Camille Scaysbrook wrote: > Salinger also uses the techniques of Zen Buddhist > writings in his own writings. Often, as stated before, his > stories are koans which the reader is beseeched to solve. Indeed, this is often suggested. But can anyone provide an example of a "koan" and then offer a Salinger selection in which there is any trace of significant structural, thematic, or "stylistic" similarities? > he has also been quoted as saying in relation to his writing > (and before `Catcher' was published) `I'm a dash man, not a > miler. I will probably never write a novel.') He is more > content with short story writing - a method of writing > characterised by its compactness of narration and message. And > one important aspect of Zen is to `convey the message in as > few words as possible'. There is quite a stretch involved, though, in equating short stories (which are generally compact, no matter who writes them) with koans. What about "Hapworth"? Rambling and verbose? > `no dependence on words and letters', and Salinger's message > always comes across in the most direct way possible and always > with the feeling that the rationality of words can never > wholly describe his message - as one critic puts it `When the > gesture aspires to pure religious expression, language reaches > into silence' . Poststructuralism doesn't obtain in the East, and language probably reaches into silence all the time, there. But where does Salinger (or Suzuki, for that matter) ever try to escape language? I agree that Salinger's fascination with/exposure to eastern thought informs much of his fiction, but he's ultimately a very western personality. His few mystic moments are loud and obnoxious. D-D Smith? He's in love with his mother and he wants to marry an American girl in shorts. And Seymour, as you noted before, is more closely associated with Sybil/Sibyl and the great Western tradition from Homer to Eliot than he is even with Suzuki's adapted version of eastern mysticism. -- Matt Kozusko mkozusko@parallel.park.uga.edu