Salinger, and Even More Seymour

Did the reclusive J.D. Salinger keep writing about the Glass family even after he last published? Perhaps it sustained him, at times was even a purgative. I knew people who criticized him for cashing in then going all Greta Garbo—I vant to be alone—but it never bothered me.  Sometimes you gotta do what you can to maintain the internal peace.

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Seymour — An Introduction

I encountered an old friend recently. Our re-acquaintance came about through this blog. Ms. Maria del Mar found my post on Salinger’s  Raise High the Roof Beam, Carpenters (Roof Beam, to us) which I had ended with a note on the odd wedding gift at the end of the story, wondering why anyone might send cigar ash.  She commented that it is explained in the next novella of that collection, Seymour — an Introduction.

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Tiring and Retiring: In which I remove myself from the workaday world

It’s time. I’ve saved for years. I bought five extra years’ service with the state, bolstering my pension. I don’t have to work in the court system any more. The judicial process is painstaking, and as a citizen I appreciate the serious efforts of the courts to apply the law, to resolve conflicts, to get things right — at the same time, I don’t have to take those pains myself any more.

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God’s Own Gadfly

 On my walk in to work in the mornings, I sometimes pass a Goodyear tire store at Turk and Larkin streets, Kahn & Keville, which maintains a large signboard out front, often with amusing or thought-provoking messages.  Up through the election it had something from Voltaire, on how uncertainty is an uncomfortable position, but certainty is an absurd one.

Before that, it had a note on the passing of Gore Vidal which I found poignant.

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Firing up a Metaphor

If being in the frying pan is bad, but jumping into the fire is worse, what would the opposite analogy be? 

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Rekindling Imagination

Haven’t had a lot to say lately – rather low energy. My bloggerly imagination seems to have gone into hibernation. Until I got this email from someone who recently bought a Kindle, and was punning around in his message about it.

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When I Decided Joyce Carol Oates Is Not for Me

A very long time ago, so long ago we listened to music on vinyl and people still used typewriters, I had a very good writing instructor at City College of San Francisco. He was a published writer, and was very good about the nuts and bolts of writing: grammatical, thematic, plot development, all of it. He also didn’t hesitate to critique what he felt didn’t work, which didn’t endear him to some of the more sensitive students.

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