Re: Buddhism and Salinger as promised

Camille Scaysbrook (verona_beach@geocities.com)
Mon, 15 Jun 1998 11:06:35 +1000

> >      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?

Well, that's an odd question to ask - I would have thought a koan by its
very nature would be non-structural, non-thematic and more or less
non-stylistic; their succinctness and simplicity not exactly an aesthetic
but a functional element. Koans are very different from haikus. By
comparing his work to a koan I'm comparing the function - think of `Just
Before the War with the Eskimos' for example - like a koan it is a kind of
mystery story whose meaning we must construct out of its apparent
meaninglessness. You could say that about just about all of JDS' writings,
no matter their length or style. Even his longer works, although they do
not utilise the `aesthetic' (insofar as it could be called that) of Zen,
carry this quest to be deciphered.

> > 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?

What do you mean by this? Of course short stories are compact; that's why I
said they're so suitable for Salinger's expressions. I didn't say he *only*
writes short stories, just that they seem to me the most perfect
distillation of and vessel for his messages - even TCIR is really a
collection of short interconnected stories.
 
> > `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 don't say he tries to escape it. Obviously, a writer must depend on words
to convey his or her message. As I see it, the way he `reaches into
silence' is similar to the way his poetry seems to occur between the lines.
He recognises that real emotions occur between the broad definitions we
give them - there are an infinite number of increments between `happy' and
`sad'; even between `happy' and `joyful' - and that we cannot rely on them
wholly to put across what he is saying. This is the reason why his best
writing is so compact - the *real* action occurs outside the writing on the
page; it is beyond language and into that `silence' of the indefinable.

> 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. 

Do you really think so? Would you call Holden's realisation at the carousel
`loud and obnoxious' ? To me his moment is made beautiful by its very
quietude and simplicity within the generally `loud' world that has made up
his journey. You seem to see both Salinger and Suzuki as representing a
kind of chocolate-box supermarket queue magazine Zen. I think that's an
unfair accusation. It's interesting that Salinger seems to recognise his
(for want of a better word) `Teddiness' - he knows that to teach any
Western person the fundamentals of Zen - even by sheer osmosis - is through
a Western mode of storytelling. It's a controversal point I know, but I
believe that sometimes the message has to be altered or made vernacular in
this way to get across at all. Some would condemn the loss of essential
purity in that action, but frankly I doubt Cosmopolitan would have been
publishing haikus or koans in the stead of a short story such as `The
Inverted Forest' which their readership would actually appreciate. Suzuki
never would have gotten the ideas of Zen into any minds without providing
an easier entry point from which converts like Salinger could work their
way up.

It's interesting also that you see Seymour as belonging to a more western
tradition. As a writer, perhaps - but as a figure he has far more in common
with Gautama Buddha, that paradox of genius who is meant to be worshipped
in a non-worshipful way (or vice versa).

Camille 
verona_beach@geocities.com
@ THE ARTS HOLE
www.geocities.com/Hollywood/Theater/6442