Re: With Love and Squalor
Jonathan Moritz (Jonathan.Moritz@utas.edu.au)
Mon, 22 Feb 1999 11:56:08 +1100
A different take on the story focuses on how Charles is an important
balance for Esme, and that it is Charles who has a major impact on X,
perhaps even moreso than Esme. This appears in an article by Mike Tierce,
"Salinger's For Esme- With Love and Squalor", The Explicator. v. 42 Spring
'84 p. 56-8.
This article discusses how BOTH the rational, reserved Esme (e.g. removing
objects like laboratory specimens) and the spontaneous, emotional Charles
are important for X's recovery, in living with both rational science
(squalor?) and spontaneous poetry (love?) in the world. I think it is
wonderful in highlighting how Charles' riddle, of two walls meeting at a
corner, is the kind of meeting envisaged, ie the poetry and prose, etc etc.
Another interesting short article by the same author, Mike Tierce,
"Salinger's De Daumier-Smith's Blue period", The Explicator. v. 42 Fall '83
p. 56-8.
This article discusses how the story has repeated references to chairs as
"the symbol of his new sense of security". Early in the story, he has to
stand on buses, remembers dentist's chairs, and has no chair in his room.
His getting out of the Blue Period is tightly linked by Salinger in text
as: "It may have had something to do with the fact that, before sitting
down to write, I'd brought a chair up from downstairs".