Re: Salinger's Working Methods
citycabn (citycabn@gateway.net)
Thu, 07 Oct 1999 10:46:18 -0700
Colin,
I have been at the keyboard too long this morning trying to clear up e-mail
and some bananafish ripostes.
I admit to *just now* reading your thoughtful, excellent, I'll go out on a
limb and say *exciting* linkage of JDS and Sam Beckett, two of the four
members of my own outrageous, clearly off-the-mark, prejudiced Perfect
Literary Quartet. (Okay, quick bows, you two guys from Prague: Rainer
Maria, Franz.)
Forgive me for not commenting more now. I will soon. Or: Soon.
thanks again for your great post,
Bruce
-----Original Message-----
From: Colin <colin@cpink.demon.co.uk>
To: bananafish@lists.nyu.edu <bananafish@lists.nyu.edu>
Date: Thursday, October 07, 1999 1:50 AM
Subject: Salinger's Working Methods
>In Alexander's biography of JDS there is an interesting section where he
>quotes some of the statements Salinger had to make during the legal
>hearings over the Hamilton biography. At one point the lawyer for
>Random House attempts to get Salinger to talk about his current writing:
>
>Q "Could you describe for me what works of fiction you have
>written which have not been published?"
>
>A "It would be very difficult to do."
>
>Q "Have you written any full-length works of fiction during the
>past twenty years which have not been published?"
>
>A "Could you frame that a different way?" he asked. Callagy [the
>lawyer] asked Salinger what genre he was working in.
>
>A "It's very difficult to answer," Salinger said. "I don't work
>that way. I just start writing fiction and see what happens to it."
>
>Q "Would you tell me what your literary efforts have been in the
>field of fiction within the last twenty years?"
>
>A "Just a work of fiction, that's all. That's the only
>description I can really give it . . . I work with characters, and as
>they develop, I just go on from there."
>
>Apart from the fact that JDS is clearly trying to avoid saying anything,
>not surprising in the circumstances, it does result in one of the few
>statements by JDS about his writing. And what he does say strikes me as
>honest because it fits in very well with the whole drift of his later
>writing.
>
>When asked if he is writing a full-length work JDS has difficulty
>because he doesn't say to himself I'm going to write a novel but just
>writes and sees where it leads him. Without the necessity to fill a
>framework his prose tends to naturally result in a novella type length,
>but each novella doesn't only stand on its own but is more or less
>closely related to the others in the sequence so that together they make
>a much longer work without the whole being a 'novel'.
>
>But the most interesting point in the exchange is the last one where JDS
>talks about the way in which he works, and this fits in very well with
>the development in the successive Glass novellas. '... I work with
>characters, and as they develop, I just go on from there.'
>
>In his Glass family fictions Salinger moves away from plot driven
>stories to stories which are essentially an exploration of character.
>It is this trend in his work which alienates some readers from his later
>fiction. If one wanted to characterise this as a vice one would say it
>is the opposite of a writer who has 'flat' characters, Salinger's later
>characters are so three dimensional, so well rounded that they inflate
>to a proportion which leaves room for little else, like story, for
>instance. Salinger wants to make his fictional characters fully alive
>in a way in which most writers don't because as well as creating fully
>rounded characters most writers also want to (or have to) get on with
>other things like telling a story, developing the plot, creating tension
>etc.
>
>I enjoy that aspect of his later work and think it is a very interesting
>and innovative development in writing. A development which for some
>reason hasn't been treated as an interesting formal development like the
>innovations of Joyce and Beckett and Burroughs, but should be. Some
>readers still seem to complain that the Glass stories don't make a
>traditional narrative when that isn't what JDS is attempting to do,
>whereas they are less inclined to expect it from Joyce, Beckett etc.
>
>
>I think there are some very interesting parallels between the later work
>of JDS and Beckett's fiction. Both writer's became increasingly
>hermetic and self-referential as they went on. Reading both writers
>gives me the feeling that I'm inhabiting the mind of the writer in a way
>which is different to the experience of reading most writers. The
>'action' takes place in the writer's head, where they, and we
>(temporarily), are trapped. Both writers are, in an important way,
>creating solipsistic worlds which we can step into by reading their
>fiction. The significance of their fiction ultimately rests on how much
>illumination their solipsistic worlds casts on 'the real world'.
>--
>Colin
>