Why I joined the list
PODESTA,Lesley (Lesley.PODESTA@deetya.gov.au)
Mon, 20 Oct 1997 15:34:06 +1000
Hi everyone,
I've really enjoyed reading the archives and becoming a member of this
list. I'd like to introduce myself. My love of Salinger began during my
adolescence (doesn't everyone's?)
Here is my "How J.D. changed my life.. "story.
In 1975 I was in high school (large, poor outer suburban school forty
miles west of Sydney in Australia). I loved books. My great rival at
school was also very interested in literature. We used to continually
fight and argue in class. We never agreed about any book and our
classroom was always divided between our various camps (me radical, she
conservative). It was very stimulating and competitive.
One day we were both assigned to read Catcher in The Rye. For the first
time we both loved the same book. Not only did we love CITR, we started
chasing every story by Salinger that we could find (not easy in a town
without a library or bookstore). I remember our great excitement when we
found F&Z on the shelves of another school's library. We became
fantastic friends, lying around on the grass reading out our favourite
passages from Nine Stories (incredibly difficult to locate in Australia
in the seventies, we had to import it from the States and it took five
months to reach us). We're still quoting from Seymour to each other over
twenty years later.
In these days of world wide communication, it might seem hard to believe
how difficult it was to actually find J.D's books. I guess they became
just that much more precious.
I have no favourite stories - different ones become my favourites at
different times in my life.
I'm very glad to have found the Bananafish Homepage.
Lesley