Re: Upper class instincts.

Camille Scaysbrook (verona_beach@geocities.com)
Sun, 22 Mar 1998 23:12:00 +1100

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> From: Scottie Bowman <bowman@mail.indigo.ie>
> To: bananafish@lists.nyu.edu
> Subject: upper class instincts
> Date: Wednesday, 11 March 1998 23:59
> 

> 
> 	But I'm afraid my own instincts belong with another tradition 
> 	altogether.  This is the curmugeonly, pernickety approach which 
> 	arises from the fact that ideas can be truly realised only with 
> 	words.  And which insists we try all the time to narrow it down, 
> 	get it exact, make it surgical, throw out the extraneous, hunt 
> 	forever if need be - up the Amazon & down the High Street - until 
> 	we put our hand on one word, the mot juste, the one that slides 
> 	sweetly into the breech ready for firing.  This is the one, after 
> 	all, that will lodge the idea for good & all in the mind of the 
> 	reader.

I can see your point - I'm a writer myself, and I'm all too aware of the
saying `A picture speaks a thousand words - but it takes words to say so.'
But words are kind of like Lego bricks - you can build a Lego car that
resembles its real life counterpart, but you're always limited by the fact
that Lego has a finite number of little gripping nubs, and ultimately, you
can always tell it's constructed out of Lego. I think the reason that
Salinger (I've heard) spends hours searching for the perfect word that will
`slide sweetly into the breach for firing' is that he must select the word
which is closest to the idea he is expressing; that limits the infiniteness
of this idea as little as possible. I heard a quote once that's relevant to
this (I think it was Stephen King, of all people) along the lines of `ideas
are infinite in the head, but only finite on paper'. As a writer, you're
using a kind of shorthand to translate what's in your head into a
communicable form. I guess the best writers are the ones able to use words
that lose the least in translation from mind to tangible form, so to speak.
All a writer can hope is that somehow these compressed bullets of ideas and
information will somehow unfold, once lodged in the reader's mind, into
something resembling what was originally in the author's mind - in fact, it
can be even more exciting when it unfolds into something completely
different and teaches the author something about themself too.

> 
> 	I think Salinger - like most good writers - was often trying 
> 	to capture the ineffable. 

Absolutely!

>           And I think too he was a natural refiner. 
> 	I only wish he didn't insist on taking me with him on the hunt - 
> 	or try out his various experiments (with capitals or lower case or 
> 	alternative word choices or whatever) on the rest of us while he's 
> 	looking.  It feels like sloppiness.
> 
> 	Scottie B.

I guess it depends on your opinions of Salinger - I think it's kind of
interesting to see into his writing mind (it's amazing how much of this he
offers to us for perusal) and observe its workings. But you are right -
occasionally it can get tedious. But I'm usually willing to wade thru these
to find the experiments that did work.

Camille

P.S. apologies if there's a bit of a time lag with my answers. I've been
having trouble with computer gremlins and have only just had about a week's
worth of mail come thru to me. (: Likewise if everyone has already got
this, sorry or Sorry.