Re: Catcher Paper
blah b b blah (jrovira@juno.com)
Sun, 21 Mar 1999 13:58:19 -0500 (EST)
On Fri, 19 Mar 1999 18:52:00 +1100 Camille Scaysbrook
<verona_beach@geocities.com> writes:
>Jim wrote
>> I don't think Holden would be staying with DB, that seemed
>impossible to
>> me,
>
>Well, that's kind of the point I was making. Not that it's impossible
>- but
>what stops it from being Holden talking to some out-of-work actress? A
>bum
>on the street? The paramedic who's just found him lying on the
>pavement
>after jumping out of a twelve storey building? Why aren't any of these
>any
>more or less likely than the analyst explanation? The way I see it -
>Holden's talking to ME. The way he talks to me makes me feel flattered
>that
>he has seemingly chosen me to confide in. And that's all that matters.
>
Oh, ok. First off, we need to view this on a couple different levels.
The first level would be the fictional world that Holden inhabits. Yeah,
really, he could be responding to anyone besides D.B. When he says "I
was put in here" or something to that effect, the word "here" may imply
that the person he was speaking to also inhabits the same place that
Holden did -- the "sanitarium" or whatever it was. But it's not a
necessary conclusion you could derive from the use of that word, just a
possibility. Really, it's open.
The next world we need to look at is the interface between the fictional
world Holden inhabits and our world. We can't say Holden is speaking and
confiding in "us" because we are non-entities in Holden's world, living
nearly 50 years in the future and in a world that Holden doesn't inhabit.
Unless you can establish that Holden is speaking consciously for a known
"general reading" public. On this level what's really happening is that
Salinger is making us privy to this fictional character named Holden
Caulfield for the sake of whatever was motivating him to write the book
with whatever hopes he had for his readers...
>I concede that Holden's parents were more than likely denizens of
>Spock -
>but why TB? If you want to pursue that `why does the guy in Kafka turn
>into
>a cockroach' type reasoning - cancer seems to be a much more likely
>suspect. Holden's already mentioned that his mother is still very
>protective after Allie died. Holden's read an article which convinces
>him
>he has cancer. Put Protective Mother A together with Overreacting
>Child B
>and you have your reason for Holden being in any kind of treatment.
>But
>this still doesn't make sense - why is it in any way likely that
>Holden
>would be telling all this to his doctor, be it for cancer or TB? Does
>he
>believe he hasn't long to live?
>
Holden specifically said in one of the quotes I made (I think I quoted
this, anyways), that "I almost got t.b. and had to come out here." I
wasn't making the TB thing up, it was in the text.
WIthin my the world of "my ideas" about the text, I don't know if
Holden's telling a doctor, some other psychotherapist (there was at least
one mentioned and the text didn't seem directed toward him), a nurse, or
what...I just confined my speculations to someone in a helping capacity
at the sanitarium for the reasons given above. But I know they are
speculations and to what extent. The t.b. thing wasn't speculative at
all, however.
One other thing I wanted to explore but didn't was the physical pressures
Holden was subject to during the course of the narrative. I mean,
between Sat. afternoon and Monday afternoon he barely slept, drank a lot,
ate poorly, got punched in the stomach, and in the middle of winter in
New York got rained on Real Hard and spent a night outdoors. No Freaking
Wonder he got sick :)
And this tells us a lot about what may have happened to Holden had he
actually ran away. He was a Kid, unable to care for himself -- he ran
through a fair amount of money pretty quickly and didn't know how to eat
properly or get shelter. I think he would've died of t.b. somewhere
eventually had he left home. He really needed to be caught by someone.
>> Regarding non-rationality and anti-intellectualism -- I don't think
>this
>> stands in opposition to the use of intelligence. Remember
>Salinger's
>> study of Eastern philosophies is broader than Zen. In the Bhagavad
>Gita
>> and (I think) at least some of the principle Upanishads intelligence
>is
>> touted as a necessary quality for spiritual development.
>
>`Intelligence' and `Intellectualism' are two totally different things.
>Intelligent people are intelligent, but intellectuals aren't
>necessarily
>intelligent (and vice versa). Salinger seems to not only mistrust the
>intelligensia as having pretentions towards intelligence (and
>especially,
>seeing it as superior to spiritual gain) but seems to see the cult of
>the
>intellectual as threatening and phony. This has very little to do with
>actual `intelligence'. To me `intelligent' implies something not
>consciously attainable - more like `wise'. `Wise' is a concept that
>Salinger seems to see as infinitely superior to the more literally
>cerebral
>`intellectual' ... why ... `it's a Wise Child'! (: So no, I agree -
>section
>manism *isn't* about intelligence. It's about intellectualism, which
>is
>different and always falls prey to .
>
That's basically what I was saying, yes :)
>> cleverness being paraded around to elevate the self
>
>I too have long wished to have a look at the role of acting - when you
>think about it very closely allied with the idea of `phony' - in
>Salinger.
>Even the little man in RHTRBC I've always thought of in terms of a
>mime
>artist. Having just read `Slight Rebellion Off Madison' for the first
>time
>I realised how different the use of the third person makes Holden seem
>-
>from the outside, he is a total phoney. It's something that comes
>across a
>little in the book, but overwhelmingly so in the short story.
>
>Camille
Ooh, yeah, phoniness and "acting," and third person vs. first person are
interesting directions to explore.
The character Holden Caulfield is in stories other than Catcher, but the
Holden in the other stories aren't necessarily the same as the Holden in
Catcher. It's probably best to see the Holden in the other stories as a
different person with the same name. I don't think Salinger had fully
realized his purposes for Holden's character until Catcher. If you think
about it, it's impossible for the Holden of Catcher to have been missing
in action in WW2.
I don't remember the details of the "Madison Avenue" story, tho -- that
one may be a version of Holden closer to Catcher than in the other story.
I've only read about that story without having read it...
Jim
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