Tag Archives: William Weigand

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

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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

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“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

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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

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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

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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

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view from the cliff

So long and thanks for all the fish.Even if it is hard to catch the imagery of fish frozen in ice as anything positive and constructive, a kind of purgatory state that is not fully human, but potentially on the … Continue reading

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