Re: zen, seymour, muriel.
WILL HOCHMAN (hochman@uscolo.edu)
Tue, 15 Jul 1997 18:43:26 -0600 (MDT)
lagusta, I've read a lot of criticism and love it at times very
much...when you wrote:
i think sometimes those books of salinger critism just go for the least
> common demoninator, the most obvious answer and never look for anything
> deeper.
I'm sure you are right that *sometimes* lit crit sucks and certainly for
some of the reasons you point to (though I think the best crit does look
for depth in Salinger...)...but you might think of contributing to it! I
thought your reading was thoughtful and knowledgeably applying eastern
ideas...something some salinger crits do very poorly (rosen) and some do
well (alsen, kurian). Your analysis of muriel offers a way of seeing we
know S used, though less from the story and more from later stories...I
wondered if S saw that he couldn't get as far as muriel and when he
realized that, his intelligence and insight become an impossilbe
situation...I'm not sure...I liked what someone (sorry about my name
amnesia, I usually note posts with more than pleasure) discussed earlier
about service and marriage (an important concept of vedanta hinduism) and
maybe even S, that lifelong teacher of those he loved realized he was not
going to reach Muriel except possibly with a very shocking and sudden wake
up call about what being Mrs Glass really means--being shattered.
will
On Tue, 15 Jul 1997, Lagusta P. Yearwood wrote:
>
> i am definately not an expert on this, but i have always thought
> that one of the primary reasons seymour loved muriel so much was because she
> was was so incredibly **in** the world. zen tells you to simply be, that
> it is not necessary to leave the world to achieve enlightenment. seymour
> was into zen, and i think he loved muriel because she just was. she was
> nail polish and clothes and ringing phones, and
> he admired this because she was happy with this, she did not mind this
> earth bound existence, she welcomed and embraced it.
>
> of course, on one hand, she was opposite of a zen ideal because she did not
> realize that those things are transparent, and that perfection is
> nothingness, as zen would say. she was seemingly the opposite of a zen
> protagonist because of her ties to the world of phonies and egos,
> but at the same time, i think she had zen-like attributes. it seems that
> the glasses sometimes do love people simply because of their ties to the
> world and it's silly creations. think of ms. glass. she was a bathrobe and
> an apartment and washrags ("cloths!"), and she was loved dearly by all
> her nutty zen fanatic kids. bessie just was.
>
> i just looked in the book __Mondern Critical Views: JD Salinger__
> (article title: "zen and 9 stories") and it said basically the opposite as
> me. it said that seymour commits suicide because he is stifled by the
> phoniness and egotism of muriel's world and the only way to escape it is
> suicide. perhaps that's true, but...
>
> "Followers of the Way, as to Buddha-Dharma no effort is necessary. You
> have only to be ordinary with nothing to do -- defecating, urining,
> putting on clothes, eating food, and lying down when tired.
> fools laugh at me, but
> The wise man understands."
> --zen master rinzai
>
> i think sometimes those books of salinger critism just go for the least
> common demoninator, the most obvious answer and never look for anything
> deeper.
>
> please feel free to shoot this theory to hell, because simply by writing
> it i've convinced myself that it's pretty dumb (i'm reminded of course of
> the quote at the beginning of __seymour: an introduction__: "the actors by
> their very presense convince me that the words are false..."). but it has
> some good points, i think.
>
> :)
>
> lagusta
>
>
>