Subject: Re: drag artist
From: Josh Stott (jstott@bigplanet.net)
Date: Wed Oct 18 2000 - 11:41:50 GMT
I had never analyzed my distaste for this story, but it is probably the
only of the 9 that I skip every time I read straight through the book.
I think that Scottie has hit it right on the nose -- make-uped or not.
Josh
Scottie Bowman wrote:
> Well. The more I return to the stories - in most cases
> after long intervals - the higher Holden & Esme rise in my
> appreciation & the lower the others sink.
>
> This here Uncle Wiggily in Connecticut - does no one share
> my misgivings at the sight of Salinger trying to experience
> & recreate an all-female encounter & conversation? I don't
> doubt all the ladies will rally round & reassure me this is how
> girls behave & talk when they're alone together. But to me it
> doesn't READ that way . No matter how convincing the makeup
> & authentic the dresses, I'm still left with the embarassing
> feeling of being in the presence of a fairly gifted transvestist.
>
> The cute-tough little girl with the imaginary companion,
> the taciturn resentment of the black maid, the drunken ex-college
> girls reminiscing about chaps .... I have an awful picture of
> a cissy who collects women's magazines & attends chick-flicks
> in the hope of gaining access to the mysterious & envied female
> world.
>
> They say for example that Jane Austen, an undoubted genius
> of the literary imagination, never attempted to create a situation
> where men confronted each other in the absence of women.
> She had no experience of such & sensed, probably rightly, she
> would get it subtly wrong. I can't think of any of her successors
> who managed to get it right.
>
> Tolstoy's equivalents SOUND convincing - but I have no way
> of knowing if he actually did pull it off. And, anyway, Lev is
> the exception. I don't think Salinger is.
>
> Scottie B.
>
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