RE: Nine Stories

Joe Cross (JCROSS@CTMSINC.com)
Mon, 18 Oct 1999 09:17:04 -0400 

<<The Laughing Man is an 
outcast.  >>


I'm not too big on literature and I'm not too intelligent and after only
being on here for a few days I've decided I have a lot of reading to do to
catch up with you guys as most of the time I have no idea what in the hell
you're talkin' 'bout and I'm hoping that burning sensation is not gonorrhea
but I've always considered this story to be about someone who is miserable
and angry so they decided to take it out on everyone else around them,
especially the young, vulnerable children and make their lives as bad his. I
think I just wrote a big run on sentence. How many points do I lose?

"I swung my fiery sword, I vent my spleen at the lord, he is abstract and
bored, too much milk and honey"



Joey Cross, Americano

-----Original Message-----
From: AntiUtopia@aol.com [mailto:AntiUtopia@aol.com]
Sent: Friday, October 15, 1999 11:28 PM
To: bananafish@lists.nyu.edu
Subject: Nine Stories


I just reread it (skipping DDS because I had just reread a couple weeks
ago). 
 No, it's not a terrible fate, Camille :), and I will miss hearing your
voice 
around here quite so often.  The worst thing about rereading NS now is that
I 
should be reading Paradise Lost and Hamlet instead, and I'm Not :)

BUT, that being said, I think many imply some sort of rejection of the
world. 
 Seymour shoots himself.  The little kid runs away.  DDS says everyone is a 
nun.  Teddy is a bit more overtly spiritual about it.  The Laughing Man is
an 
outcast.  The woman in Uncle Wiggly has her own form of isolation (highballs

and unhappiness).  It's probably not there in Pretty Mouth, what you get is 
an awareness of the dirtiness of the deed by the participants at the end.  
For Esme?  The rejection was in Sgt. X's attitude toward his visitor and his

psychological state itself -- the shell shock was partly a reflection of his

sense of horror at the state of this world (revealed through war), and that 
was why Esme's kindness was so therapeutic.

But the stories...like most good stories I've read...don't lend themselves
to 
cut and dried analysis very easily.  In Laughing Man, for example, the only 
parallel I saw between the story told on the bus and the narrative action 
itself (what was happening to the storyteller) was emotional -- the 
children's suspense and worry about The Laughing Man was reflective of the 
storytellers worry about his relationship.  The death of the relationship
was 
parallel to the death of the Laughing Man.  This story may be a commentary
on 
art itself -- metafiction, of sorts.  

Ah, that's all, for now

Jim