Subject: Everybody is a Nun
From: Matt Kozusko (mkozusko@parallel.park.uga.edu)
Date: Sun Jan 23 2000 - 14:14:33 EST
Paul Miller wrote:
> Can anyone remember when
> it was that Salinger came under his eastern influence?
>From an old, unpublished paper on "Bfish":
"But 'Bananafish' is *not* informed by Advaita Vedanta--of this there
can be no doubt. Salinger, as far as we can tell, did not have any
extensive experience with Vedanta until sometime after 1948, and one
must consider that the story 'Teddy' would not be necessary if
"Bananafish" had already represented Salinger's concern with the
Vedantic theory of reincarnation. His fiction from the start
invariably and candidly refelcts his recent personal experiences;
hence the military shorts, the prep-school and college stories, and
the cruise ship tale, 'A Young Girl.' We do not begin to see glimpses
of Eastern thought--or anything specifically religious--until 1950 at
the earliest. What is more likely is that 'Bananafish' is informed by
something besides Advaita Vedanta, something less specific, and that
"Teddy" was written as a companion piece at some point after
Salinger's exposure to Eastern thought had crystallized for him the
vision he had worked with earlier in Seymour."
-- Matt Kozusko mkozusko@parallel.park.uga.edu - * Unsubscribing? Mail majordomo@roughdraft.org with the message * UNSUBSCRIBE BANANAFISH
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