Something out-of a paradox exists from this alignment out of American editors with Salinger-and that contradiction provides all of us close to the center out-of Salinger’s end
legitimate faith next to Seymour’s? “Hapworth sixteen, 1924” closes that have a long list of courses one to Seymour requests feel taken to him at the june camp. And most website subscribers could be disturbed from the diffuseness and you can miscellaneousness of all content inside facts, factors and that apparently confirm the fresh new damage out of ability seen within the “Seymour: An introduction.” Particularly Eliot otherwise Melville, Salinger is complete an adequate amount of quotations of literature and you may records to help you publishers to point his own literary perspective and you will community. References range astonishingly from the poetry and you will religious literary works out-of India, Asia, The japanese, and throughout West literary works from Blake, Dostoevski, and you will Rilke to Kierkegaard and you may Kafka. But in spite associated with the broad sprinkling of welfare and you may web sites, Salinger is not a beneficial Zen Buddhist or an effective philosopher otherwise a beneficial poet. He is an american erican culture. From the some point from inside the “Zooey,” Pal Glass claims, somewhat, your Higher Gatsby are his Tom Sawyer when he is a dozen. New confession suggests a simple attraction to the local community. Salinger is allied, for the an elementary method, towards the happy mysticism out-of Whitman, however, the guy responds, as well, with the strange pain off Emily Dickinson also to this new macabre humor of Mark Twain. He surely finds out far getting themselves throughout the idiom and you will prose rhythms off Ring https://datingranking.net/muddy-matches-review/ Lardner, and he was attracted because of the F. Scott Fitzgerald’s poetic style and his explorations out of idealism and you may facts. Out of his very own point in time, we could possibly reckon that their sympathies was drawn to Wright Morris” probing of your time, and you may John Updike’s study of the newest family members from soul and you will matter. However the basic designs from their books, this new models regarding withdrawal and you will come back, of the search 44
Record selections in the over really works from Dickens and you may Tolstoi on the Gayatri Prayer and you will Porter Smith’s Chinese Materia Medica
/. D. Salinger for the right plus the advancement away from mind, of the slide out-of purity therefore the bill from complicity, are also the essential models out of Hawthorne and you will Melville, even though these are a few editors which he will not speak about. He really does consider Eliot, but never with enthusiasm; and although the guy failed to completely escape the newest wilderness attention, it’s clear you to his choice (along with his templates) are more closely akin to affirmative poetry of your own strange traditions. Salinger’s really works are demonstrated, metaphorically, since the a-cry regarding mysterious happiness transcendent over the modern desert as well as misery. Two outlines off Whitman’s “Tune out-of Me” may indicate the new thematic cardio off Salinger’s work. The initial (that he rates inside “Brand new Inverted Forest”): “I’m the guy, We suffer’d, I became around.” Next: “That isn’t a mess or dying – it’s means, partnership, plan – it is eternal lifestyle – it is Contentment.” Translated for the progressive idiom from Salinger, these first feelings could be reconstructed: although progressive boy feels “his attention dislodge itself and you may teeter, like vulnerable baggage on an overhead dish,” the guy have to, to steadfastly keep up his sanity, create his wisdom “towards the fundamental most recent from poetry one to streams thanks to one thing, everything.” Such Seymour, the guy have to go their appointed series, knowing that “the we perform the entire lifestyle try move from that absolutely nothing bit of Holy Crushed to another location.” Even when Salinger’s complete imaginative creation, yet, could have been apparently short, their feeling and you may dictate – and his artistic achievement – was basically astounding. Zero major reputation of blog post-The second world war American fiction is going to be created as opposed to awarding him an added the initial rating, and also, possibly, new pre-eminent status.
