Subject: Re: favorite first Salinger lines (and why)
From: Will Hochman (hochman@southernct.edu)
Date: Thu May 30 2002 - 18:26:26 EDT
Shall we dance darling? I had hoped you'd scoop me up in your arms
when you heard th band strike up our bananfish music!
> Arch, arch, arch. Oh God.
No, not God, just me, old lowercase will.
>
> Too many, oh-so-droll, self-indulgent words,
> Will.
Yes, yes, "droll, self-indulgent" is a good way to describe the tone
of the opening, but after billboards from Mr. Kafka and Mr.
Kierkegaard, I think such indulgence makes me think Mr. Salinger is
all snuggly cuddly with our more substantial (?) Mr. K's.
>
> Does he really mean: '... my old fair-weather friend
> the general reader...'
> A fair-weather friend is normally used in an insulting way:
> someone who will stick with you - but only through the easy
> passages of life.
So it is with most readers...oh, don't get me wrong...I'm well-read
enough to sing the virtues of re-reading and reading against the
grain to learn through impossibly difficult books, but readers truly
are fair-weather friends and I suspect you agree--how else could you
have writingly winked with "through the easy PASSAGES of life! I'm
admittedly bouncing between text and text and a word like "passages"
resonates so poetically for me in this discussion it felt as though
you dipped me perfectly in our music's swooning moment.
>
> And what about: '... deeply contemporary confidant ...'
> DEEPLY contemporary? What the fuck is that meant
> to mean? Profoundly fashionable as opposed to
> superficially archaic?
I think there's a tongue in Salinger's cheek in that "deeply
contemporary confidant" for me is what just happened to us again...as
writer and reader...we meet, confide, perhaps deeply and only in the
moment of reading. For what profession isn't timing everything?
>
> Then we have: '...least fundamentally bumptious public
> craftsman I've ever personally known ...'
> A public craftsman conjures up the village blacksmith,
> maybe, or one of those Murano glassblowers laid on
> by the Venetian Tourist Board.
Bumptious, now there's a word even a bumpkin like me can love...and
yes, I even loved touring venice because we visited the Murano glass
blowers. I used to sell sand and met glass makers throughout the
northeast of the USA. I liked watching the Italian way of making
glass and wished I could have afforded to buy some. I still think
about some of the glass I saw there...but we know I'm too bumptious
to own any of that art responsibly...and like my understanding of
what the public craftsman/village blacksmith can mean in the quote, I
too want my skills and spirit to be used well.
>
>
> Did anyone ever say to you: 'You know, fundamentally,
> he's bumptious.'? Bumptiousness doesn't require
> unearthing - it proclaims itself from the battlements.
>
> I thought 'personally' known to me was something
> one only ever read in character references written
> by semiliterate cops or priests.
I think the term is "oxymoron" and yes, I think you are
right...that's a bit over the top.
>
> As darling Truman remarked: that's not writing, that's
> typing.
Actually, John Updike told me that "darling Truman" was quite a bit
jealous of Mr. Salinger and was known to lie about Salinger from time
to time. Nonetheless, Mr. Capote's "Glass Harp" is a fine collection
of stories likely to please many of the fishes here.
>
> Scottie B.
Thanks for the dance!
>
>
>-
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-- Will HochmanAssociate Professor of English Southern Connecticut State University 501 Crescent St, New Haven, CT 06515 203 392 5024
http://www.southernct.edu/~hochman/willz.html
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