Re: Tarantino and J.D. Salinger
Camille Scaysbrook (verona_beach@geocities.com)
Wed, 02 Sep 1998 20:32:45 +1000
> It's obviously a very sensitive issue with Salinger if his lawyers sent
letters
> to make sure that something as non-profiteering (not to mention innocuous
(to
> some, perhaps)) as the Holden Caulfield random quote generator was taken
off
> the original JDS homepage under legal threat. So JDS would be considered
a poor
> sport?
I think it's a slightly different thing ... sure, Salinger is afraid he'll
be misappropriated - *every* writer fears seeing his or her masterpiece
turned into Disney on Ice (: But it seems to me that with the exception of
Hapworth (which seems to me a simple concession that yes, it's out there,
people can get to it if they really want to and it's not one of the
embarrasing - his sentiment not mine - earlier stories so why not publish
it - and I'm still waiting) all he's determined to do is keep things on as
low a scale as possible. It's almost as if he would erase himself from
history and memory if he could. The closing down of the Holden Caulfield
generator is one aspect of that.Some would call this bad sportsmanship. But
we know our old Salinger and his desire for anonymoty better than that (and
legally I guess legally the Holden generator was on some thin ground too)
It just occured to me - there's a thing called the Loebner prize where you
have to program a computer to `talk' to a panel of judges and convince you
it's a human. It just occured to me that I wouldn't mind designing a
Virtual Holden (:
Camille
verona_beach@geocities.com
@ THE ARTS HOLE
www.geocities.com/Hollywood/Theater/6442
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