Subject: Re: assumption...
From: Tim O'Connor (oconnort@nyu.edu)
Date: Mon Jun 18 2001 - 00:35:44 GMT
On Fri, Jun 15, 2001 at 03:24:30PM -0700, Valérie Aron wrote:
> well, I'm not sorry about disgression, because most
> of the times it's funny and gives some fresh air.
> Especially to me. I don't want to insist about that
> (I'm the only one to care about ...) but I think that
> foreigners whose english is not the mother tongue have
> some difficulties to express themselves about
> "technicals" subjects like literature. Compare to
> Scottie, or Suzanne... they just look like "amateurs"
> and give up. Disgression is easier and help them
> feeling as "one of the guys".
> Valérie, one of the girls.
I hope I'm not too ... treacly ... about this (no, that's perhaps the
wrong word, but I am distinctly suffering a damaged vocabulary tonight;
I absolutely refuse to use a thesaurus this evening, though, because
it lends an air of deadness and staleness to the prose when I do that,
and I would rather use an imprecise word than a word I have pulled out
of someone else's glass display case), but I have in my heart a special
fondness for those people who are not native English speakers, yet who
are brave enough to come to this list and participate in an ENGLISH
conversation about what is mostly American literature written in English;
and who do so clearly, for the most part, and charmingly, and pleasantly,
and in such a refreshing manner.
Oh, and did I mention that the recent influx of conversationalists has
breathed fresh air into what had been slowly turning into a slightly
stale room, as the air becomes in a submarine that has been submerged
just a BIT too long? So, thanks, too, for that. I am genuinely
grateful to you who shuffle in with downcast eyes, making excuses for
your English, when I couldn't make it one-tenth-of-one-percent of the
way ahead in *your* languages, even if there were a gun barrel pressed
to my head.
And it does not matter when you say that, well, you're exposed to English
because it is in many ways, for better or worse, becoming a common tongue
of Europe and all that. I still think it's terrific that you do it and
that you keep on doing it. I'm crazy about every last one of you having
the nerve to do that. I'd never be able to reciprocate.
Anyhow, this isn't meant to cast slurs upon the posts that have made it
here in native English. I'm grateful for those too. It's why we gather
around this crazy late-night-discussion-around-a-flickering-candle event
(because for me, this bananafisherie always happens, in spirit, at night,
at a time when we should all be asleep or, um, otherwise occupied). Even
if I might occasionally answer a message when the sun is high in the sky,
in my heart it is really 11 pm or so, and for that I am glad.
I started in a terrifically pessimistic mood when I began to think about
what to say in this note, thinking then only about digressions -- my
negative mood having nothing to do with this list, I hasten to add -- but,
after having been away from the keyboard for a couple of days, I came back
and found a handful of messages, for which I am grateful, for which I am
hungry, for which I am happy.
As Valerie said, I love the digression. I hope it continues. I offer a
virtual toast to the practice! May we digress until we turn that huge
verbal circle and find our way back to where we started. And may you who
come here as newcomers not feel unwelcome (for you are not), nor awkward
(for you are among friends, even when some here growl), nor off-topic (for
digression is the currency of this land we inhabit).
I just finished rereading an old pile of letters Salinger wrote, mostly
to a friend during the war (no, I fear that they are not available
online, to those of you who might ask), and I am more aware than usual
of the hesitant and stumbling way in which we start out in the world as
writers and as readers, and it makes me feel good and generous and
hearty. These letters, and a dip into CATCHER, in preparation for its
50th anniversary of publication in the U.S., make me feel very fine and
revived, infinitely better and more generous than I was feeling when
this evening began.
And now it is over, and I should start to think about falling asleep.
But there remains one last thing that must be said. Today was Father's
Day in the U.S. Many people belittle it here as a "greeting card
holiday," and perhaps it *is* that. But it need not be so, if we don't
allow that to happen. Like some, or many, of you, I am no longer an
active-duty son (my parents have died) nor a father (I made a conscious
decision about that), nor do I daily see, as friends, any fathers.
But I spent part of the day with my father-in-law -- a gentle and lovely
man who will never know how much I love and admire him -- and I closed the
evening by chatting with the father of a dear friend, a father of the old
mold, in his sixties, who recently underwent multiple-bypass heart surgery
and who continues to bravely face the hurdles that remain in his way, and
who sets an example of relentless survival for me that I cherish, though
HE'LL probably never know it, either, and it's a bit past midnight now,
and what a family I've assembled for myself tonight, in my very own
digression, which is all I have to present here at my desk.
I've got my stolen or borrowed fathers and sons (idea filched from
Hemingway), and then there is a community of captive listeners -- that
would be you, my fellow readers -- which consists at the moment of a
list of email addresses stored in a file that is safely locked in the
bowels of a computer somewhere in New York City in a metal cage, and I'm
about to send this message that digresses in as many directions as a
satellite. And all I know what to say in the end is, thank you to all of
you for being out there to listen, to laugh, and, yes, to digress in your
own replies, public and private.
I'd like to think that somewhere out there, old Holden is smiling
benevolently at this moment. Smiling, or wondering how to get off that
crazy Broadway. You decide. I like to think he's found a warm place to
curl up, which is exactly what I plan to do momentarily.
Keep those digressions coming, you crazy fish!
--tim
-
* Unsubscribing? Mail majordomo@roughdraft.org with the message
* UNSUBSCRIBE BANANAFISH
This archive was generated by hypermail 2b25 : Tue Jul 24 2001 - 09:20:44 GMT