In a message dated 11/9/99 6:17:50 PM Eastern Standard Time, Smmrs@aol.com writes: << Sheesh..all this talk about the bible made me want to take a nap for a bit...so i did. Why all this blab about a "book" written by who knows and as ambiguous as ever. So lets talk about Salinger. On a personal note, what do you thinbk about his preference for an organic diet and overall reductionism?. INteresting view form a guy who owns a BMW (my friends parents have seen him, he lives about twenty minutes form where htye live).. >> Oh lord. I won't get into the textual side here. But I will say that its legal documents are pretty straightforward (there is always nitpicking, of course), its poetry is generally simple for poetry, its narrative is about middling so far as simplicity goes (more so than Salinger but less so than children's stories), its personal letters and epistles are written with varying degrees of simplicity, and its apocalyptic literature is less cryptic than Eliot but generally a pain in the arse. So far as Salinger's preferences goes...who cares? Jim