Quiet list? there's always "Salinger and Buddhism"

Matt Kozusko (mkozusko@parallel.park.uga.edu)
Fri, 26 Jun 1998 14:27:44 -0400

With roughly 70-100 people privately assuring me each day that this
thread is the most compelling activity the list has ever seen, I proudly
offer the latest in our fascinating, two-person colloquy:


Camille Scaysbrook wrote:
 
> 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: (:

Well done.  A truly singular moment, even among like moments.  A hit--I
do confess't.

  
> > 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. 

Was Franny pregnant?  Was Ophelia?  

Did Hamlet and Ophelia sleep together?  Her songs seem to suggest so, as
does (in at least one reading) the flower sequence.  Clearly, her
madness and subsequent suicide are related to her father's death.  But
they are also tied to her relationship with Hamlet, and sexuality is a
big concern there.  

And what does Gertrude think of Ophelia?  Horatio tells us that Hamlet
will
not be able, as unvalued persons are, to carve for himself.  But
Gertrude says to Ophelia, "I hoped thou shoulds't have been my Hamlet's
wife"--is she serious, or is she merely speaking rubbish to comfort
her?  

Another curious moment--in the Mousetrap ("something *like* the murder
of my father"), Hamlet makes one very significant change--the murderer
becomes the nephew of the king, instead of the brother.  Thus, Claudius
can understand the play as a dramatic recreation of his "offense," or he
can understand it as a threat from Hamlet.  Why screw up a perfectly
uncomplicated dramatic moment by making the one change that matters,
unless to introduce provocative ambiguity?  Shakespeare is a true
pioneer of ambiguities and loose ends.  

At points, I think, he stops just short of openly asking to be
deciphered.  _Richard II_ deals with--and can be seen to question--the
divine right of kings.  Why perform it on the eve of the Essex rebellion
in front of Queen Elizabeth?  I guess what I've wandered off into is
that Shakespeare had a subversive strain in him--but it was a subversive
strain that required deciphering.
 
  
> 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 thought about this one for a while and concluded that I don't really
know, after all.  I suppose it's different from person to person. 
Salinger, it seems, works with a flexible mold, mostly inside the
boundaries of prose.  A dash man--but some of those ideas started as
short stories, only to become longer stories or even novels.  
 
 
> P.S. Who the heck is Jorn Bergson ???

A vociferous denizen of the Joyce list.  And of rec.arts.books, and
probably
of many another list.  I thought maybe you'd run into him on jj-l.  
 
-- 
Matt Kozusko    mkozusko@parallel.park.uga.edu