Re: The Laughing Man
Bethany M. Edstrom (Bethany.M.Edstrom@Dartmouth.EDU)
Sat, 17 Jan 1998 00:33:25 -0500 (EST)
I reread The Laughing Man this summer and was struck blind by a passage I'd
never noticed before. I'm not going to assert that this passage captures THE
MEANING of the story or anything, but I have been thinking about it ever since.
In the interest of copywrite, and also fo the purely logistical reason that I
don't have my copy here, I can only quote the last line, but it comes at the
end of a longish paragraph, close to the beginning of the story, I think, and
is worth taking a look at. The passage I love is: "But the *main* thing I had
to do in 1928 was watch my step. Play along with the farce. Brush my teeth.
Comb my hair. At all costs, stifle my natural hideous laughter."
What sets a Salinger apart from the rest of the crowd? Or a Holden, a Seymour,
whatever? There is a sense in this passage that the narrator feels llike some
sort of infiltrator in the world of his parents, an impostor with some vague
and incomprehensible reason for living where and when he does. He says he feels
like the Laughing Man's heir, which means he is an outcast, and therefore he
possesses the outcast's innate understanding of the world that a fully
incorporated person cannot experience. This "natural hideous laughter" could
also be seen parallel to Seymour's brilliance, Holden's understanding of
innocence and ability to spot phoniness, and Salinger's great gift of
writing--all things that separate them from others, yet make them richer than
others.
Bethany