Re: Salinger criticism
WILL HOCHMAN (hochman@uscolo.edu)
Fri, 31 Oct 1997 13:42:19 -0700 (MST)
I disagree (respectfully and joyfully since jon's post is filled with fine
thinking!) with jon's sense of Warren French but admit WF's a friend of
mine and encouraged me with my dissertation in ways that I will thank him
for forever...I think French is ok on religion and salinger, and don't
think he ever made a pretense of covering religion the way Eberhard or
Kurian
do. WF told me about Kurian and believe me, he was pretty happy to have
his hands on that little gem of a book! I like the way WF wrote a second
book on salinger--if you read it you will see he has earned the
"Revisited" part of the title and my respect for revising and playing with
his readings...the truth is that how we create meaning in a text is so
variable and wonderful that salinger's texts encourage a number of portals
and I do believe WF's work is among some that I would call central...I've
also been growing quite fond of John Wenke's work--his study of Salinger's
short fiction even includes work on salinger's critics...I get very
excited about this stuff because I really think critics and amateurs
are readers all...I'll be quiet now, will