Re: Sleepy
Camille Scaysbrook (verona_beach@hotpop.com)
Tue, 14 Sep 1999 10:31:57 +1000
Jim wrote:
> I don't see how identifying some of Salinger's characters as more like
> Salinger than others could possibly help us understand the works better.
We
> Don't Know The Man. Some speculations are more justified than others,
and
> some seem pretty obvious, but it's all speculation.
That's not what I was suggesting. I was postulating that Salinger's
writerly ego seems to have undergone a change over the years, which is
something we *can* deal with. (I was going to refer the email I sent -
which you didn't quote, naughty naughty! - but I've just discovered
something has completely wiped out my `Sent Emails' folder!). In the past,
Salinger seems to have been very open in a closed sort of way. In the
characters of Holden and to a smaller extent DDS, we can sense that he's
letting himself examine himself with an extremely critical and objective I
- I don't mean to imply that Salinger *is* either of these characters, but
we can never deny that they are part of him in some small way. What I'm
trying to say is that the conditions have slowly changed in which
characters like Holden and DDS have been allowed to form themselves in his
mind - the types of characters he came up with in his early career differ
quite greatly in their outlook and basic type from his later fiction.
Camille
verona_beach@hotpop.com