Subject: Re: John Updike
From: Tim O'Connor (tim@roughdraft.org)
Date: Mon Jan 10 2000 - 19:09:32 EST
At 6:59 PM -0500 on 1/10/2000, I wrote:
> It was from an essay (sorry, I don't have any more details, but I bet
> Will will) Updike wrote about the Glass family. As usual, I have no
> reference books with me, but I believe it's both cited in the
> Salinger bibliography by Jack Sublette and in Warren French's books.
Fortunately I was able to get my hands on the article in only a few
moments. The first line IS a mistake on Updike's part; this is a
cut-and-paste job by me. This appears in a September 17, 1961 New
York Times Book Review of F&Z, entitled "Anxious Days for the Glass
Family."
Updike says:
In "Hoist High the Roof Beam, Carpenters" (the first and best of the
Glass pieces: a magic and hilarious prose-poem with an enchanting end
effect of mysterious clarity), Seymour defines sentimentality as giving "to
a thing more tenderness than God gives to it." This seems to me the
nub of the trouble: Salinger loves the Glasses more than God loves
them. He loves them too exclusively. Their invention has become a
hermitage for him. He loves them to the detriment of artistic
moderation. "Zooey" is just too long; there are too many cigarettes,
too many god-damns, too much verbal ado about not quite enough.
--end of quote--
So, there you have it.
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