Subject: Re: Infinite Jest, Laughing Man and Too Much Joy. . .
From: Tim O'Connor (tim@roughdraft.org)
Date: Thu Jun 26 1997 - 09:03:46 GMT
>> << On Tue, 17 Jun 1997, Steve Gallagher wrote:
>> > >> if Salinger wasn't little heavy-handed in pushing that idea in my head
>> > >> and, therefore, all the more brilliant for leading me astray? Perhaps
>> > >> his shot at a _Hills Like White Elephants_ style of story.
>> > >>
>> > >> SGallagher >>
>>
>> excuse me, but what salinger story were you originally referring to.
>> thanks.
>
>It's weird, you know. You can go and type your heart out and be
>completely moving and reach like Holden does for the nuns or De daumier
>does for the painter and send it off to the Bananafish list (a group you
>believe to comprise faultless sensitivity) and wait and anticipate and
>wait and nothing but a couple of posts to your own address offering you
>silent direction.
Steve ... I'm sorry you had that experience. I think we've all been
through it, though. Some of your readers here are seriously enmeshed in
reading Salinger carefully; others just hit-and-run. (In fact, until we
moved the list over here, I had no idea of how many people joined and quit
over the course of two or three days.)
What I mean is that sometimes there's not a lot to say except, "Yes!
Exactly!" And many of us hesitate to do that, because we've all been
burned at some point by people who complain about "me too" posts.
But to get more to the point of what you said ... I've mentioned here a
couple of times that I enjoy Salinger best when he is deeply ambiguous.
And while I've always loved "Hills Like White Elephants" for its intense
focus on exactly what it does not mention explicitly (the woman's pregancy,
the solution of abortion, the underlying failure of the relationship --
that last the most intriguing and compelling detail, for me), I read "The
Laughing Man" as a story in which that is a possible element, but in which
it is a small ambiguity within a more complex situation.
There is, of course, the mirror effect, between what happens in the story
and what happens in the story-within-a-story, and that strikes me as the
most arresting element of "The Laughing Man." I've often wondered about
Mary Hudson and what happened between them, and the conclusion I've reached
is that (as someone has said; forgive my vagueness, but I'm still out of
the country, on an expensive connection, and don't have nearly the amount
of access I normally have to the list archives) there is too great a class
distinction between John G. and Mary.
I'm sure she has some amount of resentment about the attention he devotes
to his kids; I'm pretty sure that she would prefer him to lift himself out
of the "lower-class" situation she sees, into something more along the
lines of the way she lives. I gather (and without either the story or
comments on the story in front of me, I admit that this is really
stretching things) that she would be faintly embarrassed to present him to
her parents. Regardless of what he is doing with himself outside the bus,
I have a strong sense that his life as "the Chief" is just a little ...
distasteful to her. I myself have seen this dynamic at work, where one
person in a relationship has significantly higher expectations, in terms of
society.
So -- in some kind of rambling conclusion: I don't believe your "pregnancy"
interpretation is completely off-base, but I have never read the story with
that as a central theme, and perhaps others who read it the same way
overreacted to your remarks.
>fashion similar to Hemingway's HLWE and everybody's coming out of the
>shadows for a shot at you. (I mean, thank Gary Ernest didn't go and
>throw a couple of baby carriages next to the table in the train station.
>THAT's what I call heavy handed.) If you really think about it, it
>sucks.
I see no room here for cheap shots, and apologize by proxy if you felt
mistreated in that way.
Now, as I said, I'm a long way from home, I don't have a live connection
(thank the heavens for offline mailers like Eudora), and between Dutch,
French, and German infiltrating my brain, I feel fortunate if I have
managed to be clear in this message. I can only guess at what may be
happening even as I write this and wait for a convenient time to post it!
--tim o'connor (now in Amsterdam, and pining to be home, even though the
first duty when back is to make yet another visit to the dentist)
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