RE: Re: Plot Plot Plot?
LEONARD YEARWOOD (LEONARD.YEARWOOD@gte.net)
Tue, 23 Dec 1997 15:19:03 +0000 (Pacific)
hey 'fishers,
hmm, it's not leonard yearwood, it's me, lagusta. at home on my brother's account.
to dave koch: i've been thinking a bit about your post, and i think you brought up a really interesting,
underexplored area with salinger's writing style. i think it is harder to talk about the way he writes
than about the plot he writes, because for me, his style is much more internal and slippery, it just
makes me feel very good. i often love his plots, too, but i think my favorite parts are when nothing
happens, or very little. zooey's shaving scene, i could read that forever, just marvelling at the way he
makes sentences out of little nothings.
unfortunately, i don't have the books here, or else i could find about a million examples. there are
some wonderful stylistic things in some of the unpublished short stories, but i don't have those at
hand, either. the one where umm...what's his name...goes to tell vincent caufield's old girl he's dead
(either vincent is the one who is dead or he's the one who's telling, and i think he's the one who died)
strikes me as full of lovely little strings of words.
like tim, the sentence about lane being one of those people who ought to be given only a very
probationary pass to meet trains is one of the all time greats.
i'm deep into language, it's really my thing, and i wish i had my books here so i could go back and
find some great lines. i'm always amazed at the way he takes such ordinary words and twists them
around to make them the kind of sentences that give you goose bumps.
tim said:
>It's lines like that -- the narrator's throwaway remarks -- that make
>Salinger stories so memorable. That and the dialogue, of course. The
>perfect pitch that catches the italics that appear in only one syllable of
>a long word.
ah, yes! i think a whole books could be written analyzing his amazing ear for dialogue. i've met some
other writers like that (of course my mind is a holiday blur, so i can't think of any) and even through i
know some are older than salinger and he probably learned such dialogue from reading them, i still
always think he is the master and all others took lessons from him.
>Just in general, to everyone on the list: what phrasing is, for you, the
>absolute sound of Salinger's narrative voice? What about a line of
>dialogue?
hmm, maybe i'd go with the train comment, or some stuff in "teddy," maybe, his dad and the
gladstones. or probably some dialogue between muriel and mrs. fedder in "APDFB." part of the
chats with the two women in "pretty mouth and green my eyes" might be a contender.
but the winner would ultimately holden's narrative. the perfect way he sums people up that has let so
many people stereotype as classify people as "keep all their kings in the back row" people, "would
go ice skating just to wear one of those skirts that their butts look cute in" people, "red hair that you
sense before you turn around" people, "roller skate legs" people, "make you keep picking up stuff
from the floor they've tried to chuck onto the bed and missed" people, "craning their heads around
trying to look for movie stars" people, "they play the piano well but like they know that they play
well" people, people who talk about the lunts in the intermission of plays and call them "angels" (or
whatever they called them), people who can write well but are now out prostituting themselves in
hollywood. etc etc.
this list is getting longer and longer because i'm searching for this perfect classification that i can't
remember. i'm saying what i want, but only partly. there is a certain way holden sees people that is so
achingly accurate that it just kills me every time, and that is what i love best about salinger. oh! i
thought of an example, although it's not from "catcher." when salinger tells us that muriel is the kind of
girl who "looked like she would drop absolutely nothing for a ringing phone" (paraphrase) --
THAT'S what i mean. that's the heart of salinger's style, what i love most. when he says something
like that and you understand so perfectly what he means, it's the most beautiful solace.
it's that "other people feel it too!!" glee that draws people to salinger so strongly.
i'm drawn as well to the idea that the best, most well written page is that which is blank -- that
reminds you most closely of the world before it existed, of words before language, stuff like that, and
i feel a lot of that in salinger. when buddy speaks of how he thinks an appropriate wedding gift
for seymour would be the little old man's cigar "perhaps with a blank page enclosed, by way of
explanation" THAT'S it. that's exactly what salinger is to me: the writing that comes closest to the
blank page that explains everything. does anyone know what i mean?
lagusta