Subject: Re: unless ye become as little children
From: James Rovira (jrovira@drew.edu)
Date: Sat May 11 2002 - 21:11:51 EDT
While of course there are people on this side of the Atlantic who don't harbor any illusions about what children are really like (i.e., those that actually have children), I think there's a lot to be said for your ideas here. Of all the teachings of Christ we could have focused upon -- and the values that proceed from them -- we seem to have fixed upon this thing about children. What kind of a society would we have if "be wise as serpents, but harmless as doves" was the dominant teaching, or even "love your neighbor as you love yourself?"
Jim
-----Original Message-----
From: "Robert Bowman" <rbowman@indigo.ie>
To: <bananafish@roughdraft.org>
Date: Sat, 11 May 2002 20:45:21 +0100
Subject: unless ye become as little children
Is it pushing things too far to suggest that the divergence
of views between Valèrie & Micaela on the simplicity
of children is a reflection of the wide Atlantic itself?
I realise this is an old, & by now very boring, hobby-horse
of mine but I don't apologise for it. The mutual misapprehension
of the two cultures has engaged much better men than me:
Twain, Henry James, the Expatriates of the Twenties,
Graham Greene - to name only two.
Although I know The Catcher appeared on the syllabus
of the more enlightened secondary schools of these lands,
what was much more extensively prescribed was
William Golding's Lord of the Flies - a darker vision
of boyhood altogether. All my sons' generation read it
for their Leaving Certificate, along with Animal Farm
- not exactly the most optimistic of works, either.
Surely in almost all his stuff, Salinger assumes somewhere,
a state of blessed innocence to which all of us could,
or should, aspire (as saints) or revert (as children).
And isn't this an inherent part of the American Dream?
When Micaela hopes to God she won't, in twenty years,
be dulled by cyncism & disillusion, I think she's expressing
a sentiment deeply felt by her compatriots & not just
her contemporaries. In the Dream, when the wagons
roll west what moves us, surely, is the optimism undismayed
by considerations of mere reality? And what about those
two great archetypes, Huck & Gatsby? One a rogue,
the other a crook, yet both retaining a buoyancy that
derives from their essential naiveté.
An important part of the American self image is a kindly,
innocent confidence - exploited all too often by the envious
world. But there it persists: undeterred, rising once again
up off the floor & ready to save the rest of us with
food parcels & lectures on the nature of democracy.
This is Love for the Fat Lady made manifest.
The startling visibility of September Eleven rendered
it indelible for everyone - no matter what part of the world
they witnessed it. But away down deep, beneath the revulsion,
was the feeling among many non-Americans that this was
a long overdue disillusioning. For how many great European cities
- within living memory - was the death of a few thousands
in a morning by no means a one-off?
Salinger is, of course, greatly cherished in Europe &
elsewhere but I doubt he ever enjoyed there, or could enjoy,
the acceptance that arises from that conviction he shares
with so many of his countrymen, the conviction:
'YES. If we'd only shed all the shitty selfishness &
become again as litle children we could make the world
an Eden.'
No one between the Brittany Coast & the Ural Mountains
could ever again possibly believe that.
Scottie B.
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