Subject: Re: Why (NOT) Read Biographies?
From: Will Hochman (Hochman@scsu.ctstateu.edu)
Date: Sat Nov 04 2000 - 07:31:10 GMT
I'm going to throw my own stone in this river to change it's flow
because I was walking my dog, Holden Caulfield by the beach and
thinking about this summer when I will have time to resume serious
work on my book. I intend to turn criticism upside down by using
Salinger as the reader's writer...the lover of amateur readers, to
tease out the idea that we read with a spectrum of ways of seeing
the text--critic or amateur, the ideas that make meaning of Salinger
texts have thematic strands and reading insights that are rich for my
mind's researching, linking and and mining into the stone I'm email
tossing into our flow...I want to discuss "Salinger's Readers" and
build on an academic analysis of "The Salinger Industry" of criticism
while really pointing to readers on this bananafish list, web
sites, and some of the books about Mr. Salinger. Specifically, I'm
thinking that even the two crappier books (Alexander and Maynard)
coupled with Hamilton's and Ms. Salinger's book represent some
emerging body of biographical criticism. Salingers readers evolved
into articles from plenty of stellar literati like Leslie Fiedler,
John Updike, Frank Kermode, George Steiner, Alfred Kazin, Joan Didion
and Mary McCarthy. Salinger's readers gathered in collections of
articles, and some of their efforts evolved into serious book length
work by readers like Warren French, Eberhard Alsen, E. Kurian. Now we
have biographical criticism, for the first time affecting our diverse
group of Salinger readers. We have COMMUNITY and communication and I
love this discussion about how his biographical information changes
our address. I've been a teacher long enough to see the parallel
between list and class but I'm not in front of class tonight so much
as tapping classy hearts. What I love about this list is no
tuition, no grades, no guidelines, just readers...the best in my book!
Whew, I hadn't intended this--I had a three hour nap
today--exhaustion from traveling to Baltimore to present another
academic blah blah blah paper--and I guess I'm just hoping to heal my
soul a bit online. Yeah, I know I'm almost too close to the academic
edge to not justify bananafish exile , but don't forget, I said
Salinger was the reader's writer and this list, well, the pun on
writing is too much to resist!
Apologies for this rushed prose, but tonight with true love and squalor, will
-- Will Hochman Assistant Professor of English & Composition Co-Coordinator Southern Connecticut State University 501 Crescent St, New Haven, CT 06515 203 392 6962- * Unsubscribing? Mail majordomo@roughdraft.org with the message * UNSUBSCRIBE BANANAFISH
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