Re: Salinger and children's literature

Here's the text of the story of Little Black Sambo:

http://ibiblio.org/gutenberg/etext98/sambo11.txt

You have to scroll down past quite a few disclaimers and notices and
warnings and beseeches before you actually get to the story. I'd always
heard of it but never read it. Pretty interesting...could almost do a
post-colonial read of the thing. The phrase "mumbo-jumbo" probably
comes from this story too.

Here's an Oh My God definition of "Uncle Wiggly"

http://www.urbandictionary.com/define.php?term=uncle+wiggly

Here's copy introducing an Uncle Wiggly Board Game on Amazon:

* From Toysrus.com & Amazon.com *
*/From the Manufacturer/*
A classic child's first reading game. Uncle Wiggily Longears, the
gentleman rabbit, was first made famous in the early 1900's when he
starred in a series of children's books. In the Uncle Wiggily game,
players draw cards and follow the simple rhymes to move--or if they're
too young to read--match numbers and symbols. The first player to get
their Uncle Wiggily mover to Dr. Possum's office wins the game.

Here's the game:

http://www.amazon.com/exec/obidos/tg/detail/-/B00005JSA0/002-8318107-5403230?v=glance

Here's more about the Uncle Wiggly stories:

http://book.realbuy.ws/0448400901.html

Jim

Lucy Pearson wrote:

> Hello all,
>
> I've just had a half formed thought about the way that Salinger refers
> to children's stories in his writing. Two of the 'Nine Stories' refer
> back to children's stories and seem to use them as points of human
> contact. In 'Bananafish' Seymour talks with Sybil about 'Little Black
> Sambo', while Walt's 'poor old Uncle Wiggly' is a reference to another
> popular 1950s storybook character. I don't recall, offhand, if there
> are other references to children's books (there may be some I haven't
> picked up on - it's only quite recently I realised about the Uncle
> Wiggly reference), and I'm the wrong nationality and the wrong
> generation to be familiar with these books, but it strikes me that
> this could be an interesting line of enquiry. Anyone know anything /
> have any ideas?
>
> Lucy-Ruth (still lurking around)

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Received on Wed Oct 1 14:56:11 2003