favorite first Salinger lines (and why)


Subject: favorite first Salinger lines (and why)
From: Will Hochman (hochman@southernct.edu)
Date: Thu May 30 2002 - 13:04:47 EDT


"At times, frankly, I find it pretty slim pickings, but at the age of
forty I look on my old fair-weather friend the general reader as my
last deeply contemporary confidant, and I was rather strenuously
requested, long before I was out of my teens, by at once the most
exciting and the least fundamentally bumptious public craftsman I've
ever personally known, to try to keep a steady and sober regard for
the amenities of such a relationship , be it ever so peculiar or
terrible; in my case, he saw it coming on from the first."

J.D. Salinger, "Seymour--An Introduction"

I love this story because I believe it is one of the true examples of
a story explaining how to write a story while doing it! The first
line sets up Seymour Glass as a "public craftsman" and writing coach,
and also says to me that Salinger himself was coached by his
characters, will

-- 
	Will Hochman

Associate Professor of English Southern Connecticut State University 501 Crescent St, New Haven, CT 06515 203 392 5024

http://www.southernct.edu/~hochman/willz.html

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