Re: holden caulfield vs therapist
Camille Scaysbrook (verona_beach@geocities.com)
Fri, 11 Jun 1999 16:19:03 +1000
Graham Preston wrote:
> B-Fishers,
>
> Isn't the whole point of CITR, not that Holden is talking to a therapist,
> but he is talking to us. It seems immaterial if Salinger intended Holden
> to be talking to a therapist in the sanatarium. If Holden wrote/spoke
> Catcher to anyone at the place, it might of been to a fellow "patient"
> during a particularily dull period, while the two sneaked dargs on a
> cigarette to avoid that damned pyschoanalyst type.
Spot on again. I meant to mention before that I would earmark the
therapist/no therapist controversy as another one of Salinger's `phony
traps' too.
> In a particularily boring Math class, I reread RHtRB,C and this in turn
> raised my doubts that Seymour even wrote Hapworth. I believe Buddy says
> something to the effect that Seymour was never a very extraordinary
letter
> writer and never got 5 letters from him...How can this Seymour write a 90
> pg. + letter to the family back in the city?
Aha! Excellent point! I have long had my doubts about the reliability of
Buddy as a narrator - after all, everything (including presumably the Glass
related 9 Stories - or even all 9 Stories) in the Glass pantheon is
filtered through his consciousness. We never, ever see Seymour without him
pointing him out over our shoulders. Seymour is never anything other than
Buddy's Seymour. I've always wished I could find some concrete evidence for
Buddy's unreliability and I'm so glad someone's found it!
Camille
verona_beach@geocities.com
@ THE ARTS HOLE http://www.geocities.com/Hollywood/Theater/6442
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