Godot: An Introduction
Colbourne (colby@online.net.pg)
Sun, 22 Feb 1998 16:34:44 +1000
[insert witty introductory comment here]
I would like to take this opportunity to welcome myself into your
presence as much as any estranged guest can welcome himself into the
mental home of another. My name is Godot and, for the past year or so,
my garbled posts have frequented the Killdevilhill Salinger Campfire
Chat where, everyday, a new person arrives to ask in a newly annoying
way what the connection is with The Catcher in The Rye and
assassinations, where can they buy a copy of the movie, why does Holden
keep asking where the ducks go at winter-time, and if their are any,
freely available, previously unpublished, 1000-1500 word essays on the
subject, which they can claim to have written and hand in tommorow for
an English paper. I suppose that I never came here because I am only
just learning to shed my fear of mailing lists - they're just so damned
official and 'adultish', for want of a better word. In an existence as
pathetic, isolated and self-pitying as mine, subscribing to a mailing
list is a major committment and requires hours of laboriously
accumulating courageous thoughts. But I am here now and I shall attempt
to summarise what I have learnt and considered, concerning Salinger and
his works.
The general theory of all Salinger's characters, particularly Holden and
Seymour, that I subscribe to, and can relate with, is that of their
being 'bloated with sensation, memory and experience'. I first read the
theory in 'Cliff's Notes' on The Catcher in the Rye, and I haven't
doubted it since. There is so much evidence to support it, including
most importantly Seymour's bananafish metaphor and his lemon yellow palm
scar. The good thing about the theory is that, in being so broad, it is
credible, there is an abundance of evidence and it is very hard to
provide reasons against it. Actually, that is not really a good thing at
all - the fact that a theory is hard to disprove doesn't mean that it is
true or good. The rest of the stuff that is said about Salinger's
characters is generally pretty straightforward, I think.
As for Franny's alleged pregnancy, I find it compellingly and
inexplicably uninteresting. If you read the text again you can start
extracting singular lines and placing them in a new context that
suggests she was pregnant. You can find enough evidence to prove
anything. Or as Homer once said 'You can find statistics to prove
anything - 10 percent of all people know that'. Whatever the case, I
believe that if Franny is or was (depending on whether you regard
literarary events in the past or present tense) pregnant it is just an
insignificant parallel occurence. It doesn't appear to have any bearing
on the small pea-green clothbound book and it's effects, whatsoever.
One of the strange things about Salinger's work is that throughout there
are scattered little Zen koans of his own creation. You don't understand
them because there is no answer, but you *know* that it is a beautiful,
astounding perfect thing.
In the introduction to the J.A. Underwood translation of 'The Castle',
it says:
'Erich Heller said of Kafka 'Kafka is the lest problematic of our modern
writers'. In a sense, there is no 'problem' of 'what Kafka meant': he
meant what he wrote.'
I believe that Salinger is the same. People are too often reading too
heavily into literature, that is to say, they are attributing symbolism
to an object or occurence that was not intended to be symbolic. I think
that some writers of our century have been aware of this, and have
managed to produce stories that are merely a pool of archetypcal figures
and symbols that are like boxes. The reader comes along to these boxes
and puts inside them all their influences and beliefs etc. and opens the
box to find something that is significant to them. Salinger does not do
this. I read somewhere some rubbish about the Happy Man being a phallic
symbol or something. What a load of crap. Salinger means exactly what he
says.
As a whole, I think that all Salinger's work points to God.
'It would be a complete contradiction of myself if I expected ears and
hands for my truths today: that I am not heard today, that no one today
knows how to take from me, is not only comprehensible, it even seems to
me right. I do not want to be taken for what I am not - and that
requires that I do not take myself for what I am not [...] Ultimately,
no one can extract from things, books included, more than he already
knows. What one has no access to through experience one has no ear for.
Now let us imagine an extreme case: that a book speaks of nothing but
events which lie outside the possibility of general or even of rare
experience - that is the first language for a new range of experiences.
In this case simply nothing will be heard, with the acoustical illusion
that where nothing is heard there is nothing...'
- Friedrich Nietzsche
The problem is that Salinger can not give us God, he can only point us
in the right direction. I, however, as some others are also afflicted,
am unable to see him. I read a wonderful essay about Nietzsche recently,
and it closed with Nietzsche and Buddah or Jesus or somebody, and God
asks each of them how he should make the world. Anyway, the final
sentence was that, if you are to use absoloute logic, you will agree
with Nietzsche and see that there are no inherent absoloute truths or
values but if you are to merely *feel* you will see that God does exist.
Logically, I agree with Nietzsche, based on his essays on morality, etc.
but you read about Franny's dusty light-bulb fingers, Holden crying out
to Allie as he disappears across the road and Seymour's lemon-yellow
scars and it just makes you want to weep with utter joy and sheer pain.
But Nietzsche says that because there are no values we must make our
own. So, I value Salinger's work.
There was another thread somewhere about youth today. I too, am one of
the 1980 kids. People like us turn to Salinger because we are lost. We
are drowning quietly in an ocean with no surface because we have no
reference points. We all burn to 'die nobly' or something, to *believe*
in something. But it has all been done before, and consequently, we are
unable to create anything - we revert back to the people of the past and
chant their words and become 'wannabes' because we have no values of our
own. This is what I call 'Generation Zero', which is the next step to
Generation X. It doubts the media and everything else, it rejects
conventional society. It is, as Antolini said 'The whole arrangment's
designed for men who, at some time or other in their lives, were looking
for something their own environment couldn't supply them with. So they
gave up looking'.
It is the Zero Generation because it has come to the point where there
are Zero values. Once we realise this though, it liberates us and we can
value whatever we want to. But not everybody our age is like this, it is
only us *intellectuals* (heh, heh). There are many our age who can't get
past designer clothing - wearing their 'No Fear' merchandise as they
watch Ricki Lake all afternoon - as though it takes some great deal of
courage to do nothing all day. You never see some dude hanging off a
cliff by his fingernails saying 'Face Your Fears, Live Your Dreams',
like he doesn't know and practise this philosophy already. These are the
same people that continually say how bad life sux and they want to kill
themselves. Us Zero Generation dudes are concerned about the end, saying
'I don't want to be conscious anymore' and the designer label dude will
be obsessed with the means, saying 'I'm going to take a pistol and shoot
a bullet into my skull and die and people will have to go to my funeral
and wish they had paid more attention to me'. The Generation Zero dude
will stay around for only as long as he can tolerate existence.
"Choose life. Choose a job. Choose a career. Choose a family. Choose a
f-cking big television. Choose washing machines, cars, compact disc
players and electrical tin openers...choose DIY and wonderying who the
f-ck you are on a Sunday morning. Choose sitting on that couch watching
mind-numbing, spirit crushing game showes, stuffing junk food into your
mouth. Choose rotting away at the end of it all, pishing your last in a
miserable home, nothing more than an embarrassment to the selfish,
f-cked up brats you spawned to replace yourself. Choose your future.
Choose life... But why would I want to do a thing like that?"
- Trainspotting
My belief with Antolini is that he was *exactly right* in what he said
to Holden, and what he says is also wonderful advice to anybody who
feels as Holden does. I think that Salinger managed to provide an equal
amount of doubt on both sides as to Antolini's sexual orientation. This,
combined with the fact that Holden was very ill, negates Antolini's
advice in Holden's eyes, or at least it distracts him from addressing
it. Perhaps he is as distracted as 'old Ophelia's brother' is while his
father is shooting him all this bull.
My comment on this youth spirituality thing is that nobody can defame
the validity of these emotions held by youth. If he decides to put a gun
to his head and redecorate his apartment with a fascinating, new
'splattered brain matter' look, his spiritual concerns are gonna seem
pretty damn valid then, aren't they? The fact that the lad is 13 doesn't
mean he's any less spiritual than the next guy. You won't see some 75
year old monk walk up to a toddler and say 'I'm sorry, but when it comes
to the crunch - I'm just a lot more spiritual than you are, son.' Each
person's beliefs are as valuable or crap as that person decrees them to
be. Some person can't just come along and say that their spiritual
concerns, or intensity, is not valid. They are 'subjective', as another
post mentioned. I don't think it's possible to be spiritually immature,
because it implies that there is such thing as being spiritually mature,
that is to say that one person's spirituality is more advanced that
anothers. I know very little of the Tao philosophy, but I very much
doubt that it would distinguish between degrees of spirituality in this
way. Especially when you consider Teddy and his reincarnation etc. What
would Zooey, Buddy or Seymour say? Some kid asked this Yoga instructor
how his yoga ability was tested. Obviously, he could prove his knowledge
of the philosophy and history etc, and his practical achievements but he
can't show what's inside his head. He can't prove he has the yoga
spirit. And nobody else can say that he does or doesn't. He tells us
that the meditational epiphanies are not shared with others. You can not
give him a 10 out of 10 for spiritual aptitude.
For a few more blissful days I will linger longer in that gorgeous realm
of beauty for which so many of you would give your reproductive organs
if it meant that you could experience it once again. That is to say, I'm
reading 'Seymour an Introduction' for the *first time*. I finished Raise
High the Roofbeams the other day and it just blew me away, though I must
admit, I find Buddy's language style harder to get through than
Seymour's.
Incidentally, I am responsible for what I read somewhere described as
'the Holdenish it is Now Safe to Turn Off Your Computer symbols', which
can be found at my homepage:
http://www.fortunecity.com/victorian/beckett/92/shut.html
Could somebody please elaborate on this 'amateur reader' concept?
I apologise if this message appears in any way arrogant or presumptuous
and to compensate for this potential fault on my part, I hereby declare
myself to be a humble, highly submissive, blathering little dog,
salivating unintentionally, at the proverbial feet of all who read this.
I'd just like to be Muriel's father's uncle and all.
Godot.
circumstance@hotmail.com