Summary of David Lodge’s ‘Skaz’

To start off the writing there is a part of the book ‘Catcher in the Rye’. David Lodge starts with defining ‘skaz’ which is the sound of the language. Skaz comes from jazz and scat. The writer J.D Salinger uses first person narration meaning ‘I’ am Holden and you as the reader of this book. In the book ‘Catcher in the Rye’ the writer uses colloquial speech (conversation-like speech) so it sounds like the reader is talking in real. Although it sounds like colloquial speech, really it is just created and in normal life, a person wouldn’t use this kind of speech that J.D Salinger used. David Lodge made a comparison with this book and an American literature tradition called the ‘Huckleberry Finn’ written by Mark Twain. Lodge mentioned that Holden Caulfield is a descendent of Huck Finn but Holden is in a situation where he is more educated and sophisticated and affluent (his father).

After analyzing the book as a whole (how they speak, narration, etc) Lodge goes on by talking about Holden’s narrative style. The reason why Holden’s narrative style sounds so colloquial and teenager-like is because it is easy enough to indentify. It is easy to understand the text because Salinger put repetition; which is especially slang/informal words such as ‘phoney’, ‘killed me’, and ’old’. Also J.D Salinger put hyperbole which is simply exaggeration. Some examples could be ‘smoking himself to death’. Also sentences are uncomplicated and all the sentences are lacking finite verbs. There are lots of grammatical mistakes throughout the piece to show that a teenager is speaking. There are invariably in his characters.