RE: Universitatlity (Kelly and Tim)

Kelly--

Are you really comfortable with the thought that Holden's youthful nostalgia
at the age of 16 generates a set of universal questions? You suggest that
Holden questioning *his* world is the same thing as everyman questioning
*the* world. If you abstract Holden from himself and the world from
Holden's world, don't you remove from *Catcher* everything that makes it
precisely what it is? It's not the underlying plot that's so remarkable;
it's the language in which the plot is rendered, and so what's appealing
about *Catcher* isn't the bildungsroman crap that might make it "universal."

The same goes for Shakespeare. Tim remembers hoodlums reading *Macbeth*:

"they really responded to the (dare I say it?) universal story that was to
be found under the language, under the iambs, under the stagecraft."

The mythos? The "plot"? Point appreciated, but the only thing unremarkable
about Shakespeare is his plots. Insofar as they're separable from the
language, iabms, stagecraft, and so forth, those plots are about as
interesting as the staples in a play program.

Perhaps basic plotlines can approach a "universal" significance, but I can't
think of much in canonical western literature in which the language (iambs,
rhymes, dialects) isn't more appealing and satisfying than the plot. Maybe
I'm oversimplifying things a bit, but the difference between the plot
synopsis in the *Macbeth* Cliff's Notes and the play *Macbeth* is in the
language, the iambs, the stagecraft. It's the play, not the Cliff's Notes,
that keeps Shakespeare at the center of our culture.

--
mkozusko@ursinus.edu    
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