Re: a bed of nails
Tim O'Connor (tim@roughdraft.org)
Wed, 28 Jan 1998 09:27:01 -0600
> I feel like a decidedly shabby leopard rubbing tentatively
> at his own spots.
Well, you have chosen a good animal, but the wrong adjective, since there's
nothing shabby about you that's visible here!
> lists to which I've belonged at one time or another (Austen,
> Hemingway, Ernest, Trollope &ct.), the casualness was not all
> that obvious. Writing without benefit of capitals - which looks,
> in fact, like an affected & pretty laboured way of typing - would
> certainly have been questioned - as would a cheerful indifference
> to the conventions of spelling.
It's true that on an Austen list, I'd expect more convention. This, here,
tends toward the casual end of the spectrum. I, myself, keep to the habit
of being generally formal, and setting one kind of tone. Other good, and
more influential, people are more casual, which sets a different kind of
tone. We have room here for all that.
> Whatever one feels about his style, Salinger comes across as
> someone intensely concerned with words & their use - certainly
> no less than the writers mentioned above. Do the people who
> love his work have no comparable concern ?
Yes, and no. I'm excruciatingly aware of Salinger's technique; I cannot
describe how many times I've tried to read him for technical details (to
discern how he accomplishes a certain result). At the same time, I am
aware that many of the people in our group here are perhaps not inclined to
consider postings here as "real writing." So, I write one way, you write
your way, and someone else may eschew punctuation and capitalization.
Nobody really likes to stand by and observe a nitpicky fight about these
details; the only time I would inquire about an author's intent here is if
something were genuinely confusing (as with the Calvino reference).
> What you're really talking about, though, is the way in which
> the list carries on its discourse. There seems to be an implication
> that I'm in danger of hurting or browbeating the more timid members
> into a resentful silence or a complete withdrawal from the list.
Well ... just a tiny bit. More than a few people have written to me
privately, during the last six months or so, to say that this is their
first mailing list, that they don't know how to conduct themselves, that
they are concerned about speaking up, and so on. These are the people I
want to encourage to stick around. They already have a feeling for
Salinger's work; they don't quite know how to express that feeling, they
say; and the medium of email is still new to them such that they don't
*quite* know the conventions, beyond the casual quality they see at school
or with friends.
> Each list seems to develop its own `establishment'. On many, it
> seems to be academically based. (I was once reprimanded on the
> Hemingway list for presuming to question `seventy years of
> scholarship'.) Here, it has a more proletarian quality. But it is,
> apparently, just as touchy.
I suppose it is, to the extent that even the most shy person should feel
free to speak up without worrying about someone correcting them. I'd
rather see someone write in conventional English, but if the more casual
approach works for them, then I say "welcome aboard," and learn the other
approaches to expressing yourself in this medium.
> You ask about my address. I assumed my endless self-promotion
> had already sickened people with information about myself -
> including my present home in Cork, Ireland. (As Thurber should
> have said: `We have O'Connors like other people have mice.')
Ah ... my family is in Kerry, where the O'Connors (my father's entire side
still there) are everywhere you look.
> And this may be part of my difficulty. There don't appear to be
> too many Europeans on the list. So that I come to it feeling
> something of an outsider & with all the prejudices of a European -
> or least someone with a clearly `Anglo' mind-set.
There are some European subscribers, but the majority -- certainly the
majority of those who actually post mesages -- tend to be in the U.S.
> In this part of
> the world, we tend to look on America nowadays as the home of
> correctness & conformity. No one must be allowed to feel excluded:
> not the vertically, circumferentially, pigmentally, cerebrally,
> chronologically, genealogically, or in any other way challenged.
<*Grin*> Many of us feel the same way as you do.
> This lays a corset on anyone accustomed to the vigorous if not
> unbearably violent rough & tumble of the literary bar-room - which
> I was once told was the proper ambience of a list.
I don't know ... here we often have people who are not the bar-room type,
at least in conversational terms. My goal -- to the extent that I have any
control at all -- is to encourage the shy and discourage brawls. My
father's approach, in his bar, was to come out from behind the bar with a
baseball bat and "encourage" the fighters to take it out on the street.
And that wasn't to protect anyone's sensibilities; I think he was more
worried about losing a dozen highball glasses and a mirror or two.
> Unquestionably if I'm to be a guest at this party, I should conform
> to the rules. But the best parties are usually a little boisterous.
> Where the inflexible code is one of genteel good manners I think
> you'll find some of the very best people eventually make their
> excuses & leave.
Please, Scottie -- your remarks about Salinger and how we read him have
been excellent, and there is even something to be said for a running
commentary on, say, the stylized tale told in "The Laughing Man" and the
lack of style that might take place here in discussing the story. That's
not objectionable, and even your "boisterous" written voice is a whiff of
fresh air and a welcome addition. I don't want to see you offer your
polite excuse to leave; I certainly don't want this forum to turn into the
kind of dinner party of Joyce's "The Dead."
I guess that what I really mean is that if this list is compared to a
garden, I don't want to see the seedlings and the flowers trampled before
they have a chance to take root and have a chance of thriving.
Anyone who agrees or disagrees, please speak up -- I'm basing my remarks on
mostly private complaints I've received from people who feel too
intimidated to speak up.
So, please -- continue with us, Scottie; just refrain from chastising
those
p
e
o
p
l
e
who take some
l i c e n s e
with their
s
t
y
l
e.
Cheers!
--tim