Re:Yawn.

Tim O'Connor (tim@roughdraft.org)
Sun, 28 Nov 1999 09:22:15 -0500

At 9:27 AM +0000 on 11/28/1999, Scottie wrote:

>     Illiteracy inevitably dries up the number of ideas available
>     for their expression.

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For this we have this man on hand!

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This line made me wet my pants.

>     Real writers, people like you & me (& ... I need not name
>     them, they will recognise themselves) should welcome
>     these arid stretches.  For they illustrate all too vividly
>     what a dangerous diversion any listserve can be.  Just as
>     the saint welcomes poverty & adversity so should
>     we welcome anything that drives us away from worldly
>     temptations & back into the galley that brings us finally
>     to our one true home.

I greatly agree; they also mirror the writer's creative life: full of 
ups and downs, fallow periods, times of red-hot composition, fumbling 
with ideas, and so on.

I confess that I have been only skimming things recently, but perhaps 
-- just perhaps -- someone might have a topic of s-u-b-s-t-a-n-c-e 
into the arena.  Scottie said it well in a section I did not quote: 
there's not a huge body of work on which to comment, unless we want 
to be alarmingly esoteric (like discussing Salinger's use of iTALics, 
or of the semi-colon)....

I'd like to think that the stream will replenish itself from 
upstream, as new people join.  Please, new people, do jump in. 
Sometimes people get offended here about comments about what they 
say, but the best thing to do is to approach it as any sane and 
humble student or writer accepts comments, and consider them 
constructive criticism.  So, if you offer an idea and someone shoots 
at it, maybe your idea is faulty.  Or rich for discussion.  But we 
won't know unless we try.

Here is one idea:  Which of the stories in Nine Stories comes closest 
to your life experience, and why?

I'll throw out my answer right now:  I have had such moments of 
despair as Seymour in "A Perfect Day for Bananafish," and have been 
on that beach, literally (though without any touch of innocence as 
Sybil to tether me to the ground), and at the lowest ebb, possibly 
would have pulled a trigger if I had had one to pull.  (Lucky for me, 
I swore off handguns years ago.)

I say that the cold lack of inner detail toward the end of the story, 
compared to the richer narrative that preceded it, where we see 
Muriel in exquisitely unflattering detail, is parallel to the mental 
state of the man in the story who wakes his wife up by blowing out 
his brains in their hotel room.

In fact, that gunshot-cry from Seymour is very possibly his own 
answer to the koan, "What is the sound of one hand clapping?"

Now, there's something at least on topic, and I'm genuinely 
interested in hearing what people think.   Hey, if we get some 
responses, we can offer the real answer to the koan.

--tim o'connor