hitchcock ideal

Pierrot65@aol.com
Thu, 04 Mar 1999 23:38:51 -0500 (EST) 

Fishes --

	I'm going to spill the beans. The reason I was looking for the "feminine
ideal" was not for personal growth, or knowledge, or anything defensible. I
read a short piece on Hitchcock a while ago and came across the mention of
Hitch's "feminine ideal." The article suggested the likenesses of Tippi Hedron
in "The Birds" and "Marnie" to Grace Kelly in "Rear Window" to Kim Novak in
"Vertigo" to Eva Marie Saint in "North by Northwest," and on and on. You know,
the kind of leggy, blonde, sophisticated, cigarette-holder-toting American
dame Hitch almost always cast. I have the same sort of affliction. That is to
say, the lead actress in my novel is of this type, sort of, a little bit, and
I am struggling with her motivation and why her "suitor" in my book is so
enamored of her that he would take certain drastic measures. I was trying to
see if the article writer was referencing something which would shed some
light on ... all of that, I guess.  A kind of psychological profile to spur
inspiration. I guess that's pretty selfish to clog the list with, but self-
editing is hard, goddammit!  :)
	But to bring this around to our eponymous pals, why does Salinger stay so far
away from the sexual relationships in his work? Why so much family material
and bad pairings (Seymour & Muriel, Franny & Biff Doody) and no "Getting to
know you"? I guess that suggests a look into Salinger's personal life, but
that's just rude. I'm more interested in what it says about his fictional
characters and their fictional world. I get the sense (as I've said before)
that he just chose not to write about it because it wasn't "serious" enough
for "literature", but what can we infer about this from the text? (I know from
personal experience, working on my own crap, that one's subconscious does a
lot of the dot-connecting for you ... uh, for one. whatever. I mean the
metaphoric, symbolic daisy-chaining that we find upon criticising the work is
done without the author's immediate knowledge. Really, so much of it comes
about this way. I was just amazed.  Anyway, the point being that there are
probably answers in the text which biographical criticism would use to shed
some light on Salinger. I'm looking more for the formalist approach.)
	Dammit, I've run out of train track again and I can't find the brake for this
thought. If someone has any thoughts on any of that I would like to hear them.

your braindead pal, 
rick