Subject: Re: uncollected stories
Omlor@aol.com
Date: Sat Mar 31 2001 - 15:47:50 GMT
Hi All,
I've been enjoying the confessions and the memories. But surely, if we are
going to criticize Holden and his creator for their lapses into a too-neat
either-or logic of exclusion, then we ought to be careful not to set up one
ourselves.
You either sympathize and identify with Holden (before 20) or you see the
silliness and the danger of the attitude (after 20 -- or 22 in some reported
cases) :), to paraphrase Scottie's paraphrase.
But surely it's more complicated than this. What makes Holden a lasting
literary creation is not just his relevance for readers of a certain age, but
also the way he offers us attitudes and insights that we all find
occasionally resonant even after we "should" know better. Hell, I'm double
the age when I "should" have left it all behind, and of course, I saw the
insidious nature of the insider/outsider construction fairly early on. But
that in no way means that I don't still now, in my early forties, have those
moments in a bar where I start creating elaborate *noir* melodramas or those
moments, usually amidst anger and frustration over the stupid politics of my
chosen profession, when I feel the surge of the sarcastic spirit of Holden
rising in my bile, or even those moments when I look at my two nieces, ages 5
and 7 and hear in my head the music of the carousel and see Holden behind my
eyes, leaning over to kiss them good night and wanting to keep them safe from
harm.
Sometimes he's still there. And I do know better and I'm not hanging on to
lingering residue of psychic immaturity and I have no naive expectations
about my fellow man or about any alleged but most likely fanciful insights
available only to the chosen, sensitive few.
Holden remains, as a specter, haunting my adult years and echoing in still
useful ways even after I have graduated beyond his world view and moved on
the all those "big boys (and girls)" that I now read and teach in my classes
and write about and that enrich my life almost daily.
In this sense, I don't think I ever will really, stop feeling "as if I was a
part of Holden (or visa versa). " I don't believe this makes me a candidate
for the emotional short bus. But I might very well be wrong.
Bye for now, from a gray Florida coastline,
--John
This archive was generated by hypermail 2b25 : Tue Apr 10 2001 - 13:24:06 GMT