Re: van't to be alone


Subject: Re: van't to be alone
From: Will Hochman (Hochman@scsu.ctstateu.edu)
Date: Tue Sep 05 2000 - 02:37:02 GMT


I used to think that creating great art justifies the human crap most
lives generate. I don't know if I believe that anymore. I don't
think that Margaret Salinger's Dream Catcher changes my belief that
Salinger's fiction is some of the great art of our time, but it does
help frame some of the critical questions about his sense of love and
his merging of art and religious thought. I may think I feel
Salinger's holiness at times, but that is my reading response to a
text, not a person. Margaret Salinger's prose helps balance text and
person, while offering biographical detail that cooks! In her book
readers can see how Sergeant Salinger and Sergeant X are similar--how
both Holden and JDS lost the fencing team's equipment, and how
Salinger's sensitivity to criticsm and insensitivity to the women
around him may have caused some deep family problems as well as some
deep critical questions about the roles of women in his fiction.
I've been trying to say that Dream Catcher is not about Salinger
snooping or about a daughter's disloyalty to her father's values so
much as a subjective but, informed analysis of Salinger's principles.
will

-- 
Will Hochman
Assistant Professor of English
Southern Connecticut State University
501 Crescent St, New Haven, CT 06515



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