Re: down with zen

the.tourist@excite.com
Tue, 02 Mar 1999 09:28:06 -0800 (PST)

Scottie observed:

> Once he begins to 'illustrate' topics - like the
> 'point of existence', or the 'best way to live' 
> he becomes, no matter how well hidden, a kind of
> preacher.  And begins to take his eye off the
> ball - which for a writer I suggest should, above
> all, be the realisation of the individual & what
> he makes of his world.

Could it be the inexorable sense of power and influence that a
suddenly-popular writer feels?--to at last have the clout to share all the
pedantic ideas he/she has had but has never felt really fits in a story?
I've seen Scottie's observation a lot myself, usually occurring in a
writer's earliest or latest work.  The young writer must learn to filter the
didactics out of his/her prose in the interest of telling a story, so why
does it appear later?

Are we all preachers at heart, biding our time until the lectern is ours?

I know I am.

> Which is the reason, I suppose, the Catcher seems
> to me an incomparably finer & more moving piece
> than all the tortuous, dinky, philosophisings of
> the Glass family.

I tend to agree with Scottie there, although perhaps not so vehemently.  I
don't think Seymour is "dinky"--although Buddy, when he's revved up in his
little mountain cottage and I'm revved up in my little bedroom, can feel a
tad torturous.

Or is that "tourtuous?"

--Brendan




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