Re: Antolini: Life Imprisonment
Camille Scaysbrook (verona_beach@geocities.com)
Wed, 03 Mar 1999 17:35:31 +1100
Brendan wrote:
> I'm not quite sure what to make of it this instant, but what I want to
know
> is why doesn't that stick with me? It kind of smacks of Holden's
> unreliability as a narrator, his bizarre exaggerations, but it *has* to
> point to something. I'll have to go look at it in context.
I think that is the point exactly. It doesn't stick with you. It's said
like a throwaway line. But again I use the example of `Tirra Lirra By The
River', an Australian book that I've mentioned before. I'm always reluctant
to reveal the ending because the ending is really the point of the whole
book, it's kind of like a lens that refocuses and gives meaning to the
whole experience of the book. I'm proposing the possibility that Holden's
line, and the theme it embodies, fulfils a similar purpose in TCIR - but
how it would all be cheapened if Holden's last line was `... even if they
*did* abuse you as a child' or something like that. Salinger understands
the idea of the narrator too well to stoop to that. He *knows* that the
thing that is most important to a person is the thing they are the least
likely to verbalise. A lot of screenwriters make that mistake - no one ever
admits anything unless they're really pressed. Perhaps this was Holden's
moment of being really pressed - and that's the most we could get out of
him on the subject.
Camille
verona_beach@geocities.com
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