New member says hello everyone

Diego Dell'Era (dellerad@sinectis.com.ar)
Sun, 28 Dec 1997 22:59:16 -0800 

Greetings, blessed Salingerites! 

First of all, I have to congratulate you on the affable atmosphere that
reigns in this place (I've been to other sites where discussions about
Salinger involve insults...). I've only read the past 3 digests and they
sound really honest.
As a newly accepted member in your list and following Dave Koch's
example I feel I must introduce myself. I am a 21-year-old literature
student at the University of Buenos Aires, in Argentina (an apology for
my primitive English seems in order here: it is not my mother tongue
though I love it as if it were). I came to love JDS at a short age
(natürlich!) when a teacher took us to a small, subterranean theatre
where a lovely actress told us several stories, but I liked one in
particular by someone called "Salinger" : "The Laughing Man". I was
deeply moved, as I suppose anyone of you must have been, whatever the
age. I even felt the fever of the leading character as I left the
theatre, and ever since then JDS has been my favourite author. What
shocked me, I think, is that he didn't express the emotions I felt, as
other writers usually do, but rather introduced me to a new world of
feelings and characters. I had never imagined that I would have any
interest in ashtrays, New York street games, or kids. JDS is great. 
Motivated by JDS's unselfish reading guidance I've started reading
Kafka's "Diaries" (you know, from the notes in "Raise high...") and a
lot of beautiful similarities, which I can hardly explain, popped up.
Perhaps you don't think they are relevant, or you have enlightening
thoughts about this subject. In either case, I would be much obliged if
you could share them.

Voilà the entries I've marked so far: (haven't finished the book yet.
They are poorly paraphrased into English, because I'm reading it in a
Spanish translation I've borrowed)
may 17, 1910:  With Blei, his wife and his little son, he hears within
himself the whining of a small kitten.
December 16, 1910:  He feels sorry for the blurred fate of secondary
characters in a bad book. What happens to them? What have they done not
to be allowed to enter the novel in full scale? Bad writers condemn them
to watch the action as shadows through a window.
January 12, 1911:  On Schiller's nose: "a face can't be grasped with
more strength than by such a nose."
march 26, 1911:  On Rudolf Steiner's conferences:  "In general, a phrase
starts in the mouth of the orator with a capital letter, then bends as
much as it can towards the audience, and with the final period it comes
back to the orator. But if this period is omitted, the phrase, no longer
having any support, is thrown into the audience with all the strength of
its breath."
September 29, 1911:  A remark on a play he has seen: "Nice jump of a
clown from a chair and into the empty sides of the theatre."
October 2, 1911: "A sleepless night, the third one in a row. I fall
asleep alright, but an hour later I wake up, as if I had put my head
into the wrong hole."
October (before 30th), 1911:  "Today, a staircase arouses in me great
happiness."
November 2, 1911:  He feels again that morning the joy of fancying a
knife poking his heart.
November 3, 1911:  (I find this entry an example of JDS painting a
character with its discursive habits, in a very poetic yet funny way,
and of what Tim O'Connor has pointed out: "the narrator's throwaway
remarks"). Kafka speaks about N., who likes retelling his anecdotes.
Later, when everybody else is talking about something else, N. remembers
a connection to his own anecdotes, and tells them again another story,
without omitting details, with the innocence of he who walks in a room
with a stripe of paper that somebody has glued onto his back.  
November 16, 1911:  At night, after having studied all day, he notices
that his left hand has taken his right one, "out of compassion"
December (before 10th), 1911:  He says that we feel irritated by letters
with such expressions as "indescribably happy" or "so sad that", because
they are vague, but this ignorance of what the author meant is want
makes us rumple and unrumple the letters, thus turning our ignorance
into mutual understanding, because we find ourselves limited to believe
only what is in them and to accept them as the most perfectly described
feelings.
December 30, 1911:  "My impulse towards mimicry has nothing to do with
the theatre; it lacks unity." He explains that he can't imitate other
people's most conspicuous movements, only their details, but he does
that to such extremes of perfection that others can't see that he's
imitating them. When he imitates interior attitudes, he does it so well
that he can't find a place within him to hide himself and observe his
imitation.
July 2, 1913:  He has told his sister in the bath about a comedy he had
seen at the movies, and he wonders why he can't do that with a stranger. 
July 21, 1913:  In dreams, he invented a new transportation system for
steep mountain descent. You take a flexible, thin little branch of wood,
put it on the ground, sit on it and throw it down the mountain. The
advantage is that as the branch is so thin, you can speed among trees
where a man could not go through on his own.

Enough for this first message (I don't want to be garrulous). Bye!