Godot: An Estimation
Colbourne (colby@online.net.pg)
Wed, 25 Feb 1998 18:47:18 +1000
[Initiate foolishness]
I would like to thank you all for welcoming me so kindly and immediately
into your banana-bloated family. I am astounded by ....well, everything
really. I would like to respond to your various responses with an
excessive degree of responsiveness and consequently, this post will be
as perfectly structured and planned as much as my last post wasn't.
> though last night I saw a new edition -- new translation -- of The Castle
The 'Kafka is the lest problematic of our modern writers' excerpt I
included, was from a 1997 publication of The Castle translated by J.A.
Underwood. The front cover is adorned with a sort of blue-purple-red
slate collage. This may be the new edition you are referring to. I have
only read a few chapters of it and continue reading, with the strangely
compelling knowledge that the story was never actually completed and
that it actually breaks off in mid-sentence.
> Or away from God. Or to the fact that there is no God. that, too, is
all a
> matter of one's viewpoint.
That's a good point. Maybe Salinger is pointing away from God, or to a
sign-post that reads 'God this Way', or maybe he is pointing to himself,
or he is pointing several directions, or he is not pointing at all, or
we are pointing at him. It is truly a matter of one's viewpoint.
My point about the whole Generation Zero theory was not in any way meant
to say that 'Life sux'. I think that if you *logically* analyse our
current metaphysical situation, you will inevitably arrive with the
quantity: 0 . Once again, with any global verbal analysis we must
define the terms we are using. The use of the term, 'nihilism', for
example. The term refers to the belief that nothing exists; however, it
should not follow that everything is bad. In some ways I'm saying what
Teddy said about regurgitating the apple. If we break down all the
values that society imposes, etc. we will inevitably come to Zero. THEN,
we must define our own values. We must choose our own numbers. This
reminds me of Orwell's 1984: 'Freedom is the right to say that 2 + 2 =
4'. I suppose that the distinction is that, upon arriving at 0, you have
two options. You may pessimistically infer that life sux (and die) or
you may optimistically infer that life has the potential to be what you
choose (and live or die). I choose to back the optimistic side. The Zero
is a clean slate to shatter, ignore or write on. I don't mean to
summarise our current generational situation. Perhaps I am just forcing
my own situation into a wider context - that of everyone else my age. I
apologise.
Malcolm, I found your intensity....well there is nothing to describe the
way I really find your intensity. It's just intense really, and I wanted
to ackowledge that somehow. Anyway, I was particularly amused by your
description of how intense your golf-ball in the head pains were. I
think I see
what you're saying, and although I might one day concede that Seymour
was selfish, I disagree with your opinion about Seymour's rock-throwing.
> an idiot foolish enough
> to throw something at a girl because their perfection offended you
I think that Seymour was aware of how perfect and beautiful the image
was
(similar images: Phoebe on carousel, boy singing 'if a body catch a
body...', Zooey's little girl playing with her dog) but it was not
enough for him to just see it. He needed to be a part of it. And maybe
that was selfish but I don't think that he threw the rock because the
perfection offended him, but because he required immediate involvement
in the perfection. He needed to be a part of it and maybe that's why he
never walked out of 507, because he had stolen a banana and was too
involved in the theft to write his poems about it. It's hard to define
the involvement of the poet - does he watch detached or does he become a
particpant. Does he write about the bananas or does he eat them himself?
I think that there are two types of writers. (JOKE: Two types of people;
those who categorise people and those who don't). The first writer
writes his story and may provide the literary equivalent (or literally)
the equivalent of a press-statement defining what the story means and
how it was intended. I think that the reader may read the story and say
'the author says the story is about this but I
think he is wrong'. Maybe there comes a point where the author simply
cannot explain his story. Do we say that it has no meaning? No. We infer
our own meaning.
The second category of writer, and I think the best
type of writer, Salinger, does not say what his story is, nor says what
it is not. He just says the story. It's all in the story. When we ask
what the point of the story is, do we ask what the author intended the
story to be, or what we say that the story is? Either way, it has
meaning attributed to it.
> Every reader brings her/his experience to the reading, and some
readers go to
> lists such as this to expand that experience. You can tell us that
> we're faulted for dumping that in the box, but that, as I said, is
your
> way of dumping *your* experience in the box.
My criticism is not of the reader, and I agree that in this theory I
have dumped my experience in the box. That's exactly my point - we all
do, don't we? My criticism is of any writer who merely bunches up a heap
of symbols and shoves it into paper-back. The initial premise of any
story is that the author has something to say - the work is not
invalidated if the author says nothing - but the merits of any author
are attributed to what he tells us, what he doesn't tell us, or what, by
way of accident or intention, we infer to be the message.
There have been many posts which I completely agree with. It is a shame
that the greatest responses are a result of a conflict in opinions. It
is impractical for us to refer to another persons' post, accompanying
each line with our own 'I agree completely'. It is a lot harder to talk
about shared beliefs than disagreements.
In talking about 'God', I refer to society's conventional Christian
image of him as a male/female deity (QUESTION: Activists are always
saying
God is a woman - in that case what gender is Satan?). The problem of
talking about 'God', is that there is no universal definition. Some
people say 'I believe in God' and think of God as some perfection or
totality of conciousness, some instinctively think of him
(/her/it/nothing) as the collective potential of man, or God is
kindness, love, pleasure or something that exists in everything and
nothing. If we are to say that God is in the trees, and the rivers, and
streams etc. and provide that alone as the definition of God, are we
supposed to find some comfort in that thought alone? If all he is, is
just some being that exists passively in everything, then isn't an
acknowledgment of his presence as insignificant as a
denial of it? The universal question is not 'Is there a God?' but 'What
is God?'.
Which among you is the 'river' of the killdevilhill Salinger message
board? Tim? I have a terrible affinity for providing, highly
discriminatory, generalised statements of literature pieces so, to
negate this, I would like to discuss specific Salinger occurences and
their possible interpretations (despite the obvious tediousness and
unavoidable repitition that will accompany this). I would like to say
that I am terribly fond of all you bananafishes. No, fond is definitely
to 'touchy-feely'. Perhaps as one of the protagonists said in 'Lano and
Woodley': 'I tolerate you'. Though my tolerance is administered with a
great degree of affection. The terrible/wonderful thing about Salinger's
work is that it is a lot like an AA meeting. People that congregate to
talk about other authors usually just share their opinions, likes,
dislikes, etc. But with Salinger, it's as though everybody has stumbled
into some sort of intensity - of pain, pleasure, insight, bewilderment
etc. and we are all *COMPELLED* to discuss it with others. As though, in
Salinger, we have all suffered some terribly traumatic experience (and
who would deny that his work contains no trauma?) and we unite to share
our burden. It's damn fine. In speaking of God, Salinger surely imparts
some of that Godliness upon himself. Rightly so. He deserves it.
(Incidentally - though there was no relevant incident - perhaps we
should discuss the validity of profanity in Salinger protagonists).
I apologise for the 'impersonalness' of this post, but, as a man who
first enters a hall of like-minded people, it is all a daze. I will
respond individually as soon as I figure out who you are and who I am.
I'm suddenly a figure at a masquerade ball and I've randomly assumed a
mask that I have not yet seen, and would not recognise my own
reflection.
To doubters of my age, I was first written and conceived November 27,
1980. Whenever I think of November 27, I am pounded by thoughts of
November 22nd Kennedy. I always have been. I think I must have known him
in my last incarnation (if I had one, or more rightly, if I believe in
one).
colby@online.net.pg - the 'pg' stands for Papua New Guinea, a country
north of Australia, shares it's
island with Indonesia. I am in Port Moresby, which is the heart, or
rather, the very rectum of this country. I am from Australia.
I just discovered where Franny's reference to 'unskilled laughter' comes
from. On the phone, Zooey talks about his love for Yorick's skull just
before he reverts back to Franny's 'unskilled laughter' comment. Hamlet,
of course.
'Be not too tame neither. But let your own dis-
cretion be your tutor. Suit the action to the word, the
word to the action, with this special observance, that
you o'erstep not the modesty of nature. For anything so
o'erdone is from the purpose of playing, whose end
both at the first and now, was and is to hold, as 'twere,
the mirror up to nature, to show virtue her own feature,
scorn her image, and the very age and body of the
time his form and pressure. Now this overdone, or come
tardy off, though it make the UNSKILFUL LAUGH, cannot
but make the judicious grieve; the censure of the which
one must in your allowance o'erweigh a whole theatre
of others. O, there be players that I have seen play,
and heard others praise, and that highly, not to speak it
profanely, that, neither having th'accent of Christians
nor the gait of Christian, pagan, nor man, have so
strutted and bellowed that I have thought some of
Nature's journeymen had made men, and not made
them well, they imitated humanity so abominably.'
I think that knowing this reference helps to put Franny's situation into
context. I had never noticed it before.
Despite all the serious things I say, I am a terribly funny guy, though
only perhaps in the fact that I insist I am terribly funny, not the
actual humour of any other of my comments or actions.
Godot.
circumstance@hotmail.com