Pack up your troubles in your old kit bag and smile, smile, smile


Subject: Pack up your troubles in your old kit bag and smile, smile, smile
From: Cecilia Baader (ceciliaann@hotmail.com)
Date: Mon Sep 25 2000 - 01:13:06 GMT


eryk salvaggio <one38@one38.org> wrote:

>Does anyone on this list like JD Salingers stories?

Well, sure. Of course I do. Salinger managed to make concrete that which
I've felt, at various times throughout my life, most keenly.

And different parts of his fiction have enveloped me at different times of
my life. Sometimes I think that the various stories are like a guidebook,
except that it's in double super secret code. And the stuff of life is what
furnishes you with the double super secret decoder ring. So sometimes when
I reread them, I see more that I never saw before. However, sometimes the
decoder ring of life has put me beyond the "answers" that I found there
previously, and the story doesn't ring true.

It all used to seem so much more important to me.

That it's less so now is true, but I've had that feeling before. So maybe
like Matt K. said, it's cyclical. And maybe the cycle is dependent upon
whether you're thirsting for its message or not. Or maybe perhaps I have the
wrong ring right now for his stuff.

But when I again come across broken watches and gold swizzle sticks and
chicken sandwiches, I can't help but believe that there is something there,
something which is perhaps lacking in perfection, flawed, maybe drowned in
neuroticism. Sometimes we focus on the neuroticism that created it, but the
little girl with the broken watch still remains. The fact that I *do* come
back to it remains, too.

There's something in that, I think.

So yes, yes I like his stories. I like finding the unpublished stories in
magazine archives, I like looking for his books in used bookstores just to
see if they're there, I like lending out my copies to people who haven't
read his stuff. I think they're good. I think they say something. And I
think that there's something in them.

Regards,
Cecilia.

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