Tag Archives: J.D. Salinger

tugs of war

To recoil from the tired shape. Form and anti-form collide, tugging from opposite sides at the drama of naturalistic illusion. The urge to engage in the shattering of shape. And never shall the twain be twined again. Excuse us for … Continue reading

Posted in Feature Article, Ideas/Opinion | Tagged , , , , | Leave a comment

updike: small appliances of civilization

…”They were just people, members of the race of white anmals…Highly neural, brachycephalic, unquely able to oppose their thumbs to the four other digits, they bred with elegant settlements, and both burned and interred their dead.” They were the people … Continue reading

Posted in Feature Article, Ideas/Opinion, Literature/poetry/spoken word | Tagged , , , , , , , , , , | Leave a comment

poor “cohort”

“Cohort” means a body of soldiers: a battalion or a regiment, something like that. A pure Latin word, it has been in English for hundreds of years. In Milton’s Paradise Lost God sends the archangel Michael down to expel Adam … Continue reading

Posted in Feature Article, Ideas/Opinion, Literature/poetry/spoken word | Tagged , , , , , , , , , , | Leave a comment

struggles on the edge of sanity

American literary criticism, to use Adorno’s term is a great machine, a cultural industry constantly in need of raw material. It is, in fact many machines; press the right button and off the assembly line rolls social consciousness, protest, dissent, … Continue reading

Posted in Feature Article, Ideas/Opinion, Literature/poetry/spoken word | Tagged , , , , , , , , , | Leave a comment

tradition of the quest

The atmosphere conjured up by J.D. Salinger inevitably recalls the era of nineteenth-century romanticism; then, too, the promise of utopia disappeared in blood, leaving the younger generation disillusioned and ready to escape into the personal search for truth and beauty. … Continue reading

Posted in Feature Article, Ideas/Opinion, Literature/poetry/spoken word | Tagged , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , | Leave a comment

“we don’t talk we hold forth”

They evoke a memory here, a recognition there, of the kind of overarticulate, overemotional young people who excitedly theorize about the universe and themselves, who forever question what they are saying and then question the question itself, who sound as … Continue reading

Posted in Feature Article, Ideas/Opinion, Literature/poetry/spoken word | Tagged , , , , , , , , , , , , , , | Leave a comment

a seymour misunderstood: hints of envy and terror

The ambiguity was strongest about Seymour, who is regarded by the surviving Glasses as something of a Holy Man. But there are hints in Franny and Zooey that coexistence with a saint, living or dead, can have its drawbacks and … Continue reading

Posted in Feature Article, Ideas/Opinion, Literature/poetry/spoken word | Tagged , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , | Leave a comment

small shares of nobility

The refusal to accept the status quo in the universe marks not only adolescents; it also marks the saints and, at times, the mad. The connection is not accidental but necessary and functional. The young have the clarity and newness … Continue reading

Posted in Feature Article, Ideas/Opinion, Literature/poetry/spoken word | Tagged , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , | Leave a comment

the Fat lady

Finding behind the laughter all kinds of hate, cruelty and perverted fantasies. In a way, the Glasses are an intimate club, as David Leitch once said, a peculiarly intimate club in which Salinger’s readers were overtly invited to associate themselves … Continue reading

Posted in Feature Article, Ideas/Opinion, Literature/poetry/spoken word | Tagged , , , , , , , , , , , , , | Leave a comment

J.D : the winsome as unfair advantage

A part of the charge of immaturity often brought against J.D. Salinger is the fact that he did not deal with mature love. The implication is that he “escapes” from sex. It is an open question whether this escape is … Continue reading

Posted in Feature Article, Ideas/Opinion, Literature/poetry/spoken word | Tagged , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , | Leave a comment