Subject: unwelcome news
From: Scottie Bowman (rbowman@indigo.ie)
Date: Thu Sep 07 2000 - 03:12:32 GMT
Certainly finding myself at one with the Prof is gratifying.
But aside from the gratification, I'm very happy to salute
the openness of mind that's willing to re-examine what I'd always
assumed, unfairly, to be a pretty settled view of Salinger & his place
upon the earth. (I'm intrigued that even some time ago, he was
giving indication that the new book was going to be something
different. Where did that hunch come from?)
As people have pointed out, the existence of a book like this
raises awkward questions.
Even if it were important for me to preserve a particular idea
of Salinger so that I could go on enjoying his stuff in the familiar
way I think I'd recognise the futility of refusing - along with Cecilia
& Paul - to read the book. Unwanted knowledge - especially about
some personally charged subject - will continue to seep through
like the smell of a dead animal in the trunk of a car.
But one DOES sympathise with those who find much cherished
characters tainted now forever with awful associations of a green-
faced, homeopathic nut & of little children having wooden dowels
driven into their fingers under threat of the nastiest sort of
emotional blackmail. ('Once I turn off, buddy, you're gone for
good ....') Always now, behind the man who lifted the heart with
his conception of love for the Fat Lady, there comes the whisper:
'Phoney.' Not just ordinary phoney like the rest of us but
real, forty-four calibre, drop-forged steel, chromium- trimmed,
neon-lit PHONEY. (I suppose you could rationalise that along
the lines of: the greater the sinner the greater the sanctity. But
pas moi. A phoney is a phoney is a phoney.)
It's the fashionable solution to separate the man from the artist.
But the 'who-am-I-to-judge?-let's-just-stick-to-the-text' posture
seems to me to be untenable. You can't separate them. That's
idealistic rubbish. It may be more or less apparent, but a man's
character & what he has made of his life always spills over into
the work. The honest biography of any artist will reveal the
inconsistencies, meannesses & failures which are simply part of
the human condition. But almost invariably there will also come,
glinting through, reports of the nobility which illuminated
the work.
The unsettling thing for the enthusiasts is that, SO FAR at least,
from the acquaintances & victims of JDS we've heard remarkably
little of the latter.
Scottie B.
-
* Unsubscribing? Mail majordomo@roughdraft.org with the message
* UNSUBSCRIBE BANANAFISH
This archive was generated by hypermail 2b25 : Sun Oct 01 2000 - 14:44:36 GMT