Subject: Re: aping one's betters
From: Tim O'Connor (tim@roughdraft.org)
Date: Sun Sep 10 2000 - 14:46:55 GMT
At 7:40 AM +0100 on 9/9/2000, Scottie wrote:
> A fair number of Holden Caulfields, all right, but you'd
> imagine that prolix Buddy Glass voice that beguiles so
> many impressionable young minds would have spawned
> at least a few would-bes. Yet I don't think I've come
> across any.
>
> Anyone else?
I can't speak for anyone else, and often can't speak for myself,
either, but I find the Buddy Glass voice menacingly contagious -- at
least as much so as the voice of THE SUN ALSO RISES -- so that after
I've spent any serious time rereading one of the Glass books, any new
work (that is, anything in which the narrative voice has not already
developed a shape of its own) tends to take on the meandering quality
of Buddy's style.
The one redeeming angle is that any writer who has what Hemingway
called "a built-in, shockproof,bullshit detector" will notice this at
least upon revision, if not during composition itself, and will
manage to excise the foreign voice, and it is thus for me. But it is
a danger, without question; unlike Scottie, I don't find the voice
revolting, and so I get it in my head and it occasionally takes over.
Luckily, though, I can't abide finding myself lecturing anyone, so I
have a good record of catching these things before they get out of
hand.
I have a very close friend who is not a subscriber here but who is a
cohort in Salinger-admiration, and he and I, when we exchange
letters, often purposely talk like Buddy does, not least for the fun
of it, for the wink and nod, and perhaps for the thrill-by-proxy of
seeing how closely we can "ape" the original.
The only writer I can think of, without thinking hard, who has come
close to imitating Buddy is Gordon Lish, in "For Jerome, with Love
and Kisses," where the narrator is ostensibly JDS's father in a
general harangue about just about everything. I regret that I don't
have a copy of the story at hand from which to quote a snippet, but
you can find it in the collection WHAT I KNOW SO FAR. It's quite an
amusing performance from a writer who lives for the grand, dramatic
gesture. Lish also wrote (and I may have this title slightly wrong)
"For Rupert -- with No Promises," which is to be taken as a narrative
from Buddy to Zooey. I recall the last time I read it, which was at
least a year or two ago, thinking how fine a job of ventriloquist
Lish had pulled off.
--tim o'connor
P.S. Several types of personal and work pressure have been at work
upon me lately, so I have not yet put up the August list archives.
Please forgive the lapse; it's not an oversight, but is merely the
consequence of not having sufficient waking hours in the day.
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