Re: a thought
WILL HOCHMAN (hochman@uscolo.edu)
Sun, 09 Aug 1998 13:27:53 -0600 (MDT)
I've finished the article and have been thinking about it a great deal. I
just read "Sunday Morning" by Wallace Stevens where the ending's
"Ambiguous undulations as they sink/Downward to darkness, on extended
wings" put me into my Sunday chore of pitch forking my compost heap and
turning over Salinger as well...first of all, there is no other fiction
writer I enjoy and admire more than mr. salinger but I don't consider him
a saint. I have had a friendship with a great poet and was close enough
to him to know his "underside" was so human and disappointing even he
couldn't avoid it...but I didn't think that what I know of alcholism or
unusual sexuality was what his work was mostly about and what I chose to
love.
However I try and say I'm not in love with mr. salinger's stories, I am
though, and so maybe my interpretation of Ms. Maynard's article is biased,
but first and foremost, in the _Vanity Fair_ piece, I got glimpses of
Salinger's writing life that thrill me. Having several books in a safe
sounds glorious to me in just knowing there is more to the glass family
and mr. salinger's stories than I have presently enjoyed. That he loves
his characters and suffers from their critical reception doesn't surprise
me. Though I run my own train on parallel tracks of criticism and
creativity, his locomotion seems to have creative tracks which involve his
giving life to characters in skillful and deeply personal ways. Hell, I
love them too and on occasion see the good chair of my department as just
a few inches short of seymour or salinger himself...
I'm not sure what scottie means by the "essential truth" reported by Joyce
Maynard, but it's about his writing that I most want to believe her...you
see, I just don't think an old lover's one sided recollection is something
I'm going to take at face value...I don't have illusions about mr.
salinger's humanity. When holden claim's peole are always ruining things
I have nothing to believe that holden is excluding himself (nor salinger
himself), and so I accept that mr. salinger is not a perfect joy to be
with but who of us is? My poet friend Dick Hugo once used a line in his
poetry that went something like "I myself did things bad as any german"
(in a WWII context) and I've always used that line to think about my own
shortcomings especially when I think I need to judge others...you're damn
right he's no "Saint Jerome" Scottie, so let's make our expectations of
him real and human. We all have crap in our lives when it comes to love
but I've also followed another poet's words...in _Book of Nightmares_,
Galway Kinnell says "the self is the leasts of it/Let our scars fall in
love" or something close to that...I'm keyboarding too quickly to check
quotes of stop my heart from beating in mr. salinger's defense. Folks who
do great good can also be perceived as mean or devalued for not living
up to the expectations created by their acts...that's nothing new, but god
bless the souls who have the wisdom to see beyond moments of human ruining
to what creates human continuing...
Scottie, I think you are right to see salinger as a performer (see _The
Performing Self_ by Richard Poirier for a nice study of how artists like
Mailer perform in their work and as their work) and I don't disagree with
the idea that one can only look so good on a stage for so long. Ah
Scottie, what fine imagery that irridescent bubble used...so fine it still
remains!
I've been reading _Rivers and Mountains Without End_ by Gary Snyder these
past few weeks and he's one of the first poets I fell in love with...when
I finally met him he was a real disappointment. I cried in the projection
booth as he gave his reading. But I met him again 20 years later, and we
shared moments as writers and teachers that I will cherish, but nothing,
nothing I've ever felt face to face touches what happens when my eyes
touch his page...the lesson is that is where the fun is...what we do as
humans in our flesh is fun too, but for me, not as much fun as when the
words are right. Give the writers their paper stages and let their flesh
performances go unreviewed as much as we want our own lives to remain
unreviewed! I'll be quiet now. It's raining and the rest of Sunday's
chores will wait with the rest of all our falling. will
On Sun, 9 Aug 1998, Scottie Bowman wrote:
>
> The September issue of Vanity Fair hasn't yet reached this part
> of the world so I've had to make do with an article in today's
> Observer reporting all the excitement whipped up by Joyce Maynard's
> revelations.
>
> There's one apparently fairly recent photograph of Salinger
> unloading a supermarket trolley for his wife - & another of
> Miss Maynard. JD, wearing a casual shirt very much like my own,
> looks eminently reasonable, not angry, not frightened, not startled,
> just preoccupied handing over the packages & getting on with life
> generally. Joyce, on the other hand, is pictured staring
> exophthalmically at the camera as tense & neurotic as you'd expect
> any poor woman to be with the personal history she ascribes
> to herself. On these appearances, certainly, it's a no-contest win
> for our hero.
>
> At the same time, I'm pretty sure we shall all come to accept
> the essential truth of what she reports. And quite a number will
> be disjointed to think such lofty thoughts & writing could proceed
> from such mean roots. I think I can already hear the apologists
> & rationalisers switching on their grindstones in preparation for
> axe sharpening. The woman is a fantasist, or a money grubber or
> a scorned lover ....or whatever... Or these little foibles are
> just what you'd expect from a man of genius & regardless of
> his personal struggles with the ego his message remains as true
> as the Christian message remains pure after all the Borgia Popes ...
> or whatever...
>
> But what about another possibility. Maybe Salinger is simply
> an entertainer. Maybe that's what all artists are. Some people
> are good at telling stories, others at building model cathedrals
> out of matchsticks. They're simply knacks. No special merit
> should be ascribed to their possessors. Are we all quite sure
> that the artists we call great are not simply those who have managed
> to sell us the loftier sounding ideas ? We're flattered - as apes
> would be - to think ourselves in touch with the transcendental.
> But maybe there's no such thing as the transcendental. Maybe that's
> all just warm muffins for consumption by gullible adolescents.
> The irridescence of a soap bubble is charming. But the bubble lasts
> no more than a second or two & cannot carry the smallest weight.
> Maybe there really is nowhere other than that darkling plain where
> ignorant armies clash by night.
>
> In which case we shouldn't feel the need to apologise for an old
> vaudeville man who has some funny ideas about his diet &
> a weakness for impressionable young women.
>
> Scottie B.
>
>