Subject: Re: Who wrote Catcher? [Was :Re: Basketball with the Big Boys [was RE: Words, words, words]
From: citycabn (citycabn@gateway.net)
Date: Wed Jan 26 2000 - 18:20:09 EST
Cecilia,
Yes, thanks for correcting me re Webb/Buddy in Dinghy. My mistake. Ole W. G. Glass of _Hapworth_.
Your points re morphing and all of the last paragraph seem right on target. I see I need to read that Alsen book!
--Bruce
-----Original Message-----
From: Baader, Cecilia <cbaader@casecorp.com>
To: bananafish@roughdraft.org <bananafish@roughdraft.org>
Date: Wednesday, January 26, 2000 3:01 PM
Subject: RE: Who wrote Catcher? [Was :Re: Basketball with the Big Boys [was RE: Words, words, words]
> On Wednesday, January 26, 2000 12:15 PM citycabn [citycabn@gateway.net]wrote:
> ...(Well, yes:
> if one had read an old issue of Harper's carefully there
> would be a Seymour,
> Webb and Boo Boo. No Franny or Buddy around yet.)
In "Down at the Dinghy," BooBoo says something about "Your Uncle Webb." (I haven't got the book with me, so I can't quote it verbatim.)
Since all of the other family members appear to have proper names, I've always felt that she meant Buddy. Webb "Buddy" Glass, as a matter of fact. He's making an appearance already, way back in 1949, long before he speaks his own name in _Raise High the Roofbeams, Carpenters_, published in 1955.
Salinger had a history of creating characters and morphing them through stories until he had an incarnation that worked. Just look at the Caulfield family stories. I certainly can't argue with the way that he managed to shape Holden out of that.
I guess that Updike isn't too far off the mark when he said that Salinger loves the Glasses more than God himself. If he didn't like what he had done with them previously, he changed them. Voila. The perfect family. Everybody is a Glass.
So perhaps an analysis of whether Franny is Franny Glass isn't really as important as understanding that Salinger made her into Franny Glass later on. And the characteristics that are changed in the second Franny are perhaps the more important things to note in her character, for those changes are most indicative of Salinger's own changing ideals.
Just a thought, anyway.
Regards,
Cecilia.
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