Subject: drag artist
From: Scottie Bowman (rbowman@indigo.ie)
Date: Wed Oct 18 2000 - 02:57:32 GMT
Well. The more I return to the stories - in most cases
after long intervals - the higher Holden & Esme rise in my
appreciation & the lower the others sink.
This here Uncle Wiggily in Connecticut - does no one share
my misgivings at the sight of Salinger trying to experience
& recreate an all-female encounter & conversation? I don't
doubt all the ladies will rally round & reassure me this is how
girls behave & talk when they're alone together. But to me it
doesn't READ that way . No matter how convincing the makeup
& authentic the dresses, I'm still left with the embarassing
feeling of being in the presence of a fairly gifted transvestist.
The cute-tough little girl with the imaginary companion,
the taciturn resentment of the black maid, the drunken ex-college
girls reminiscing about chaps .... I have an awful picture of
a cissy who collects women's magazines & attends chick-flicks
in the hope of gaining access to the mysterious & envied female
world.
They say for example that Jane Austen, an undoubted genius
of the literary imagination, never attempted to create a situation
where men confronted each other in the absence of women.
She had no experience of such & sensed, probably rightly, she
would get it subtly wrong. I can't think of any of her successors
who managed to get it right.
Tolstoy's equivalents SOUND convincing - but I have no way
of knowing if he actually did pull it off. And, anyway, Lev is
the exception. I don't think Salinger is.
Scottie B.
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