Subject: Re: John Romano
From: Jim Rovira (jrovira@drew.edu)
Date: Wed Oct 17 2001 - 08:24:10 GMT
Ach, that was great, Scottie. I'd like to qualify your observations a bit
just to see what you think. I think most, if not all, of Salinger's fiction
addresses the very problem you describe in your post. At least one work,
_Franny and Zooey_, shows a way out. Remember Franny was essentially upset
because she came to the same realization Holden did: we're all full of
crap, phonies, vain, stupid, etc. She took it a step further and even
said, "I am too." Like Holden, she withdrew in her own way (having a
breakdown, "conveniently" as Zooey said, at her parents' house, where she
was sure to be nurtured (babied), offered sacred oranges, etc.)?
Franny, unlike Holden and Seymour, came out of her room. If you understand
the Fat Lady to be representative of everything wrong with the human race,
then understand that the Fat Lady is Christ (this isn't too odd an
identification to make given the teachings of Christ: "Whatever you do for
the least of my brothers..."), you can accept that you can serve your
ideals **at the same time** that you live in service to a whole bunch of
phonies.
I think even Calvinism, with all its emphasis on original sin, still
accepts that human beings were created in God's image. It's seeing the
image of God behind phoniness and awfulness and the "everything that's
wrong with the whole shebang" that makes not only living, but meaningful
living, possible. Franny realized that in an epiphany that led to
contented sleep. Holden and Seymour, I don't think, ever did.
Jim
Scottie Bowman wrote:
>
> We could go on slicing this forever.
>
> So far as I understand them, Cecilia/Romano seem
> to be saying that when Phoebe draws her brother up
> short by challenging him: all right, to identify one item
> in the human universe that ISN’T phoney, one item that
> WILL meet his exacting standards – he fails, thereby revealing
> how unconsidered & hollow are his own grand, holier-than-thou
> judgements.
>
> But we are not, apparently, to mind this: no one can be expected
> to hold up under such a scrutiny. We may be all ugly failures but
> – as at least the clear-eyed & the pure in heart understand – we are
> all also, au fond, truly innocent, stained only by the society that
> has grown up around us & in which we ourselves have grown.
>
> Cecilia anticipates being called sentimental. Well, maybe not
> sentimental, Cec, but this sounds to me like the noble savage togged out
> in a nice new pair of jeans. Or maybe just bushy-tailed Amuhrr’can
> CanDo.
>
> I wonder does it reflect Cecilia’s Popish training & my Calvinist one?
> I not only believe in original sin, it seems only too obvious to me that
> there’s something Terribly Wrong With The Whole Shebang.
> (It’s the reality all great writers have made themselves confront & none
> of them that I can think of, from Homer to Hemingway, ever found
> much grounds for optimism.)
>
> It was this insight, surely, that damned nearly did for Holden. I’m not
> at all confident he ever came out of that sanitorium. Seymour certainly
> never left the hotel. And one glimpse of those ravaged old features
> explains why someone else has never left Cornish.
>
> For me, it’s the crazed, hilarious gallantry in the face of the ever
> lengthening shadows of despair that makes the Catcher so moving
> & precious. This is the way it is. The singing of hymns & the humming
> of Oms that the Glasses go in for sound as banal & futile as the endless
> replays of Little House on the Prairie that we’re told Salinger himself
> uses to blank out the knowledge that he – like Sergeant X – once found
> so intolerable.
>
> Obviously – like Gatsby or Huck – you can only produce one Holden
> in your life.
>
> Scottie B.
>
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