A birthday gift, four months ‘late’ (but not late at all, when the idea is to just find the right gift and give it when it’s found) has given me the joy of re-reading Salinger for the first time since I was nineteen. So many years later, am very relieved they live up to my memory, and enhanced, all those characters and comedies I forgot, when what I mainly remembered was the angst and the relationships – which would, of course, appeal to a 19 year old. Or at least, to the one I was.
(not re-reading Catcher in the Rye, sadly that was killed for me by 7th form ‘English’, though maybe, maybe …)
I know that when I read Seymour and Raise High The Roof Beam, Carpenters at 19 I thought it was all about the characters. Now I’m finding it all about the writing (and the writing about writing). Maybe in another 27 years it will be all about the story. But oh the simplicity of just telling the reader a story and not pretending the narrator isn’t there. (Not at all unlike a blog …)