Re: Carpenters...
Pierrot65@aol.com
Mon, 01 Mar 1999 00:29:04 -0500 (EST)
Abra wrote re: Perfect Day:
"I=B4m not sure what Salinger is saying about this, as he
seems to like both girls...(Sybil and Sharon) From this text, which
perspective would you
say Salinger likes more??? Do you think he lies when he tell Sybil he
only let Sharon sit on the pianobench, because Sybil wasn=B4t there???"
I think maybe Seymour was just being charming and careful about the young
girl's tender feelings and potential jealousy when he tells her that. But
Salinger, I think very pointedly, has Seymour later say "Ah, Sharon...How =
that
name comes up. Mixing memory and desire." This is almost certainly a refer=
ence
to Eliot's "Waste Land": "April is the cruellest month, breeding/ Lilacs o=
ut
of the dead land, mixing/ Memory and desire, stirring/ Dull roots with spr=
ing
rain." (I hope this doesn't get us sidetracked, but that is the greatest p=
oem
of the 20th century, no? I know it's not a contest, though.) This allusion
brings up both a million fruitful ideas and a million landmines, and it is
beyond my capacity to tell the bananafisher king from the red herring. Suf=
fice
it to say that (despite the protests from the Seymour-as-pedophile camp) t=
his
whole story (APDFB) is suffused with loss, waste and death, that decay lur=
king
in the proverbial sunshiney garden, the inevitability of decay that tags a=
long
with the growth of adolescence. God, there are so many connections we coul=
d
make between the two, the most obvious (maybe) being the Eastern "Da:Datta=
"
question/response at the end. I don't doubt that Salinger was influenced b=
y
this poem's easy (well, easy in the sense that Eliot was a great genius, n=
ot
necessarily easy to decipher) fluidity and transition between disciplines.
Anyway, the connection, if there is one, and I think there is, brings up a=
ll
kinds of new directions to pursue: the idea of wounding, Eliot's notes in =
the
margins like the parenthetical asides in S:I, the damage of war re: Esme, =
and
probably many more. Someone else take over. I'm tired.
rick