Re: The Great Salinger May Not Be Universal
Camille Scaysbrook (verona_beach@geocities.com)
Wed, 15 Jul 1998 11:43:01 +1000
> Could you please point out what things ARE universal then, except, of
> course, the universe itself?
I think the universal texts are the ones which instead of seeming to be a
little piece of action on a stage, can be imagined to be taking place above
and beyond the action we are presented - in short when it is somehow more
than the sum of its parts. I always call on Hamlet as an ideal example of
this, and others - notably Tom Stoppard - obviously agree. TCIR is to my
mind another good example. These texts give us a created universe inside
which the characters move rather than presenting the universe as incidental
to them - windows rather than proscenium arches. Watching them in our
mind's eye is like watching life itself, which may be why it's often hard
to talk of Holden as a fictional character. Coming back to an earlier
argument, we collectively incarnate such characters as Holden and Hamlet
(and coincidentally, their emotional dilemmas are not at all dissimilar) in
our minds and hearts, causing them to `live' outside the confines of their
narrative. We think of what Holden would do in a situation, but we rarely
wonder what, say, Arthur Dent would.
Any takers?
Camille
verona_beach@geocities.com
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