Re: ah um

Camille Scaysbrook (verona_beach@geocities.com)
Sun, 07 Mar 1999 23:12:43 +1100 

In answer to your pop quiz

Russell Dame wrote:
> Awhile back, JDS and Hemingway came up. Wasn't the whole Clay/cat thing
in > Esme based upon a similar real-life incident with Hemingway and a
chicken?

Yeah. The legend is that he liked one of JDS's stories so much that he shot
a chicken. Not what my first reaction would be frankly (: Then again the
guy did write a whole book about catching a marlin.

> Who do you think has the better vault, Salinger or Neil Young?

Seeing Young is still happily releasing stuff, Salinger. But Young has a
pretty excellent back catalogue, too.

> What did JDS have against Kerouac?
Easy #1 - chocolate box drugged out Zen. Plus, in my opinion, Kerouac was
no great shakes as a writer.

> DeDaumier, garbage or brilliant? I've read both takes and have always
been on the > > fence myself.
Easy #2 - BRILLIANT! Underrated masterpiece, my favourite 9 Story and I
can't understand why no one else seems to like it. Manages, if it is
possible to conceive, to fit a whole novel into about 5,000 words.

> Is whoever wrote it completely sure that JDS had a breakdown during WWII?
To what > extent?

That would be me, and it's pretty much one of the Accepted Facts of
Salingerism. It definitely happened, everyone agrees on that. No one's
quite sure whether it was shellshock or something like what Sylvia Plath
experienced, which involved such things as having to re-learn how to write.
Again, `Esme' is supposed to be based on this experience. 

> Finally, whoever counteracted the Dostoyevsky rape shocker with the Wm >
Blake/marital bliss image was right on, credit where credit is due. That
has always > been a favorite image of mine and you seem like a
breathtakingly level-headed girl. > They were reading Paradise Lost,
correct?

Geez. I'd want to be raving mad to enjoy reading that collosal bore myself
(: (and I'm speaking as an English Renaissance major here). BTW I still
stand behind the Dostoevsky story although I still haven't been able to
verify it.

Camille
verona_beach@geocities.com
@ THE ARTS HOLE http://www.geocities.com/Hollywood/Theater/6442
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