Re: one more time
the.tourist@excite.com
Thu, 04 Feb 1999 14:29:39 -0800 (PST)
>The narrator takes cracks at psychoanalysts--
...
> And yet that same narrator seems to invite readers to read
> psychoanalytically ....
This is, I think, a recurring paradox in Salinger's work. There is a
repeated expression by the range of characters (Teddy, and Seymour in his
diaries, come right to mind) of a sort of mild reticence, or at least a
good-natured, interested attitude of knowing-better, towards psychoanalysts.
And yet Salinger approaches his characters with such a psychological
lucidity that sometimes I get the impression he's been poring over
psychoanalytical texts himself.
Holden (as with most Salinger subjects) is the clearest example--in the bar
with Carl Luce. (God, it's been so long, did I get that name right?) Carl's
father is a psychoanalyst, and through Holden we, the readers, are
encouraged to judge Carl very harshly, and by extension his father; and it
seems to me that while Carl himself represents the illusion of adolescent
pretensions of sexual maturity, Carl's father seems to represent the
community of psychoanalysis. This, I think, is where Salinger recognizes
his own paradox and admits it; Holden, who previously has sort of mocked, or
at least nervously insulted, psychoanalysis, begins asking Carl if it's
really a good idea, if it really helps.
Damn--I lost my whole point. What did I take freshman comp classes for?
I've never been good a literary criticism anyway. Will? Help me out here.
I'm going back to fiction and the creative narrative.
> Tomorrow, in my freshman comp classes, we will discuss it. I have
> whited-out the final four words on the student copies again and will
> begin by asking them to fill in an ending. Report forthcoming.
I still have some moral objection to tampering with the original text.
Nonetheless--let us know what happens.
--Brendan
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