Re: Buddhism and Salinger as promised

Matt Kozusko (mkozusko@parallel.park.uga.edu)
Fri, 12 Jun 1998 16:38:23 -0400 

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