of
the last ten years that you liked.'''
'What he say?'
'You know what he said? He said: ''A Perfect Day for
Bananafish.'''
'That's not bad.'
'It's bloody good. I didn't think he was capable.'
This was the first time I ever heard the title & for the life
of me I can't think how people in Dublin could have read it
in 1951 (I'm sure of the date) unless in what were then pretty
rare copies of the New Yorker. I can't even remember where
I myself read it - though it was certainly many years before
the Glass saga began in earnest.
My point being that A Perfect Day was making a big impact
on people long before those other, elaborating texts ever
appeared.
Scottie B.
-
* Unsubscribing? Mail majordomo@roughdraft.org with the message
* UNSUBSCRIBE BANANAFISH
This archive was generated by hypermail 2b25 : Sat Apr 01 2000 - 10:11:41 EST