Re: revelation

Camille Scaysbrook (verona_beach@geocities.com)
Fri, 11 Sep 1998 14:01:12 +1000

> 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
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