Re: From Daumier to Smith
Camille Scaysbrook (verona_beach@hotpop.com)
Thu, 16 Sep 1999 11:30:17 +1000
Now, this is all the real meat-and-potatoes stuff.!
> The events at the store window puzzle me as well, and perhaps this is
an
> indication of "weak" writing, or a least the "willfully strange", in
that,
> as everyone seems to suggest, it is just too hard to see what brought
> about the rapid change (by the way, Pasha, I thought that he did not
"cut
> loose" his students at this point, but reinstate Howard and Bambi,
no?).
No, I think he does cut loose his students - is there not something at the
end indicating he sometimes sees pictures in magazines that he imagines
might be Bambi's? I must go back and read it thoroughly again (I already
have a small Salinger archive by my computer for quick reference (: ). And
I don't necessarily think the strangeness of DDS is weak writing, although
it's often hard to tell. Sometimes the most poorly written stories are the
ones which seem to hold the most secrets, because we think `Well, this
doesn't add up in any conventional sense. What am I missing? What's
underneath here? Where's the key?' I always thought Henry James' `The Turn
of the Screw' is a good example of this. However, though the short stories
of Chekov and Katherine Mansfield - and Salinger give a similar effect, I
think the truth is that the story is just a loose membrane over a very
complex set of workings. These stories are like fractals, the further you
look into it the more detail is yielded. This to me is the mark of a truly
great writer, who can clothe his meanings so unobviously that the reader
has an ineffable Something to go back to every time.
Mattis, I also value your theories about the character of DDS very much - I
find myself realising why I have such a strange empathy with him. A theory
on the surgical supplies store - a couple of theories actually. When I
first read the story, I imagined the sort of store I have seen in old
Surrealist and Dadaist collages done at about the time the story is set.
These windows always had lots of surgical trusses mounted on strange
half-torsos. Incomplete people, a very disconcerting image which found its
way into many artworks of the Surrealists and helped convey the sense of
disaffection and disippation people felt after the war. I found that a very
striking and somehow appropriate image which seemed to have so many
relevances - the live model among the artists' dummies, the real and
apparent truth - after all, it wouldn't be hard to mistake the girl for a
dummy if you weren't looking closely - and most obviously the idea of
sickness and purgation, and subsequent healing. Wouldn't such appliances
also be used to balance? I had scoliosis as a young girl and thank God I
didn't have to wear a brace like in Judy Blume's `Deenie', but that sort of
device is what I was thinking of when I read the story. Something to keep
you in balance.
Camille
verona_beach@hotpop.com
Mattis wrote:
> What seems to stick out the most obviously in this story is that Jean
> is lonely, isolated young person, who indulges in fantasy to the
point
> that he lies more convincingly than he tells the truth. If his lies
> were designed solely to gain credibility with others I could see
calling
> him self-centered, but he seems so lost, so absorbed in the persona
he has
> created for himself, from his name, to his religion, to his dislike
of
> chairs, etc., that he appears to be pitiable. His infatuation with
Sister
> Irma, his dreaming about the Yoshotos' moaning, his lies, are all
> important only to him, and the story masterfully contrasts his own
> rich imaginings with the negligible reactions of those around him:
> the Yoshotos nods, Sister Irma's non-responses. I think he is so
> engrossed in this mode of thinking that one would need to be a lonely
> 19 year old to recognize it, and of course no lonely 19 year old
> would be able to recognize it (or would admit it, anyway).
>
> The scene at the window, then, is really an un-epiphany, in the sense
> that he did not go from some unelightned state similar to ours into
> a higher awareness which we are looking to share through the story,
but
> that he arrives, having started from a position which is pointedly
lacking
> a normal sense of perspective, at an awareness we wished he would
have had
> in the first place. I admit I do not see the significance of the
> surgical appliance store and the contents of its windows beyond
simply
> viewing it as a prosaic and rather humble setting for an ordinary
person
> to be doing what DDS realized he should have been doing all along,
living
> his life honestly (in the sense of self-honesty) and letting everyone
> else live their's.
>
> all the best,
> Mattis