Subject: Re: favorite first Salinger lines (and why)
From: Jim Rovira (jrovira@drew.edu)
Date: Fri May 31 2002 - 12:14:10 EDT
That's a pretty interesting context you've provided for that phrase
there. They're not exactly sources that your average American amateur
reader of fiction would be familiar with, however, though Salinger may
have been. I'm still inclined to think he's talking about reading as a
simple pleasure rather than a serious work.
The real problem I see with this in Salinger's fiction is that reading
is a very serious enterprise for any enlightened individual in his
fiction...the Glass family, the kid in DeDaumier-Smith who read the
entire Harvard Classics (50 vols.) in one summer, etc. It's like
Salinger wants us to take reading seriously but doesn't want us to take
his writing seriously...but then writes about such serious issues.
However you take the phrase, I think your final question is pretty
justified.
Jim
Scottie Bowman wrote:
>
> '.... 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.
>
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