Re: Universitatlity

On Mon, Dec 8, 2003, lmanningvines@hotmail.com said:

>Contributing to the sense of out-of-placeness that I mention in my last post
>was a recent post of our dear steward, Mr. O'Connor. I forgot to mention
>this is my other post, but I was stunned to see not another look of
>astonishment aside from my own at a single post that asserted plainly that
>sequels are a recent phenomenon rooted in cinema, and which yet went on to
>use the name Ulysses. . . which, of course, is to say Odysseus.
>
>Where AM I?

I regret that I was unclear.

I should have deeply qualified what I said about sequels. I was so deep
in my own thoughts that I imagined it was clear that I was speaking of a
relatively new approach of trying to clone something successful (think:
Planet of the Apes or Rocky or Friday the 13th) such that we find
ourselves facing projects that sprout Roman numerals after the titles,
projects that become known as "franchises," repeating thin stories until
they are threadbare and shameless and, eventually, ignored by even the
most hardcore admirers.

I was thinking of cases in which those who created something successful,
once, proceed to daydream: "How can I vary this so I can repeat myself
endlessly, to earn more money?" Which is how we end up with five Planet
of the Apes movies, each growing progressively more insipid. And so it
goes with the movies (for it is chiefly movies that lend themselves to
this behavior). And lest I be accused of harboring a grudge against
apes, boxers, or maniacal killers, I use these as handy examples because
once I sat through some of these movies, back-to-back, and so I am not
innocent in all this.

Some sequels have been good (I think of the first Godfather sequel),
though most do not excite me. But I'm not done yet.

It is my fault for failing to indicate that I was speaking of some kind
of vulgarization, of the creation of cookie-cutter commodities, not the
continuation of tradition, not the traditions of epics, of stories built
upon stories, tales that embellish upon tales, until the oral record is
all we have of it until perhaps someone writes the stories down. But I'm
still not done yet.

I was speaking, and was thinking, purely of the sort of shoddy craft I
think of as peculiar to perhaps America in the 1960s and later (though my
grip on popular culture is so shaky that I could be off base on the
timing), a process that seems to be a specialty of Hollywood and the
world of pulp publishers. I was thinking of the cheap process of trying
to replicate a success through the hollow exercise of going through empty
motions. Certainly I did not mean to imply that I was summarizing the
history of literature! (But I'm still not done.)

We see it in visual art, too: think of the great artists executing
paintings "after Rembrandt" and "after Vermeer" and perhaps even "after
Picasso." In their own way, these too are continuations of what came
before; these are all what Imamu Amiri Baraka called "in the tradition."
 Even Mark Twain couldn't resist dipping a toe into "the further
adventures" of his characters, and I have no doubt that like a Hollywood
producer, he had dollar signs in the back of his mind. The poor man
spent much of his adult life chasing after get-rich-quick schemes and
always missing out on them.

Anyway, one could indeed find SOME person to slap together Charlotte's
Web Re-Spun: Revenge of the Pig; or Another Little House at Walden Pond;
or The Catcher in the Cornfield; or Sure, I Killed Another Mockingbird.

So, the point I was making, was TRYING to make, and which obviously
failed, was that certain work, certain literature -- not all of it, only
some of it -- resists being cloned and replicated. It gets one shot, it
follows one lovely dramatic arc, and then it is over, as "over" as a
memorable and spectacular thunderstorm that runs its course. You write a
book like that, you get one shot with it, and you hit your target or you
fail to. And that is the point I have gradually been trying to make
here, and now I think I am done with what I wanted to clarify.

Sure, there are exceptions to this, particularly in the literary
traditions that are inherently built one upon the other and kept alive
through telling and retelling. I wasn't talking about those. I was
talking about works that (to me) can't be replicated. They exist, and
they exist once, and they are over. You can read them again and again,
but trying to graft a "part II" doesn't enrich such work. It only kills it.

The funny thing about Ulysses, at least to me, is that it's not a sequel;
it's a retelling, a rephrasing, almost (bear with me) a jazz riff on our
hero's historical adventures, in the minor key of Dublin, Ireland.

When I hear someone propose a sequel to Catcher in the Rye, I think that
it is like seeking a "further adventures" of something that is unique and
unrepeatable, something that stands alone and would be lessened by a
tacked-on tale that chases after the evanescence of the original.
Robbie, I do understand what you meant, but regrettably I caused a lot of
confusion based on my concentration on one media, not on the spectrum of
literature.

And Marcus: I don't know what to say to your question about "this
handwringing and academic masturbating"; perhaps we don't discuss things
as briskly as you prefer, but that's how we communicate. People tend to
be thoughtful and sober, much of the time. I'm sorry you see the
discussion the way you do.

Are we interested in what happens to Holden? I can't speak for anyone
but myself, but: sure. In my imagination, I certainly am. When I close
the book, I wonder about him five years on, ten years on, forty years on,
so, sure, I'm interested. (Just look at the archives to see the
discussion about what Holden would have been like when the book hit its
50th anniversary.)

But I have absolutely no interest in someone else spelling it out for me.
 That's the funny thing about the imagination. It gives each of us our
own view of a character. It gives each of us a personal Holden
Caulfield. I'm sure that your friend's sequel makes him very happy, but
I doubt very much that it matches my quite eccentric view of Holden. I
agree with you that it could probably never be published, for many
reasons. Yet if it makes your friend happy, at least it works for him,
and apparently it works for you, and that's great. You and your friend
doesn't have to worry about what happens to Holden. You probably know
all you need to know. Maybe your friend doesn't even have to wonder what
happens to the ducks in Central Park, since he can supply that answer, too.

Myself, I hold to my own view of the book, and have to admit that,
indeed, I don't care a bit about "[that] lad." I've already got an idea
of my own Holden Caulfield. Probably the last thing I would ever do is
write it down, though. I wouldn't want to see it on paper, ever. I
guess I'm a bit of a madman myself, like D.B. and his secret goldfish.

--tim o'connor

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Received on Tue Dec 9 00:44:28 2003