[Bananafish] RE: bananafish Digest, Vol 22, Issue 2

[Michael J ANELLO]

Hello, Mr. Salinger.
 
Have you ever read/communicated with Kerouac?
 
-Mike

>>> theurbanentropy at hotmail.com 5/3/2006 12:41 PM >>>

ladies and gentlemen, this "delicious speculation" is exactly the kind of 
things forums are made of. relish the controversies and pardon the quotes, 
the links...

"He is never physically described, nor does his Jewishness play a part in 
the narrative. One of the things that really got up Maxwell Geismar's nose 
was what he saw as Salinger's craven refusal to admit that all his 
characters were Jewish. Of Catcher Geismar wrote, "The locale of the New 
York sections is obviously that of a comfortable middle-class urban Jewish 
society where, however, all the leading figures have become beautifully 
Anglicized. Holden and Phoebe Caulfield: what perfect American social 
register names which are presented to us in both a social and a 
psychological void!" (In his discussion of "Zooey," Geismar dryly noted that 
the family cat, Bloomberg, "is apparently the only honest Jewish character 
in the tale.") As it happens, Salinger is himself honestly half-Jewish: his 
mother, née Marie Jillich, was an Irish-Catholic who, however, changed her 
name to Miriam and passed herself off as a Jew after she married Salinger's 
father, Sol, with the result that Salinger and his older sister Doris grew 
up believing they were wholly Jewish; only when Doris was nineteen, and 
after Salinger had been bar mitzvahed, were they told the surprising truth."
http://www.nybooks.com/articles/14272

If you go to read the original Geismar article..it digs deeper.

I didn't mean to stir up speculation on Doris dear..I wound't dare...but 
from what I had found, it seemed quite a shock to think that you're a jew in 
full effects and then you find out your mum is an ex catholic. and 
anyway..in the jewish community, from the little I know, the "converts", 
especially in those days, aren't especially welcomed in the social tribe all 
too grandly...

Kevin..you happen to be in a forum, for goodness sake..if we don't label 
things here, then where are we supposed to..as good ol' Kipling says "All 
the people like us are we, And everyone else is They". i'm personally a bit 
fed up with the politically correct. but thats my unpolitical take, of 
course.







>From: "kenny2 at verizon.net" <kenny2 at verizon.net>
>Reply-To: kenny2 at verizon.net, bananafish list <bananafish at lists.bway.net>
>To: bananafish at lists.bway.net
>Subject: [Bananafish] RE: bananafish Digest, Vol 22, Issue 2
>Date: Wed, 3 May 2006 13:23:27 -0400
>
>
>I hate to blow a hole in all this delicious speculation, but the truth of
>the matter is far more sane. Salinger's "Irish-Catholic" mother was
>actually born in Iowa and she never "pretended" to be Jewish. When she
>eloped with Sol, her own parents disowned her. On the other hand, the
>Salingers embraced her, so she converted both out of gratitude and to ease
>her position into the family (now her only family). Salinger was well-aware
>that his mother was Catholic. He celebrated Christmas as a child. After
>all, he went straight from his Bar Mitzvah to McBurney - run by the YMCA.
>Such things were the norm. if anyone in the family struggled with their
>heritage it was Soloman. His ambition often clashed with his traditions.
>Something tells me that Jerome was far too insightful not to notice.
>Salinger's own attraction to Catholicism seems to have come from Sylvia.
>Before that we know that he lived in the Jewish Ghetto in Vienna and
>escaped the German invasion by all of two weeks. Those he lived with were
>murdered at Mauthausen. And yet, Salinger granted a certain humanity to a
>Gestapo officer in his story re-telling those events. And I think that's
>the point. Salinger is against labels. Labels only serve to disassociate us
>from guilt in which we rightfully share. Us and them. Isn't it all "us" to
>Salinger? And that's all you've been doing for the past two days, labeling
>things that should never be labeled.
>
>
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