Re: Salinger and Buddhism as promised

Camille Scaysbrook (verona_beach@geocities.com)
Wed, 24 Jun 1998 10:49:31 +1000

> I'm appealing to the fact that even
> intuitive moments are subject to the laws of language, because they
> happen inside of our human understanding, which is itself purely a
> matter of language.    

I found the perfect explanation for my point just the other day. It's that
final page of - is it - `Seymour - An Introduction'? Where he says `I'll
leave a blank page for explaination'. That's beautiful - the ultimate
refination of that lovely bunch of late blooming parentheses which we
subconsciously imitate every time we do one of these: (:

> > It is the experience; this `koan like experience' which is the
> > important thing, and Salinger is skillfull enough to render it in a
> > koan-like way. Perhaps this wasn't the best example to pick - in fact
it
> > might be better to consider `A Perfect Day for Bananafish'
> 
> Or Faulkner's "A Rose for Emily" or Jackson's "The Lottery" or just
> about any other short story that might appear in an urbane American
> periodical.  

Maybe so - but Faulkner or Jackson did not come at it from a Zen viewpoint
(or if they did I'd be extremely interested to follow that up). I think
maybe Salinger is putting westernised fiction at the service of Zen,
whereas the other writers are simply writing, as you say, the urbane
American short story - whose congruencies to Zen I believe Salinger
utilises. Superficially they may be very similar but it's the viewpoint
that is what's important to me.

> > I can't comment on Anderson because I don't know his work, but the cult
of
> > deciphering seems integral to Salinger's work. Why else are we still
> > wondering why Seymour killed himself, whether Franny is pregnant,
exactly
> > what Holden Caulfield's journey meant a good thirty years after these
> > questions were first proposed to us? 
> 
> These questions have straightforward answers, for me.  I grant that
> every reader's experience is different, but these questions don't seem
> too extraordinary,

`for you' is are the key words here. Everyone has a different theory on the
sound of one hand clapping. That's what's beautiful about it, and the whole
cult of deciphering. We each forge a different connection to the work; each
learn our own lesson from it. Do you have definitive answers? My
perceptions change all the time, which is why I'm still sitting on a
listserv discussing the same five books six months later (:

> nor do they seem the kind of questions one could ask
> only of Salinger stories.  What do the journeys of characters in Cormac
> McCarthy novels mean?  Faulkner novels? Is Stephen an "artist"? Is
> Hamlet mad?

These are obviously all valid questions - but I wouldn't say Shakespeare
for example strove to be deciphered. For someone like Joyce on the other
hand, this is part and parcel of the readers' intended experience of the
book. Again, the intention is what is paramount. Yes, it's true that much
of modern literature uses ambiguity, less-than-linear structure and
up-in-the-air endings etc, but I think Salinger uses these tendencies in a
symbiosis. It reminds me of an anthropology film I once saw, where New
Guinean tribesmen were doing a traditional dance in traditional clothes -
made out of old bread bags and cornflake packets. You use what you have
available to you.

> And isn't there something qualitatively different about themes that
> become short stories instead of novels as well as something
> quantitatively different?  A writer doesn't necessarily take a theme and
> then choose the appropriate vehicle.

Don't they? I know one of the first things I think about now when I come up
with an idea is: will I render this as a play? a short story? a poem? Which
would best serve my idea? I think it's a similar choice in short story
writing. You're not going to pick a non-sustainable concept for a novel,
and vice versa. When I'm thinking about short stories, I'm thinking of Nine
Stories rather than, say, Zooey which I don't think were restrained in the
same way that those earlier stories were. This is, as you say, the point
where novels and short stories conflate. For the sake of this argument I'm
talking about those stories where Salinger has deliberately set himself
some sort of limits, no matter how perfunctory.

> I agree entirely with your last thought above.  Salinger is a western
> person essentially working in a western milieu--the point of contention,
> I suppose, is whether Salinger is a wester person, or whether he is an
> *essentially* western person...

True. I guess that no matter what though, he will always be Western more or
less - you can never really wash away all those Pencies, Valley Forges and
Radio City Music halls completely.

P.S. Who the heck is Jorn Bergson ???

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