|
A few months http://www.villaimperialbar.com.br/wwwfacmedunammxbmndgi_2k8prodsprods-e283.pdf facmed.unam.mx/escolares/principal/index.php Salinger’s beginnings as a half-Jewish prep school kid from a posh Manhattan neighbourhood get less coverage, partly, perhaps, because they’re less impactful than the Battle of the Bulge and the liberation of the Kaufering IV concentration camp, both of which are dealt with in greater depth. To be fair, the emphasis on the war is in line with one of the book’s main arguments: that Salinger’s psychic difficulties were partly caused by his experiences of combat and the Holocaust. This isn’t a crazy notion, and it even makes sense to speak – as Shields and Salerno often do – of Catcher as a disguised war novel. But they want the idea to do too much. Salinger was in counterintelligence: that’s why he was secretive! The landscape around Cornish looks a bit like the Hürtgen Forest! It doesn’t help that they insist on translating “battle fatigue†into “post-traumatic stress disorderâ€, a way of thinking about war damage that emerged only after Vietnam.
|