Re: paedophilia?
blah b b blah (jrovira@juno.com)
Mon, 29 Mar 1999 08:28:54 -0500 (EST)
Ooh, yeah, that's pretty good. I guess the "idealization" I spoke of in
relationship to Wordsworth could be extended beyond innocence to
"connection" with something higher. But it's still childlike
"innocence," however, not quite the same as Salinger's depiction.
The thing about them surpassing their biological age in wisdom was a
complaint I read about Hapwroth. The supposedly seven year old Seymour
presented there wasn't terribly believable to the reviewer...
Jim
On Mon, 29 Mar 1999 13:33:14 +0900 denis jonnes
<djengltl@mbox.nc.kyushu-u.ac.jp> writes:
>Don't want to belabor the subject, but I occasionally have feeling
>Salinger's children--at least Esme and Teddy--, are not, despite
>biological age, actually children--they are more mature, have more
>poise, knowledge, wisdom than "adults"--and at least in case of Esme,
>who has lost both parents in course of the war, "survivor skills"
>that
>X lacks. I see this involving less the ascription of "innocence" in
>Wordsworth's sense than something else specific to Salinger (but also
>other American postwar writers, including recently unjustly maligned
>Nabokov) who was seeking to come to grips with personal and collective
>trauma of the war. Similar case could be made for Holden. Seymour's
>attachment to Sybil is one measure of extent of this trauma.
>
>Denis Jonnes
>
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