RE: Muriel
Baader, Cecilia (cbaader@casecorp.com)
Tue, 30 Nov 1999 23:08:32 -0600
> On Tuesday, November 30, 1999 11:14 AM The Laughing Man
[the_laughing_man@hotmail.com]wrote:
> ... Last time she gave me the entire Rilke poem I'm still wrestling
> with, totally unwilling to give in to your interpretation of it but
totally
> unable to feint around it. (I went a bit astray commenting it and gave up,
> but I can feel inspiration coming: at a consultant meeting today a
colleague
> of mine used the expression 'so we are ourselves enough' and I can feel it
> all coming back to me...)
I'd love to hear what you have to say. I'm by no means an expert on Rilke,
I merely enjoy him immensely. (For those of you who have read _Letters to a
Young Poet_, you'll remember that Rilke, "the only great poet of the
century," stated that Jens Peter Jacobsen's _Mogen and Other Stories_ is
the greatest collection of short stories ever written. The library informs
me that they've received my interlibrary loan of _Mogen_ and I'm to pick it
up immediately. I have to confess that I can't wait to read it. You see?
Salinger loves Rilke who loves Jacobsen. I can hardly contain myself.
Okay, I'm not _quite_ that bad, but I'm looking forward to it nonetheless.)
>
>... The unreliable narrator is one of my favorite concepts. Well executed.
Thanks, its one of my favorite concepts, too. And one that I think that
Salinger absolutely masters. It's a major part of what makes so many of his
stories so interesting to me. There's never one layer. There's what's
said, and then there's what's not said. Which is why completely different
readings of the same story can be supported by the same lines of text. What
mastery.
> I have you up there with the sister of The Beach Man. Tell you later what
that
> means.
You've made me extraordinarily curious. You'll have to tell me now...
>
> But a piece of me is also with Jim here. A short story as a short story. A
> imagist beauty in that.
In that case, I'd love to see someone undertake a detailed analysis of
Muriel only as we know her in Bananafish. I know that my last post on the
subject is highly coloured by the rest of the Glass canon, so I'd love to
hear what others think.
Thanks so much, Laughing Man.
Regards,
Cecilia.