Re: Re:Yawn.
John Page (JHPAGE@worldnet.att.net)
Sun, 28 Nov 1999 19:13:07 -0600
Oh man, oh man, oh man. .. Christ! I don't believe I read what follows my
message.
....................Holier than thou - my ass. Condescending,
concieted...Writers - my ass.
Open you eyes to what you read. -jared
-----Original Message-----
From: Tim O'Connor <tim@roughdraft.org>
To: bananafish@lists.nyu.edu <bananafish@lists.nyu.edu>
Date: Sunday, November 28, 1999 8:22 AM
Subject: Re:Yawn.
>At 9:27 AM +0000 on 11/28/1999, Scottie wrote:
>
>> Illiteracy inevitably dries up the number of ideas available
>> for their expression.
>
><INSERT YIDDISH ACCENT>
>
>For this we have this man on hand!
>
><STOP ACCENT>
>
>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