Subject: silver threads among the gold
From: Scottie Bowman (rbowman@indigo.ie)
Date: Fri Nov 03 2000 - 06:04:09 GMT
'... The majority, I will give you my heartbreaking
opinion, will merely senesce ...'
Not having yet got hold of Hapworth, I don't know
the context of that 'heartbreaking opinion'. So obviously
I can't tell to what extent the narrator seems to be expressing
Salinger's own viewpoint.
It leaves me with the question - since I'd have thought
that Salinger is somone who, in both his own life & that
of his characters, has rather shunned 'maturity' as an ideal.
In spite of all those preternaturally mature little girls & boys
it seems to me he presents the adult world of experience,
acceptance, balance & so on, as the place where the soul dies.
And I sympathise very much with this position. As a shrink,
I've always avoided holding up to my patients the goal of
'growing up' into some commonly accepted model of adulthood.
And as a soi-disant writer, I've always clung to Goethe's remark
that the artist remains the perpetual adolescent.
You can make up your own mind about senescing, Sean - once
you've discovered what it means. But whatever you do, don't mature.
The moment you stop playing is the moment you become
just so much stale meat.
Scottie B.
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