Subject: Re: In the name of complete discussion....
From: Mattis Fishman (mattis@argoscomp.com)
Date: Fri Sep 22 2000 - 10:43:02 GMT
Thanks John for the link, it is nice to see you posting.
It seems as though the author of the Slate article John mentioned,
Judith Shulevitz, has fallen into the same trap that Ms. Salinger
mentions, of taking the fictional characters too seriously. Why don't
we hate Holden Caulfield, she wants to know. The wise-children have
are just wise-guys. She claims we like them because they pander to our
"dream of our own unappreciated genius", and goes on to find and detail
their personality faults.
This might seem a valid point of view for a daughter whose father
was so involved with these characters that she began to feel the
competition, but hardly one for a literary critic. The very fact that
these characters can be taken so seriously and be expected to inspire
such emotion, whether the admiration Ms. Shulevitz berates us for,
or the loathing she espouses is only because of the success of the
works, and the skill of the author is creating and portraying them.
Approaching a piece of literature it makes less sense to me to
contemplate "that Salinger's work is cleverly designed to stimulate
a protective response" than to wonder how the author manages to
portray a characters, even if less than a perfect human being,
as an almost universally acknowledged archetype such as Holden or
as an enigmatic war casualty who fires only a single shot.
Why should we hate Holden Caulfield when he such a meticulously
crafted image of ourselves? Even if, as a thread a few years ago
suggested, we go back and found out that we have grown up and he
is still whining. Ms. Shulevitz wonders if the book is satire, but
of course it is not. What it is, is a bull's eye portrait of someone
with whom we will at one point in our lives strongly identify, and
at another we will sympathize while wishing he would come in out of
the metaphorical rain - but most of the time we will still love.
Just as a note, I see that the Slate site
http://slate.msn.com/Code/Culturebox/Culturebox.asp?Show=9/21/2000&idMessage=6105
has a discussion forum, and, people, they have a heck of lot more
postings there in two days than on the bananafish is two weeks...
all the best,
Mattis
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