Subject: Re: Sexuality in Salinger
From: WILL HOCHMAN (hochman@uscolo.edu)
Date: Sun Mar 02 1997 - 14:55:55 GMT
malcolm, i agree with your notion of salinger not need sex to make his
ideas about love work but I don't agree with the notion that critics have
it all wrong and used my imagining seymour as a gay man as a point. I
don't think seymour is gay, but when matt posted his piece on that citing
Gwynn and Blotner, I started thinking...and reading things differently. I
still don't agree and know better why now, but I also had a nice
"alternative text" in my mind that made me see muriel differently than I
had. My basic argument in my book will be that great writing like
salinger's is great because it creates diverse, possible meaning--and the
record that his readers create is a rich body of readings that illustrate
his ability to touch a variety of people in significant ways. I'm much
less interested in whose critical vision is best so much as making the
response to salinger's work into a body of work that heightens our
consciousness in our moments reading salinger. That's why I humbly
suggest that Mr. Salinger's bias against "section" men is not entirely a
good thing. I've learned how to be a better reader--when I read
interpretations by folks like wenke, french, kazin, fiedler,bawer, etc., I
get closer to my own ideas because they have critical shaping that is
useful. When it's not useful, my memory is the perfect delete key!
will
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