> I respectfully disagree but don't know. I do think Mr. Salinger wants to > protect his characters and do hope they've continued to grow in his > stories in that safe. I enjoy the progression of his work from very > standard (though interesting and well crafted) stories in the forties, to > his longer and more innovative work in the fifties and sixties. I don't > think he has tapped the well and it's empty, but if all he writes is what > we now have, I'd say that is a well that continues to refresh in any case. I for one don't subscribe to the idea that once Salinger's contact with the outside world dried up, so did his creativity. I'd assume quite the opposite has happened (how would *you* keep yourself occupied for thirty years???) I'm of two minds of Salinger's later work. I can appreciate it as a lisible (i.e. writerly) exercise which means you get much, much denser work but which is so idiosyncratic that less people are willing to sound those depths. Then again, I think Salinger was a master craftsmen of short story writing - you could barely find a better short story than De Daumier Smith or Franny in terms of structure, etc. - so it's a shame in some ways that rather than redefining the limits of the short story he seemed to dispense with them altogether (which I think is a slightly different thing). He's certainly gotten a lot less generally accessable which I don't mind but some people find very alienating. However, I think after writing to himself for 30 years the texts he must be producing must be so dense and idiosyncratic and self-referential that we, the relatively unschooled veteran of only 6 or so Glass texts, wouldn't even know where to start understanding them. Camille verona_beach@geocities.com @ THE ARTS HOLE www.geocities.com/Hollywood/Theater/6442 THE INVERTED FOREST www.angelfire.com/pa/invertedforest