Re: Jesus/fat lady and dying


Subject: Re: Jesus/fat lady and dying
From: Suzanne Morine (suzannem@dimensional.com)
Date: Tue Nov 21 2000 - 23:21:00 GMT


At 09:23 AM 11/21/2000 +0000, you wrote:
> I'm not altogether clear whether Suzanne's fat lady
> is a heroic figure still nourishing hope, even in her
> evidently hopeless situation - or a tragic figure who
> has been somehow induced to abandon that same hope
> & who demands thereby the best, loving efforts of the rest
> of us.

Both. In my theory, she's both a martyr and someone whom we can patiently
understand with a bit of effort.

> At all events, she seems to be moving away a little from what I'd
> always accepted as the standard interpretation [..]
>
>It raises in my mind the question: why did Salinger not stick
> within the Christian tradition? Wasn't it rich enough for him?
> Why flirt briefly with the figure of Jesus & an obscure Christian
> mystic before hiking off into Zen & other Eastern practices
> with their chi-chi concepts & categories? [..]
>
> [We have] only a handful of lightweight gurus [..] who settled in
> California to ingest mescalin &
> mix with the other modish hopheads.
>
> Could it be that Salinger was really more interested in the chic
> than the true?

The terms "chi-chi," "chic," "flirt," "lightweights," "modish," and "wasn't
it rich enough for him?" suggest an arrogant sneering to me. I value places
where people are free to think and speak for themselves. Otherwise we are
all just reciting from the "accepted standard interpretation." That would
be the sort of inner death I was talking about, now that I think of it.

After all, who is to say what is true regarding art and beliefs? The
assumption about beliefs is that you don't know for sure, you can only
believe. The concept of reincarnation rings true to me and plenty of
others. I have known people who have traits that suggest reincarnation to
me, while I find many assertions from Judeo-Christianity to be plainly
myths. Obviously your mileage varies wildly from that.

I was tossing in an idea rather than keeping quiet about it. I suppose
opinions, especially about beliefs, always have some degree of an arrogant
feel to them, since, as I said, we don't know for sure and assert from some
place inside ourselves. However, I think the language quoted above could
have been curbed a touch.

Suzanne Morine

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