Subject: Re: favorite first Salinger lines (and why)
From: Scottie Bowman (rbowman@indigo.ie)
Date: Fri May 31 2002 - 03:24:42 EDT
'.... people who just read and run. The point is that
they read for pleasure, they don't take their reading
very seriously. So I think, in this case, a fair weather
friend is exactly what Salinger wants. Someone who
reads and enjoys and runs on to the next thing....'
This has always been the standard Bananafish gloss
on the phrase about running & reading that Salinger
uses elsewhere. I was never wholly satisfied. I could
remember Henry McLeod Webster's shrivelling scorn
60 years ago when someone (not me, thank God) offered
it in Class VI English Lit. But I couldn't, for the life of me,
recall the correct reading.
Here now, though, here's a thing. Here's my Brewer's
Dictionary of Phrase & Fable.
'HE THAT RUNS MAY READ.'
The Bible quotation in Hab. ii, 2 is:
''Write the vision, and make it plain upon tables,
that he may run that readeth it.''
Cowper says:
''But truths, on which depend our main concern....
Shine by the side of every path we tread
With such a lustre, he that runs may read.''
The emphasis is not upon the humane, undemanding nature
of the reader - but upon the terrible, clarion quality of the message
that even a guy fleeing the attentions of a disappointed
Tony Soprano couldn't fail to register.
So, J.D. What's the message, then?
Scottie B.
-
* Unsubscribing? Mail majordomo@roughdraft.org with the message
* UNSUBSCRIBE BANANAFISH
This archive was generated by hypermail 2b25 : Fri Sep 27 2002 - 17:14:13 EDT