Re: where the bee sucks (long reply)
WILL HOCHMAN (hochman@uscolo.edu)
Mon, 12 Apr 1999 09:40:40 -0600 (MDT)
Dear Scottie, I've been sitting on "Stained-glass Window" by Ambrose Beers
for a bit now...I live in different worlds and the article puts my
interest in the Internet and Salinger in a context that makes me wonder
what our web weaves...
To begin, when one prints out the essay on Salinger from the 4/9 issue of
_Suck "a fish, a barrel, and a smoking gun"_ <www.suck.com>, one sees a
snake like collumn of print in the center of the page no wider than two
inches. I like this because it makes prose read a bit more like poetry in
the way an eye can "fall" down the page, and because it leaves lots of
room to make notes. But I wonder why the prose article has been made to
appear skinny or snake-like--is this a new web mode of making print have
lots of screens without being "too long"?
I also note the little drawings and catchy phrasing ("fecund-rate Glass
family stories") as part of a way to make this prose spicy and tasty for
readers. Only about half of the links worked at the time I was there and
none were one I wanted to bookmark.
In essence (I have to leave for the dentist in twenty minutes and under
such conditions I think I'm being quite kind to all involved including
bananafish by trying to get directly to my point....), Beers seems to be
responding to recent reports of some dozen or more Salinger manuscripts
and suggesting that the author is not the saint his characters are...
The essay is so twisted Beers makes it almost sound like an insult when he
implies "we'll expect the eventual publication of one strangely cold book
after another, describing the utter superiority of the compassionate soul.
At least it'll be fiction." Beers is trying to say Salinger's fiction is
not modeled on the author's doings...funny thing is though he means it as
a put down, I don't think Mr. Salinger would object.
Beers is pejorative and makes some errors on his way to amusing his
readers. He claims Salinger "was hell on nearly every editor, publisher,
critic, colleague, and friend he ever encountered." If this were true, I
doubt William Shawn would have bothered to stay close to Salinger, and I
think that there would have been many more reports about Salinger. His
friends seem to respect him and his privacy. From what I can tell in
Salinger's letters, he's a kind person with deep insights and not the
hellish type Beers (and Maynard?) want to portray. Salinger is human and
I'm not nominating him for sainthood, but I doubt most who've known him
regret it or coinsidered Salinger's pecularities "hellish."
Beers makes no attempt to consider why Salinger may need privacy.
Certainly a man with his history deserves consideration. He may simply
lack the tools to deal with a public life--not everyone can, and I don't
see why there's a need to be viscious about someone wanting his or her
privacy.
At the heart of Beers attack is the point that Salinger may write about
poets but he isn't one. Listen to how charged Beers's prose is:
"Salinger is an avid literary pornographer who turns strangely silent when
its time to actually get naked--a sure sign of someone who can't perform
in the sack."
Beers wants to argue that without "real" poems from Ray Ford and Seymour,
the fiction writer is phoney for creating the characters as
poets...PHOOEY! I'm sorry, but the fact that Beers wants poetry because
of Ford or Glass characterizations proves Salinger's art as a fiction
writer and doesn't make him worthy of this attack...why should Salinger
have to be real anywhwere beyond his fiction? Why is his personal life
such a big factor for readers? I've never met a writer I liked better
than on the page with the exception of Richard Hugo. Good writers give us
what they can--why do we expect them to live as we interpret they should
from their fiction?
Scottie, since you provoked this too long reply, you might want to chime
in on how you feel separate from your books...or not, will