Salinger's world

Scottie Bowman (rbowman@indigo.ie)
Wed, 11 Aug 1999 08:57:50 +0100

    Tom Lehrer once remarked that his doctor specialised
    in the diseases of the rich.  And as a shrink in private
    practice I'm never going to escape that label either -
    despite all my corporeal works of charity & miracle cures
    among the lepers.

    Isn't it true, though, that Salinger also specialises in
    the diseases or at least the sorrows of the rich?
    Eric suggests - & Hotbuns seems to agree - that Salinger
    presents one of the few true pictures of the world's despair.
    But does he?

    When the most protected of us can't escape at least
    visual images of the violence & unspeakable squalor
    that a very large number of our brothers & sisters
    have to confront day in day out, isn't there something
    frivolous about a young woman collapsing onto
    a daybed because of spiritual self-doubt?  Does her creator
    ever really escape the world of the Upper East Side
    sophisticates who - this year - have taken up Zen,
    or some non-vulgar version of Christianity but who -
    next year - are quite as likely to go abroad with
    the Peace Corps & - the year after that - may hunt
    their salvation in cutting edge Art?

    Holden was a tremendously funny book about
    a tremendously likeable character who was simply
    involved in the awful war of being young.  We’ve all
    been there - which is why most of us love him.
    But that other crowd seem to me to be little more
    than a bunch of rich boys with too much time
    on their hands.

    The Nazarene was right about the eye of the needle.
    And he wasn't talking about the width of the Cadillac.
    He was talking about the trivialisation of mind
    that wealth produces.  I think Salinger has never really
    escaped its curse.  Of course it's no more a curse than
    the one the Kennedy's are meant to suffer.  It's simply
    the fatal thinning of the soul (which I don't believe exists -
    but you know what I mean) that accompanies the knowledge
    that Daddy or his trust fund will always be there to bail one
    out.

    Scottie B.