Re: Salinger and Nabokov / Flaubert's Parrot -Reply -Reply

Camille Scaysbrook (verona_beach@geocities.com)
Sat, 05 Sep 1998 11:07:30 +1000

> Not that long ago on a continent far, far away young Camille Scaysbrook
> and her happy band of intentionalists started raiding texts for real
> people.  As if you could fit a person in a book!  

Ah, no no no. No. All wrong I'm afraid. I think you'll find, if you'll
*remember* and if you'll take the trouble not to generalise, I was very
much in the OPPOSITE CAMP. Observe (this post was sent on 2nd August 1998,
subject : `Glass Theory 101')

>> Hoo boy ... there's some of those little western koans we call
`conundrums'
>> crawling in these waters .... Right from the outset though I wish to
make
>> one thing clear : we can NEVER talk about `Is Character (or even
Sergeant
>> (: ) X Real?'. To me, as soon as a character hits the paper, he or she
is
>> fictional. A character named JD Salinger could have been substituted for
>> Buddy Glass and it still wouldn't make any difference. 

OR this one, (4th August 1998, Subject: RE: who he?)

>>  No matter whether or not Salinger aimed to portray some real
>> person - as soon as this other person becomes a character in a fiction
>> rather than a character of life, he or she is injected inextricably with
>> some essence of his or her creator - namely, the author. 

So as you can see I reiterate this point quite a hell of a lot (there are
other posts beside this one)

You continue to accuse:

> .ha ha. . .and their meaning. . .ha ha. . .were actually dependent upon
> what One person thought about it, namely, the author.

NO NO NO NO NO NO !
This is NOT my position. This is the OPPOSITE of my position. As yes,
again, I have MENTIONED MANY TIMES. Try this post (4th July 1998, Re:
explanation)

>> There is a certain sacredness, granted,
>> in the author's original `transmission', for he or she is the one who
sent
>> the impulse that stimulated something in us. But ultimately this
stimulus
>> is only a collection of suggestions that you put out for the world to
>> consider. As you say yourself :

>>> 	 the artist may not, himself, 
>>> 	wholly understand since much of it derives from his own unconscious.

>> This is in fact accepting the reality that the author is not necessarily
>> the ultimate authority on his or her own text. I know I don't know
>> everything about the things I have written. I need almost as much help
>> interpreting them as anyone else. 

PLEASE check your facts before you go around rampantly accusing people of
these beliefs!!!! Apart from anything I cannot understand why you see this
as relevant anyway, because I certainly don't.

> Ok, there may be thousands upon thousands
> of pages of Glass Family Chronicles locked in a safe somewhere, but
> ultimately we have to approach the texts we have and get our information
> from them, not from anywhere else.

Ah. Now THIS is the question I was asking. And I think you're right.
Ultimately, these are probably the only Glass tomes we're ever going to
get. We must, as you say, treat them as if they were the full jigsaw. But
what I was talking about is authorial intention. Perhaps Seymour's suicide
isn't supposed to be an enigma at all, perhaps Salinger has written whole
book intimately recording Seymour's last thoughts. Maybe there's a book in
his safe called `FRANNY AND LANE'S BOUNCING BABY BOY'

> It wouldn't prove anything, because those still aren't the characters
> Salinger wrote in his currently published work.  

In a way, perhaps. But as I said, my question lies in JDS's intention.
Evidently he *wanted* the Glass family to be a mystery to the outside
world. Yet this could also mean there's a whole other layer of the Glass
world, one in which there is no mystery about the things we constantly
puzzle over here on Bananafish. It's just a speculation, it's nothing I or
anyone but JDS himself can prove or disprove. It's just interesting to
think about.

> We'll all have a lot of fun playing
> Intertext and developing theories and whatnot, but it still won't change
> the nature of the characters in the texts we have.

No. I'd have to dispute that. You say:

> Fictional characters, when well written, have an existence independent of
> their creators over time.  Any time you start creating things, you always
> run the risk of having em run amok :)

Coming back to my earlier point ... EXACTLY! I am *not disputing this at
all* But this also means that they take on an independent existence outside
of their actual text. Every time we even speculate on what `really'
happened - take the case of Franny's alleged baby - we are constructing a
meta-text attached to the original text. We are in fact extending this text
- and by a text I don't mean the book itself, I mean the *experience* of
the book, both the personal and universal interpretations of the book. Thus
(as I have also constantly, constantly reiterated) the author is simply
another cog in the creation of a Text - i.e. watching your characters `run
amok'

Some interesting points raised here, but again, *please* check your facts
before pointing e-fingers!

Camille 
verona_beach@geocities.com
@ THE ARTS HOLE
www.geocities.com/Hollywood/Theater/6442
THE INVERTED FOREST
www.angelfire.com/pa/invertedforest