Quentin and Julian

Camille Scaysbrook (verona_beach@geocities.com)
Tue, 01 Sep 1998 17:17:36 +1000

Funny how things tend to tie into one another isn't it. Two of the things
I'm currently studying have Salinger implications, thusly:

1) Tarantino
Yes *Tarantino* (: I've been intrigued about what Brad said about the
influence of the construction of the Glass stories on `Pulp Fiction' and I
only just realised another implication of this today. Tarantino often has
his characters and locations pop up as cameos in each others' stories in a
very Glass like manner. The world of his movies, like the world of the
Glasses is a self contained, self referential one. Consider - Vincent Vega
(Pulp Fiction), Vic Vega (Reservoir Dogs), an ad for the nostalgia
restaurant in P.F. appears on the radio in R.D. , the
never-quite-met-but-often-mentioned `Bonnie' is alluded to in *all* of his
movies. Studies of the original scripts reveal even more links like this.
 
2) `Flaubert's Parrot' by Julian Barnes
I'd already concluded that this book must have been influenced by Nabokov's
`Pale Fire', but after reading this passage about the idea of a novel with
two separate endings (p  89 of my edition, Picador 1985) I wonder if he
hadn't read S:AI before too:

`The novel with two endings doesn't reproduce this reality: it merely takes
us down two diverging paths. It's a form of *cubism*, I suppose.' (my
italics)

(Anyone remember the discussion of Buddy Glass' `literary cubism'?)
Consider also (as I just suddenly realised) that the literary discourse on
which the book is based is ultimately revealed to be the narrator's dealing
with the *suicide* of his wife!

Camille 
verona_beach@geocities.com
@ THE ARTS HOLE
www.geocities.com/Hollywood/Theater/6442
THE INVERTED FOREST
www.angelfire.com/pa/invertedforest