From: SRigg37889 at aol.com <SRigg37889>
Date: Wed, 26 Jul 1995 09:10:32 -0400

I've been thinking about all your comments on names, and I'd like to send pieces of thoughts about their derivation. I love all your ideas, and have been trying to recollect what my thinking was as I chose the names and later, as I wrote through the story. I'll start with Phoebe.
     I had the idea of her character--sort of a repressed girl, with a wild imagination. I named her after Holden Caulfield's little sister in CATCHER IN THE RYE. Not that that Phoebe is repressed, but I have this image of her trying to protect Holden (as Phoebe W. defends her father, etc.) and I love that image of Phoebe Caulfield trying to grasp the golden ring at the end of that book--sort of like Phoebe Winterbottom trying to grasp not the golden ring, but understanding.
     As I wrote, I realized that a 'phoebe' is also a bird, as is
'partridge,' and exploring all those bird images helped me develop the 'bird' symbolism. I see birds as transcendent, able to touch the earth but also flee it, rise above, etc. This sort of thinking fed into the singing tree, and its ultimate importance to Sal and to the ending of the book.
    Winterbottom was chosen because it was a name that suggested coldness, repression, stiffness, etc. I was consciously borrowing and adapting from Henry James' DAISY MILLER--from his viewpoint character, the stiff Frederick Winterbourne!
    I liked this juxtaposition of a 'rising' Phoebe with the earthbound
'Winterbottom'--it seemed to suggest the conflict in Phoebe.
    Whatcha think of that? More soon on other names... Sharon Creech
Received on Wed 26 Jul 1995 08:10:32 AM CDT