Re: D.B. Caulfield
Camille Scaysbrook (verona_beach@geocities.com)
Fri, 11 Sep 1998 14:04:29 +1000
> Things are getting a little too heavy, so I'm going to change the
> subject. Has anyone read Salinger's short story, "The Stranger?" It
> appeared in Collier's magazine in 1945. Anyway, in the story Vincent
> (AKA D.B.) Caulfield has died in WWII. Yet, in Catcher, Holden says
> his brother D.B. has already served in the war and is now a writer in
> Hollywood. I'm only assuming Vincent and D.B. are the same person. Any
> insight?
Salinger often did this sort of thing. The Caulfield family was a sort of
miniature Glass family - actually, it would be interesting to compare the
two because again there is a character, Kenneth (called Allie in TCIR) who
is a kind of dead child poet seer a little like Seymour. There's other
unpublished stories featuring the family in a sort of prototypical state.
So yes, Vincent both is and isn't DB Caulfield, just as Holden is and isn't
the Holden of TCIR - just as Buddy says in Seymour: An Introduction that
the Seymour in Bananafish is sort of different to the `real' one.
Camille
verona_beach@geocities.com
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