Re: Teen books
mepierce (mepierce@sfasu.edu)
Thu, 12 Nov 1998 17:05:21 -0600
Morgan,
I like the idea of b-fishers identifying their occupations or school
status. Salinger attracts an eclectic group. Age, ethnicity, and native
land might be enlightening too. i'm not trying to run a "personals"
here! --i do think that our probable diversity only instensifies an
awareness of the broad cult status of jds.
i'll go first--
instructor at state university--thirteen years
30 something ( i didn't say you had to be specific!)
east texas ( i find myself wanting to say "east coast" or "midwest"--i
do not own boots, a stetson, or a pair of wranglers!)
whose next?
again, i'm new so i don't want any of you to repeat yourselves, but i
would like to know what initiated your interest in Salinger. i didn't
read catcher in class--i read it poolside when i was young and tan and
looking for a short read. At 25, i was still too young to appreciate it
properly. I reread it at 30 and have used it as a text for freshman
comp for five years (ha! i just gave away my age :)).
i read franny and zooey for the first time last month. i don't know what
took me so long to get to it. i guess i didn't want to set myself up for
seeing it as a poor repackaging of catcher. and at first that is
exactly what i thought, but like so many of salinger's stories, f & z
has haunted me --I am beginning to respect their religious odysseys as
equally provoking studies of what sylvia plath called "a weird abundance
of emotion" the kind of abundance that can paralyze (as it does franny
on the couch and holden in the city) or that can even bring death (as it
does to plath and to her friend ann sexton).But it can also bring the
gift of the truth--and some of us are willing to accept that curse of
abundance in exchange for some fragment of enlightenment.
--
M.E. Pierce
Dept. of English/ SFASU
http://titan.sfasu.edu/~f_pierceme
"and gladly would he lerne, and gladly teche." Chaucer