Truth in paradox

>yesterday i dropped a bit from salinger's description of whit burnett reading:
>
>"Mr. Burnett very deliberately forbore to perform. He abstained
>from reading beautifully. It was as if he had turned himself into a
>reading lamp, and his voice into paper and print."

Thanks Kim! What a perfect little piece of prose to show how Salinger
imagines an "entre nous" moment of literature. The ironic thing, (and
believe me, I really am smiling very broadly at this moment), the
beautiful paradox is that after Salinger describes Whit Burnett's
near perfect reading of Faulkner's "That Evening Sun Go Down,"
Salinger muses "Regretfully, I never got to meet Faulkner, but I
often had it in my head to shoot him a letter telling him about that
unique reading of Mr. Burnett's." Too bad turnaround for Jerry isn't
fair play!

Literature's best moments happen when I'm reading and connecting to
words, ideas, author and moments with a sure, hungry feel that
everything in the text is exactly what I need and want. Salinger
always does that for me. But I disagree with him and others on this
list when it comes to imagining those sweet reading moments should be
without critical and theoretical consciousness. The buzz on this list
evidences how we enrich each other's readings, as well as how we
sharpen our own reading and writing instincts about literature.

Truth in paradox?

  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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