Re: Old Can of Worms, Anybody?
Camille Scaysbrook (verona_beach@geocities.com)
Fri, 25 Sep 1998 15:58:42 +1000
> Matt, I've often wondered about the 9 stories and their order and do make
> sense of APDFB&T being linked...in some ways Teddy does a good job of
> pointing to some motivation and understanding of Seymour...
I'm wondering more and more now if one contains keys to deciphering the
other. If, like I said, Teddy is a `fictional' rendering of some of the
things that happened in `Bananafish', we could possibly learn a lot from
what things Buddy altered or chose to omit. Completely subverting the Sybil
character, for example, into Booper. As for the order that Nine Stories is
formatted in ... it's one of these things I can't make up my mind on. I've
just finished preparing a book of my own short stories for publication
(only a small university press I'm afraid but better than nothing) and I
found myself trying to cobble together some loose sort of through-line
between the stories, but ultimately they seemed to fall into loose thematic
bundles rather than anything more profound, like a progression of day to
night or something - especially seeing as some stories were written only
weeks ago, others nearly two years ago. I do think there's definitely
something in the fact that Bananafish is first and Teddy last, though. And
like I said, I also wonder about the authorship of Nine Stories - is it
written by Buddy or Salinger? We know that Buddy at least wrote Teddy, and
Bananafish, and presumably Uncle Wiggily, Down at the Dingy, and so on. But
what about the rest? Has it been filtered through the Glass consciouness or
not?
Camille
verona_beach@geocities.com
@ THE ARTS HOLE
www.geocities.com/Hollywood/Theater/6442
THE INVERTED FOREST
www.angelfire.com/pa/invertedforest