Subject: Will's review
From: Scottie Bowman (rbowman@indigo.ie)
Date: Wed Sep 20 2000 - 02:42:58 GMT
This is a strong plea to the Cardinal to circulate
his review of Margaret Salinger's book on the list
& not limit it to a 'need-to-know' basis.
I should probably hold off comment until my reading
of the book extends beyond the long extracts that have
appeared in the British press. Nonetheless, I really have
to commend to everyone's attention Will's article as a
perceptive, generous-minded & elegant piece of writing.
The problem that Will addresses remains: what bearing
does the revelation of a distorted life & personality have
on the value we attach to the 'art' produced by that life?
For me, the problem can be evaded in Salinger's case since
the post-Caulfield stuff seems poor anyway. After my first
thrilled enthusiasm - greatly stimulated by the hype that
accompanied their appearance (wild reviews, TIME cover,
etc., etc.) - I became quickly skunnered ** by the ''look-at-
me-I'm-incredibly-rareified-in-my-mystical-perceptions''
preciousness that permeated everything. It was so far from
the clean, high-precision engineering of Esme or The Catcher.
Whatever went wrong after the war was evidently going
badly wrong by the early '60s.
So it came as no surprise then to read Margaret's account
of her unlikeable father. Stuff like that could only proceed
from someone in whom the heart had died.
But what if, in 1970, he'd written Crime & Punishment?
After all, there is that story of Dostoevsky abusing little girls.
What about Beethoven's rage, or Wagner's treachery?
The answer is, I think, that the great artist never really
loses his AWARENESS - of himself in relation to
the surrounding life &, not least, the awareness of his own
failures within that relationship. That inner struggle
with his own nature, with what the Christians would
regard as his innate sinfulness, sits at the very heart of the work.
The late Salinger seems only aware of a circumscribed world
held tightly within his own anxious control. What we have
heard so far is of a Salinger drowning in his own neuroses -
& embracing them in the mistaken belief they're life jackets.
** A good Scots word to describe the sickliness induced by
eating too much fudge.
Scottie B.
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