RE: revelation
Sean Draine (seandr@microsoft.com)
Wed, 09 Sep 1998 17:40:41 -0700
Interesting point. I've also wondered whether JD's obsessive
compulsiveness (which I agree is evident in his writing) brought
about the end of his publications. While OC may have ultimately
overwhelmed his writing style, as you suggest, I wonder if it
might have him hypersensitive to perceived flaws in his own work.
The grammatical curiosities of his later works may reflect the
countless revisions of a perfectionistic editor and critic.
Eventually, the editor simply rejects all submissions as unfit
for publication.
Perhaps JD has applied these same impossibly high standards to
the public, deeming us unworthy consumers of himself or his work.
-Sean
> -----Original Message-----
> From: Scottie Bowman [mailto:bowman@mail.indigo.ie]
> Sent: Tuesday, September 08, 1998 2:14 PM
> To: bananafish@lists.nyu.edu
> Subject: revelation
>
>
>
> I had, obviously, forgotten the actual reference to Honore
> in the Blue Period story - a story read very many years ago
> & never re-read. So I went back through it, giving it my best.
>
> And you know, as I read, it came to me in a great shaft
> of heavenly
> light why Salinger stopped publishing. He had simply come to
> the end of his particular road. That style - all those
> lists, all
> those endearing asides, those great solid wodges of roguishly
> subdividing clauses, the droll ruminations, the agonising
> self-modifications (all of which got much worse in his
> late stories)
> - that style had nowhere to go except endlessly outwards into a
> kind of monstrous coral.
>
> Or cancer. The body survives only so long as the culling of
> the cells outstrips their tendency to multiply. In the
> same way,
> the survival of a piece of literature depends on the
> same merciless
> cleansing.
>
> Even without Joyce to tell us, one can recognise the obsessive
> compulsive as a strong element in Salinger. That
> probably ensures
> he will never be able to stop writing. But I suspect
> his tragedy is
> a realisation quite early on that all he had to offer
> now were more
> lists, more particulars, more jokes lying broken backed
> from being
> made to carry too much weight.
>
> Scottie B.
>