Re: Holden as Henderson
the.tourist@excite.com
Fri, 29 Jan 1999 14:30:16 -0800 (PST)
I couldn't get all the way through Henderson the Rain King, only about
halfway. I found the plot a little contrived and the narrator far too
overemphatical--but in the beginning I was shocked and amazed by some rather
blatant Salinger references. I don't have the book in front of me; I'm
going by a pretty foggy memory of the first chapter or so...
Henderson takes to wearing a *hunting cap*, one of the pretty obvious
references I noticed, and his experiences at the resort also resemble
Seymour's experiences in A Perfect Day. I don't remember exactly what, only
that the people in the hotel are complaining about his strange behavior and
that his socialite wife asks him to be a little more normal. There were some
more specific allusions than that, but I'm damned if I recall. After that I
didn't notice much more to do with Salinger, and I grew steadily more bored
and annoyed as the book progressed.
So if you're looking to draw comparisons for a paper, start in the first
couple of chapters--before Henderson shoves off the Africa, destroys a whole
village with some hare-brained explosives scheme, and gets captured by the
angry cannibals, blah blah, etc, etc.
-Brendan
> >I just read HENDERSON THE RAIN KING by Saul Bellow, and I couldn't help
> >noticing some striking similarities between Eugene Henderson and Holden
> >Caulfield. Has anyone else read the book?
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