Subject: Re: Who wrote Catcher? [Was :Re: Basketball with the Big Boys [was RE: Words, words, words]
From: Tim O'Connor (oconnort@nyu.edu)
Date: Tue Jan 25 2000 - 19:10:18 EST
On Tue, Jan 25, 2000 at 03:22:19PM -0800, citycabn wrote:
> Who wrote _The Catcher in the Rye_?
>
> "Some people--not close friends--have asked me whether a lot of Seymour
> didn't go into the young leading character of the one novel I've published."
>
> I'm getting confused.
It's just more house-of-mirrors behavior, just as the flap copy of F&Z
contains a few untruths. (He had agreed to write an introduction, but
instead produced only a few hundred words that were put on the jacket --
a shame, really, because they've never been reproduced in paperback
form, and most libraries discard book jackets unless the item is a rare
book.)
It is the frame-within-a-frame device; try reading IF ON A WINTER'S
NIGHT A TRAVELER by Italo Calvino, which is written in the second person
and which tells a story in which you, the reader, are a character. Or
Martin Amis's TIME'S ARROW, where the narrative is in reverse, literally
(like showing a movie backward). I don't mean that either of these
emulates the technique, but each boldly displays a technique of fooling
or involving or confounding the reader.
--tim
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