NOVELISTS AS SNOBS.

September 2, 2009 at 5:47 PM · Literature

NOVELISTS AS SNOBS. Hemingway and Salinger had a tendency to rate people. I posted here on Mary McCarthy’s observation that Salinger and Hemingway divided the world into allies and enemies and that CATCHER IN THE RYE is “based on a scheme of exclusiveness.” Jonathan Leaf notes that “…many of the best novelists have been snobs and phonies…. Thackeray, in part as self-criticism, wrote his Book of Snobs. Arnold Bennett loved yachting and especially liked to dress to go yachting. Faulkner wore a pretend peg-leg for a time and claimed to have lost his leg in ‘the war’ — which he never served in.”