The Heart of ...
Camille Scaysbrook (verona_beach@geocities.com)
Tue, 04 May 1999 17:27:25 +1000
I just read `the Heart of a Broken Story' - and I was quite amazed that, at
this early time (1941) the issues of the mature Salinger were obviously
firmly entrenched even in a little piece of magazine fluff like that (as
I'm sure he would have regarded it). You can trace a direct lineage from
this to Hapworth. His obsession with letters, for example. There are shades
of Jane Gallager in the heroine. Most notably there is his fluidity of time
- the little vignettes that make up the story are in essence the Glass
stories in miniature - a selection of disparate stories which combine to
create a greater whole. I'm fascinated, for example, by the alternate
versions of the possibilities seem to cancel each other out, a little like
how Bananafish is `cancelled out' somewhat by the later Glass stories. Hey,
there's a doozy. When you think about it, Bananafish is really only Buddy
presenting one possibility, when you think about it.
Sure, a lot of Salinger's early stories are trifles, but they reward
serious scrunity.
Camille
verona_beach@geocities.com
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