You know, Cainad, Salinger was a fucking jackass.

[Salty]

ConVol:

I think you brought up some valid points. I had a point to make and Salinger was the simplest vehicle for for me. I took some liberties.  I don't believe he left a widow behind though. From what I read she left him when he turned her into a prisoner in their home.
I was trying to imprint my experiences onto someone else's, a thing one should always be on guard for.   

Thank you for helping me to look at this with more clarity.

[Cainad (dec.)]

Before I begin, I'd like to express my apologies and regrets for arriving to my first Apple Talk letter three days late (school eated my forum-browsing time). I haven't read the rest of the read besides the OP, so if I cover ground that's already been covered, my bad.

Not because of Catcher in the Rye, though I loathed that book. I may have judged it in error anyway. I was a lot dumber when I read it, and perhaps I found it so dull only because so many people had coveted it before me and its themes were too imprinted into society for me to see it as anything but a statement of the obvious. At the time of it's publication I'm sure it was incendiary. Also, I may just have horrible taste.*

No. His failure had little to do with his work. His was a social problem, shared, no doubt, by others who just happened upon concentration camps or witnessed similar horrors. You get the bad taste of humanity in your mouth, nothing really washes it away for good.

He did what so many like him have done: He Sought. He sought and sought. That fucker looked everywhere. He seemed to have rejected Dear Sweet Jesus right away, and I can't reall blame him for that.

Wikipedia:

After abandoning Kriya yoga, Salinger tried Dianetics (the forerunner of Scientology), even meeting its founder L. Ron Hubbard, but according to Claire he was quickly disenchanted with it.[70][71] This was followed by adherence to a number of spiritual, medical, and nutritional belief systems including Christian Science, homeopathy, acupuncture, macrobiotics, the teachings of Edgar Cayce, fasting, vomiting to remove impurities, megadoses of Vitamin C, urine therapy, "speaking in tongues" (or Charismatic glossolalia), and sitting in a Reichian "orgone box" to bathe in "orgone energy."[72][73][74][75]

I read that and I could feel this icy grip, shaming me, humiliating me. Not only had much of my own "studies" and practices been done to death well before I was capable of understanding that Shit's Fucked Up (or understanding anything at all for that matter), but they were shared by a distant (ha) somewhat aloof (haha) recluse, who died mostly alone (BAAHAHAHAHAHAHA).

What this shows me, as much as it shows me anything, is that in all his religious searching and explorations of other belief based systems of thought, he never got to discordianism. Or, at least, he didn't GET IT if did get to it.

One thing that discordianism has shown the value of is the ability to Stick Apart Together and HAVE SOME FUCKING FUN. I feel Salinger could have used those lessons.

Many of us want to rip the core of the earth apart and have been left with a deep distaste for the status quo (whatever the fuck that is). Some of us just hate generally, up and down and across the board. And that's okay. Nothing wrong with hate. Beats apathy or forced Positive Thinking hands down, IMHO.

But that doesn't mean we lock ourselves away, or find some mountain cave to hide in. Monks and priests and the anti-social make this excuse, that truth can be found in solitude, in quiet contemplation. But this is a lie, another "escape" that amounts to no more than spartan window dressing.

This is also the biggest flaw in analytical philosophy. All that jargon, just another mountain to hide in. You can tell because any FUNCTIONAL system of belief or truth or explanation must be catered to nature of humans as SOCIAL animals.

These things, these beliefs, even Mega-dosing Vit.C. They are often just ways to avoid needing people, being close to them, and feeling the very real ups and downs that people bring with them wherever they go.

You need people, I need people. J.D. Salinger thought he didn't need people. And maybe he didn't, maybe he was just happy as a clam tucked away with is supplements and Ancient Texts and no one to talk to but his typewriter.

I don't want that. For me, that is just another kind of hell. The Hell of the Lonely Bastard, and until recently it was the same hell I was heading towards.

Now though, I'm going to go ahead and do what he was afraid to do, what I've been afraid to do.  I'm going to risk myself and see if I can't make some motherfucking friends. Even ones who occasionally tell each other to go fuck themselves. Even if I lose some here and there. There's a risk there, as with anything worth doing. Hell, I'm taking a risk just by posting this for you vicious bastards to read.

It's better this way, better than living death.



*Burns has countered this and I am liable to put my faith in his judgement.

You know, I felt the same damn way about Catcher in the Rye. I tried like a bastard to grasp and appreciate the themes and genius of it and to hold up Salinger as a paragon of modern American literature... and I couldn't. It was the diatribe of a man trapped in a thought, a single ever-perpetuating thought that had been pretty clearly expressed by the end of the first chapter and somehow carried him through the whole damn book. However, I suppose it does stand as a unique forerunner and should be respected for that.

But like you say, he tried desperately to hide from the ugliness, and he needed to build his own little hidden world in order to do that. The monks and ascetics, the ones who claim to find truth in solitude, are able to do so because they can construct a world of solitude. Their truth, like the truth of anyone else's Black Iron Prison, very often only works for the context in which they found it (or made it up).

People like us, we need dynamo every once in a while. Some people start screaming for the world to stop and let them get off, and they can never stop screaming because every single time it turns it feels like a fresh new horror. So they try their damndest to build their own little secret world with a foundation and soundproof walls and, most importantly, a minimum of people. People make a great big mess of things, and they're often stupid, and often horrible, but god damn it I'm people too and it's as much of a filthy lie to pretend that I'm not as was every single lie and bit of bullshit spoken by one of the "phonies" that Holden could never manage to get the fuck over.

I wanted to smack that kid a quarter of the way through the book. Yeah, everyone's a phony, Holden, we get it. Our civilization is practically built on being phony, fake, false, and fraudulent. It's the society of the spectacle, bitch. Why let that stop you from enjoying yourself, from following through on something, anything, that might make life enjoyable for ten minutes? My Discordianism says that I won't let the scum of the world, in all its viscous, pungent, putrid mass stop me from having a good time.


edit: minor grammarfail

[The Good Reverend Roger]

Wow.

[LMNO]

Agreed.  Nice way to come back to the forums Cainad.

[hooplala]

The funny thing for me about Salinger is that he was apparently still writing for all those years, just not publishing.  What could he have to say?  If your entire world is limited to a handful of people, wouldn't your ideas tend to become cyclical in a sense?

And, by the way, how many have read the last story in Nine Stories, "Teddy"?  It's insufferable.  If that's what the rest of his writing was to be like, maybe we haven't been missing much.

[Cainad (dec.)]

TGRR and LMNO: Thanks. I needed something like this to get my hackles up, especially since some people IRL are expecting me to perform as the angry Right Reverend.

Hoopla: to my discredit, I've never bothered with any of Salinger's other work. But, as you say, someone who lives a life as far away from other people as possible would probably develop very cyclical thoughts, something J.D. was no doubt familiar with if Holden's stream of consciousness is any indicator of how the author's mind worked.

[Cainad (dec.)]

I have really mixed feelings about the OP.

My first impression of it is that it is yet another "I'm better/more enlightened/having more fun than that person" rant, based almost entirely on minimalizing the accomplishments and life of a literary icon, not just as a literary icon but as a human being. Maybe there's more to it than that, and I might read it again to see if I'm missing something. To assume that Salinger didn't know how to have fun is quite a stretch, considering so little is known about his later years. To say  that he thought he "didn't need people" seems quite a stretch as well, considering that he left behind a widow, and appears to have had several people close to him in the years leading up to his death.

The only book of Salinger's I've read was Franny and Zooey, and it was OK. Not the level of "OMG that is my favorite book now" that I was led to expect, but basically, I don't care, as my favorite book is also not everyone else's, and if it was I would find the world a lot less interesting.

Anyway, what was the point of this again? I feel like I MUST have missed something.

The point that I got out of it was that the obsession with how awful the world is and letting it ruin every moment of your day is almost as sick as being one of the people who make it so awful. Equating J.D. Salinger with his most famous character, Holden Caulfield, is probably fallacious, but the important part is that Holden, while not crazy, is infuriating and immature. I could only sympathize with him so far, before my moping gland was squeezed dry and and I wanted to kick him in the butt and hand him a ticket to go skydiving or some shit.

I dunno. Maybe it's a point that makes the most sense to people who felt the same way I did about Catcher in the Rye. In retrospect, maybe we can re-interpret the author's intention as trying to infuriate the reader with Holden's inability to cope with a world that isn't as honest and real as he wanted it to be. And maybe I should stop typing before my mind goes completely off the rails.

[Salty]

Ha! I knew I addressed this to the right person. You clarfied my point with more elagance than I was able to manage. 

Thanks!

[Cainad (dec.)]

Ha! I knew I addressed this to the right person. You clarfied my point with more elagance than I was able to manage. 

Thanks!

You're too kind. Some thoughts require an extra brain or two to help sort them out.

[Mesozoic Mister Nigel]

ConVol:

I think you brought up some valid points. I had a point to make and Salinger was the simplest vehicle for for me. I took some liberties.  I don't believe he left a widow behind though. From what I read she left him when he turned her into a prisoner in their home.
I was trying to imprint my experiences onto someone else's, a thing one should always be on guard for.   

Thank you for helping me to look at this with more clarity.

You "don't believe" he left a widow behind?

Why is that? Maybe you shouldn't write about subjects you're not very familiar with. I'm sorry, but... taking liberties with an actual human being's life is a bit more of a stretch than I can sympathize with.

Yes, his wife DID leave him in 1966, which, according to his daughter's biography, was because he was isolating and controlling. He remarried in the 80's, and that wife is now his widow. Simple enough to look up; if you're motivated enough to write about the man you should be motivated enough to read a few pages of biographical information first.

The fact remains, aside from the fact that he continued to write, no one really knows a whole lot about Salinger's later years, including whether he had much of a social life. Assuming that he was sitting cloistered in his home the whole time is a stretch, to say the least. Have you seen so much as a picture of him taken within the last 45 years? Perhaps he was a total recluse. Perhaps not.

I think I see the basic premise of your rant, but I think it could stand to be rewritten to be about yourself rather than baseless assumptions about an author with whom you aren't familiar enough to write about.

And I don't believe I agree with the rant, even then. Unless, again, I have missed something profound. But I don't think I have.

[Mesozoic Mister Nigel]

The point that I got out of it was that the obsession with how awful the world is and letting it ruin every moment of your day is almost as sick as being one of the people who make it so awful.

This, I can agree with completely. Absolutely. I was not able to find that point in the piece, unfortunately.

Equating J.D. Salinger with his most famous character, Holden Caulfield, is probably fallacious, but the important part is that Holden, while not crazy, is infuriating and immature. I could only sympathize with him so far, before my moping gland was squeezed dry and and I wanted to kick him in the butt and hand him a ticket to go skydiving or some shit.

I dunno. Maybe it's a point that makes the most sense to people who felt the same way I did about Catcher in the Rye. In retrospect, maybe we can re-interpret the author's intention as trying to infuriate the reader with Holden's inability to cope with a world that isn't as honest and real as he wanted it to be. And maybe I should stop typing before my mind goes completely off the rails.

It's not just fallacious. It's idiotic. It makes absolutely no sense. Not only that, but everything the OP expressed was expressed much better in Salinger's own Franny and Zooey, which, as I mentioned, did not rock my world, but was at least well-written and comprehensible.

It's not particularly clear whether Holden Caulfield was meant to be a sympathetic character. When I attempted to read Catcher in the Rye, I made it barely 20 pages in before realizing it was unlikely that I would sympathize with Caulfield or enjoy the book, so I stopped. Salinger was certainly a skilled enough writer to invent deeply flawed protagonists. As much as Catcher in the Rye is a 7th-grade classic, I'm not sure the average 7th-grader is sophisticated enough to really grasp the depth of characters who are more meant to be examined than to be emulated.

My suggestion to Alty; explore the Holden Caulfield angle a little more. Stop conflating the author with the character. Clarify that you are writing about your own fears rather than projecting a life of which you are fearful on an author you know too little about. This could be a good piece, with some reworking.

[Salty]

I am glad I wrote it just as I did because:

-I was able to express something, to the best of my ability at the time, and have it understood by people. 

-Your posts, which have caused me to look deeper at my method and motivations than I would have otherwise. I would rather risk having my pride and ego wounded or be called an idiot or be accused of thinking I'm better than people,  than fall under some delusion, or make the same mistake over and over again, especially when trying to communicate something important to me. Above all, I seek clarity.  

I believe I will rewrite it (though Cainad really did make the point better than I did, which was also my reason for writing it), but I'm a slow-but-steady learner so it'll take a bit to untangle my mind.  

[hooplala]

A lot of people seem to miss the fact that Holden was crazy.  Like, really crazy, not wacky crazy.

It's been well over a decade since I read it, but I recall a part where he is concerned he will not make it to the other side of the street.  I remember reading that part and suddenly a light bulb went off.  "Ah, this all now makes sense."

[Suu]

A lot of people seem to miss the fact that Holden was crazy.  Like, really crazy, not wacky crazy.

It's been well over a decade since I read it, but I recall a part where he is concerned he will not make it to the other side of the street.  I remember reading that part and suddenly a light bulb went off.  "Ah, this all now makes sense."

I disagree, I think he had a very different point of view than the rest of the world around him. His brother was a psychotherapist and his parents were rich enough to not give a fuck about him, so of COURSE the entirety of the book would be him narrating his 3 day ordeal in NYC to a shrink. They think there is something wrong with him because he left school, so they locked him up because they could afford it and didn't really care otherwise rather than approach the problems he could be facing. Problems that essentially any teenager could face. It's about reaching the point in maturity when childhood meets adulthood, and being apprehensive about growing up. He's displeased with the way the world is changing around him, and it depresses him. He describes his younger sister as having similar point of views on things as him as well. This doesn't make him "crazy".

Its the same idea as putting a 15 year old girl on antidepressants today because she is having hormonal mood swings, but instead claiming she's bipolar and crazy and letting the drugs doing the parenting.

The book is very relevant even 50 years later.

[hooplala]

A lot of people seem to miss the fact that Holden was crazy.  Like, really crazy, not wacky crazy.

It's been well over a decade since I read it, but I recall a part where he is concerned he will not make it to the other side of the street.  I remember reading that part and suddenly a light bulb went off.  "Ah, this all now makes sense."

I disagree, I think he had a very different point of view than the rest of the world around him. His brother was a psychotherapist and his parents were rich enough to not give a fuck about him, so of COURSE the entirety of the book would be him narrating his 3 day ordeal in NYC to a shrink. They think there is something wrong with him because he left school, so they locked him up because they could afford it and didn't really care otherwise rather than approach the problems he could be facing. Problems that essentially any teenager could face. It's about reaching the point in maturity when childhood meets adulthood, and being apprehensive about growing up. He's displeased with the way the world is changing around him, and it depresses him. He describes his younger sister as having similar point of views on things as him as well. This doesn't make him "crazy".

Its the same idea as putting a 15 year old girl on antidepressants today because she is having hormonal mood swings, but instead claiming she's bipolar and crazy and letting the drugs doing the parenting.

The book is very relevant even 50 years later.

For most of the book I would agree with you, but toward the end of the book he clearly becomes unglued.  It's been over a decade since I read it but there is a part when he is wandering around the town and is afraid he won't be able to get to the other side of the street, either because the street will be gone, or he will be... I can't quite remember.  I will find the passage tonight when I get home and quote it in this thread... but that is not just a different point of view, that's crazy.