Re: More Chuckles from The Laughing Man
Byrd, Steven T (BYRDS@papa.uncp.edu)
Wed, 04 Aug 1999 23:26:26 +0000
Fishy people,
First, sorry about being vague.
Just look at the events of the story. The tale of the Laughing
Man is (or is at least hinted at very strongly as being) a dressed up,
fanciful retelling of the chief's own life, with the chief, of course, in
the title role. Dashing avenger, hero among men, masked highwayman with
only his animals and fellow misfits for his companions: who, in their own
private hours, hasn't imagined themselves as this kind of rebellious
hero, huh? The Laughing Man has not a care in the world except today's
latest adventure, never really bothering with anything serious or
meaningful until he gets involved in saving the damsel in distress, in
real life the Chief's beautiful girlfriend. Everything is roses,
cobblestone streets and honeycakes for a while (along with an increase in
the quantity and quality of the Chief's tales) until, one day, the girl
leaves the Chief and the Laughing Man dies...betrayed by the damsel he
meant to save, slaughter brutally by her and her evil father. (This is
all kind of a hacksaw job on the story, but I don't have the book in front
of me and I'm trying to save time)
The obvious parallels between the "real" story and the laughing man are
there, but if you think about it, it says something really weird about
the art of storytelling itself. Even something as simple and as goofy as
a kid's story really does rise from the rank, dark places of the human
soul...the places that aren't necessarily SAD, but that are deep down,
intimate, "the foul bone and rag shop of the heart" if you will. I think,
in the last lines of the story, Buddy understood that, (he is a Glass
after all...their job is understanding) along with understanding the
innate pain of life and the unfeasiblilty of happiness stuff, he saw how
close together everything was. Buddy suddenly understood that reading
anything anyone has ever written, no matter how "superficial" (sp) is
like reading a diary. Hell, it's worse than reading a diary because
you're not getting what happened, but what the writer FELT happened...how
they felt about what happened. Think about that for a second. If you let
it swim around your brain for a bit then everything becomes so damned
PERSONAL that you almost don't want to read anything ever again. Well,
let me correct myself, you want to read everything, you just don't know
if you have the right. I mean, in certain literature, the expressive nature
is obvious...Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man springs to mind, but
Chirst, in a Kid's story? Isn't there anywhere we can go to hide from
ourselves? Is "fantasy" a sham? Sure, some of us like to write about
ourselves, but it would sure be a hell of a lot more comforting is we had
a CHOICE in the matter. I mean Jesus, a little league coach can't even
get away with spinning a yarn about a french highwayman in a red poppy
mask. Campfire storytellers will never be safe again.
It's like an epiphany in reverse. The world suddenly gets darker and
smaller.
I think this idea that "everything comes directly from us, no matter how
small" sheds a lot of light on Salinger's touchy-ish-ness about his own
writing. Taking criticism so personally, seeing his characters as his
kin and, of course, not publishing. The art and the thought start to
bleed into each other, and once art starts bleeding it never stops.
When you're writing a storypoempaintingsongart like this, this close to the
bone, you're not just writing down your thoughts, you're writing your
thoughts themselves. You're Adam naming the animals. It becomes...god
this sounds trite...holy. Holy whored out for the public view, say the
men who do not publish. After all, church is for the sinner, not the saved.
I realize I stopped making sense a few paragraphs ago. I can live with
that. Any questions, ask later, I'm spent. I'll apologize for the length
of this tomorrow, after I wake up from my coma.
--stephen icarust (glad somebody got that)