de Daumier's head/ego, and Smith's feet
Jonathan Moritz (Jonathan.Moritz@utas.edu.au)
Fri, 07 Aug 1998 12:12:15 +1000
>The meaning of the scene with the woman falling in the store window
>perhaps Smith is just shallow pseduo-intellectual wrought in a world of
>high expectations, who thinks and hopes he is more important than he
>really is...
John Russell, in an article titled "Salinger's Feat" (Modern Fiction
Studies, XII (3), Autumn 1966) (also see his article titled some like "From
Daumier to Smith", I think) argues that this story, and in fact this scene
in this story, is one the clearest expositions to Salinger's writings -
namely that feet/balance is instinctive, and it's the occasional
interference from something (eg. an audience), via our head, that causes
imbalance, instability. The feet focus has many, many examples, which seem
to a purpose rather than incidental. In Catcher, Phoebe's roller-skating,
and Holden's losing balance in the hall. In Bananafish, Seymour kisses the
arch of Sybil's foot, then in the elevator, is concerned with staring at
feet. Uncle Wiggily and the ankle. Esm=E9's pretty little execution. And,
perhaps most extravagantly, in Carpenters, with a discussion of Charlotte
stepping on Seymour's feet, with Buddy losing balance at this point in the
text. In Daumier, a couple of short extracts from Russell's article to
illustrate:
_______
At the moment of his transcendent experience which lets him make his peace
with a once disgusting orthopedics window "I had to put my hand on the
glass," he says, "to keep my balance."
_______
...feet themselves are left to take care of themselves and they keep us up
or going as they do so. They go along by habit, and Salinger commends
instinctual habit in his people. Nor is it any extension to say that it is
the nun's HABIT he has in mind when he has de Daumier Smith say in his
diary that "Everybody is a nun." ... So this crucial scene shows the
intrusive character throwing the innocent one into imbalance, but goes on
to assert the conscious return to balance and to habit that earns for this
shop girl the sobriquet of nun and that turns de Daumier Smith's life
around.
_______