RE: Salinger and Buddhism as promised

Curtis Maxwell Perrin (cmperrin@fas.harvard.edu)
Tue, 23 Jun 1998 21:31:03 -0400 

For there to be a Zen element to Salinger's writing, he doesn't explicitly
need to write koans or nonsense.  Here's what I think:

I'm not so sure that one needs to write "sdrawkcab" in order to play with
language.  Indeed, writing backwards and using other *tricks* might almost
be called violations of the rules of the language game, because, properly
speaking, such tricks are outside language.  The most difficult means of
producing "differance" is not through breaking every rule, but by submitting
to every rule while simultaneously conveying a sense of high
self-consciousness in the act of submission.  I think Salinger's writing
does call attention to itself in this way, and in so doing it heightens
one's awareness that it is a "construction."

Style is not incompatible with Zen.  Zen does not equal doing whatever you
want or being nonsensical.  Look at the Zen sects of Japan:  there are as
many, if not more, rules than in any Western monastic order.  The Zen
masters stress that the *only* way to reach enlightenment is via those
structures.  So, perhaps Salinger's writing and our reading submit
themselves to rules as the *very means* of subverting meaning.

Curtis Perrin
cmperrin@fas.harvard.edu

-----Original Message-----
From: Matt Kozusko <mkozusko@parallel.park.uga.edu>
To: bananafish@lists.nyu.edu <bananafish@lists.nyu.edu>
Date: Wednesday, June 17, 1998 3:59 PM
Subject: Re: Buddhism and Salinger as promised


>I'm coming at this from a different perspective.  Especially in the
>west, we are stuck inside of language.  Difference, differance.  I'm
>thinking of "reaching outside of language" differently--a writer who
>reacehs outside of language might show frustration with it...she might
>write nonsense, for instance, or write backwards--something to call
>attention to the use of language itself as a contsruction.  Perhaps
>Salinger comes near this with the boquet of parantheses.  In general,
>though, he's enamored of language; he likes to play and to play by the
>rules.  He's a prose stylist.  When you initially said something about
>reaching outside of language, I thought of people who try to subvert
>meaning by being nonsensical, I thought of koans, of instances of
>language use that almost "mean" something only inadvertently by
>directing you away from semantics and the rules of syntax.  Salinger is
>clever and maybe puzzling, but he doesn't do much nonsense.  He
>*translates* nonsense all the time, perhaps...but my point is that he
>doesn't do any first-hand reaching outside of language.
>