Re: Book of the month quote?

Both the explanations offered sound credible to me -- but they really
can't be any better than guesses unless we hear from Salinger himself on
this, no? It's possible he didn't want to offend living authors he
didn't name, or that he couldn't be sure of the long term value of
living authors he did name (though that would be off the point -- he
still respects them at that moment, no?) -- or that he didn't want them
to get swelled heads or want them to be associated with his name when,
perhaps, they might not want to be, or...the list of possibilities could
go on and on.

I think it'd be more interesting to think about what the writers he did
admit to admiring have in common, no? They tended to be existentialist
and romantic -- I haven't read O'Casey, though, so I don't know how he
fits or doesn't. No modernist writers -- the most important of which
were probably dead by the time he said this. I think he tended to
admire those who wrote with and about strong feeling with an at least
occasionally despairing turn of mind.

I think it's also interesting he left Wordsworth out of his list of
favorite Romantics. He may have admired him as well -- it's just
telling W. didn't come immediately to mind.

Jim

lray wrote:

>From Sonny's page apparently I saw this quote from the Book of the Month club:
>"I enjoyed the day but it isn't something I'd ever want to do again. I got
>very oracular and literary. I found myself labelling all the writers I
>respect...A writer, when he's asked to discuss his craft, ought to get up and
>call out in a loud voice just the names of the writers he loves. I love Kafka,
>Flaubert, Tolstoy, Chekhov, Dostoevsky, Proust, O'Casey, Rilke, Lorca, Keats,
>Rimbaud, Burns, E.Bronte, Jane Austen, Henry James, Blake, Coleridge. I won't
>name any living writers. I don't think it's right."
>
>
>

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Received on Fri Dec 6 11:35:21 2002