Something out of a contradiction is provided out of this positioning of American writers which have Salinger-which contradiction brings united states nearby the cardiovascular system off Salinger’s achievement
genuine belief alongside Seymour’s? “Hapworth 16, 1924” closes having a long list of guides one Seymour requests end up being taken to him at summer go camping. And more than customers could be disturbed of the diffuseness and you may miscellaneousness of the many materials contained in this facts, issues and this seem to establish this new deterioration regarding skill understood inside “Seymour: An intro.” Instance Eliot otherwise Melville, Salinger are complete an adequate amount of quotations out of books and you may records so you can writers to indicate his or her own literary context and you will society. Records range astonishingly through the poetry and spiritual books off India, Asia, Japan, and you will while in the West literary works off Blake, Dostoevski, and Rilke so you can Kierkegaard and you will Kafka. In spite regarding the greater sprinkling out-of welfare and you may attractions, Salinger isn’t an excellent Zen Buddhist or a great philosopher otherwise a good poet. He’s an american erican culture. Within some point during the “Zooey,” Pal Cup says, rather, your Great Gatsby are their Tom Sawyer when he was twelve. The fresh new confession suggests a basic attraction toward local traditions. Salinger are allied, from inside the a fundamental method, into the joyful mysticism away from Whitman, but he reacts, too, towards strange pain off Emily Dickinson as well as the fresh macabre humor of Mark Twain. He no doubt finds out much to own himself throughout the idiom and you may prose rhythms from Band Lardner, and he try attracted from the F. Scott Fitzgerald’s poetic design together with his explorations out-of idealism and you may facts. Out of their own time, we might reckon that their sympathies would-be interested in Wright Morris” probing of energy, and you can John Updike’s study of the fresh new relation from soul and you may count. Nevertheless very first patterns away from their novels, the latest patterns off withdrawal and you will get back, of your research 49
Record range from the over work of Dickens and Tolstoi into Gayatri Prayer and you will Porter Smith’s Chinese Materia Medica
/. D. Salinger for the right additionally the advancement out-of worry about, of one’s slide away from innocence and acknowledgment of complicity, are also the basic designs out of Hawthorne and you can Melville, even when speaking of a couple of writers which he will not speak about. He do consider Eliot, but never that have love; and even though the guy don’t completely stay away from the new wasteland vision, it’s clear you to his tastes (with his templates) be more directly akin to affirmative poetry of your strange society. Salinger’s work tends to be explained, metaphorically, given that a cry out of mystical pleasure transcendent along the modern desert and its particular heartache. Several contours regarding Whitman’s “Track from Me” may suggest the latest thematic cardio regarding Salinger’s functions. The initial (he quotes inside “The latest Upside-down Tree”): “I am the man, I suffer’d, I was truth be told there.” Next: “This is not in pretty bad shape or passing – it’s function, union, plan – it’s eternal lifestyle – it’s Happiness.” Interpreted to the modern idiom from Salinger, these types of very first emotions is rebuilt: no matter if modern boy seems “his mind dislodge by itself and teeter, eg vulnerable baggage to the an overhead holder,” he need, to keep up their sanity, establish their expertise “to the main current of poetry one moves courtesy something, everything.” Instance Seymour, he need to go their appointed rounds, understanding that “every we create the whole lifestyle is actually go from one to little little bit of Holy Soil to the next.” In the event Salinger’s total innovative manufacturing, up until now, might have been seemingly brief, their impact and you may influence – and his awesome visual achievement interracial cupid – was in fact immense. No serious reputation of post-The second world war Western fiction will likely be composed in place of awarding your a place in the original rank, and even, possibly, the fresh new pre-eminent updates.