Re: the "Maynard on Salinger" article

Camille Scaysbrook (verona_beach@geocities.com)
Sat, 08 Aug 1998 11:15:31 +1000 

> Emily Dickinson, though, seemed almost ... ashamed ... (that's the
> closest word I can dredge up) of her work, when in reality she was
> graced with a talent that most of us can only dream about.

Did she??? I thought that early on in her career at least she sent her work
to a magazine and even had an ersatz letter-romance with the editor. In the
end she only had one poem published, but she was the one who sent it out
(I'm relying on final-year-of-school memories here so they could be a
trifle inaccurate. Anyone care to elaborate/refute?)

> > I'm just suspicious of writing that isn't intended to be read.  I
> > question the motivation.  More than that, I question the -truth- of
> > it.  

I've always compared it to talking into an empty telephone. Re reading S:
AI I'm getting an even bigger sense of that. To me, writing is
communication, and communication is inherently a two way thing. If you
write the world's greatest novel and hide it in your drawer, it's like the
good old Zen tree falling in the woods- it may as well not exist.

> That's a fair assessment.  But when we talk about Salinger, it's not
> entirely applicable, because he may genuinely be working with the
> absolute intention of posthumous publication, and if that is so, it is
> still arguable that he wishes to have the work published -- just that he
> doesn't want to be around to see the aftermath.

That's a very strange but plausible argument. I've often thought about how
Salinger, like Seymour has, in the literary sense, committed suicide -
`ceased to be' as Buddy himself put it. He is, to all intents and purposes,
a dead writer. Even Hapworth smacks of posthumous publication. Couple this
with his strange assertion that, when asked about his favourite writers, he
wouldn't name any living writers, thinking it `not right' and you have a
very odd attitude coming out. (But hey, we never thought JD was your
average joe, did we? (: ) Although the fact that JD so openly mistrusts
publication saddles me with a very real fear for those little treasure
troves in his house. Boy, I've been reading S: AI too much, haven't I? I'm
starting to write like it.
  
> Of course, to be fair, there is another side.  He proclaims, "A writer's
> face should never be known."  But she counters, "If you hadn't seen my
> face [in the NY Times Magazine], would you have written to me?"  [That 
> is how they met.]  According to Maynard, "He doesn't answer."

Another thing struck me about S: AI. If he's so against the idea of famous
writers, why is it Buddy's sole job to increase the fame of the otherwise
unknown writer Seymour Glass? 

A mystery wrapped in an enigma wrapped in a great many other riddles ...
another thing occured to me on the topic of the Buddy/Salinger analogy. The
story that he describes Seymour writing for Waker when he was a child -
about a kid catching a fish and then finding it at home having taken over
his life - could this be a variation of D.B. Caulfield's `The Secret
Goldfish'? Holden *does* tend to focus on the less obvious elements of a
story - e.g. Mercutio rather than Romeo and Juliet. What's to say he didn't
even find those other elements that Buddy describes that important? So
here's the weird and wacky thesis - D.B. as Seymour!

Boy this man likes to play with us, doesn't he? Sometimes I'm ashamed with
myself for being suckered into it all.

Camille 
verona_beach@geocities.com
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