By
Lars Trodson
"Rarely
if ever in literary history has a handful of stories aroused so much
discussion, controversy, praise, denunciation, mystification and
interpretation. There will be more Glass stories, Mr. Salinger says. Perhaps,
when there are, a more coherent pattern will be apparent and certain mysteries
and ambiguities will be explained."
This
is what Orville Prescott wrote in his 1963 New York Times review of J.D.
Salinger's "Raise High the Roofbeam,
Carpenters and Seymour an Introduction."
The
Prescott quote is instructional because a coherent pattern was being executed by Salinger by the time "Raise High The Roofbeam" was published. Those
“certain mysteries and ambiguities,” as Prescott put it, were already being explained. It's just that no one was paying attention. When Salinger published "Hapworth 16, 1924" in June
of 1965, the set of clues was complete.
With
three short story collections ("Nine Stories," "Franny and Zooey," and "Raise High The Roofbeam, Carpenters") and one
novella (the "Hapworth" story), Salinger had presented a body of work that distinctly
reflects, embodies, and celebrates the Four Noble Truths, the philosophical core of Vedanta Buddhism, which Salinger had been following since the late 1940s.
Vedanta
Buddhism, put across in a bold stroke, is a faith that embraces all paths to
oneness with God, whether that path be Hindu, Buddhist, Jewish, or Christian — or anything else. Salinger's
stories invoke each of these religions (and certainly secular matters) at certain times, and his attempt to
reach a oneness with God becomes more and more explicit with each Glass story. "Hapworth 16 1924" is a culmination of all these paths.
It is essential to note, but not to elaborate on here, Salinger's experiences as a soldier during World War II, which by all accounts were horrific. He was going to rectify the atrocities he saw in his mind, and through his writing.
It is essential to note, but not to elaborate on here, Salinger's experiences as a soldier during World War II, which by all accounts were horrific. He was going to rectify the atrocities he saw in his mind, and through his writing.
Salinger’s reputation rests on a slim body of work: “The Catcher In the Rye,” “Nine Stories,” “Franny and Zooey” and “Raise High The Roofbeam, Carpenters" and "Seymour An Introduction." The "Hapworth 16, 1924" novella does not in any way improve Salinger's reputation, but this story is a fundamental component of Salinger's plan in mapping out the Four Noble Truths.
Despite its stature, “The Catcher In The Rye” is not included in this narrative for the very reasons Salinger himself described. Salinger was very clear that Holden Caulfield was an outsider; he was not a character he wished to include in his pursuit of laying out the Four Noble Truths.
The evidence of this comes in “Seymour An Introduction.” Salinger, as Buddy Glass, writes: “Some people—not close friends—have asked me whether a lot of Seymour didn’t go into the young leading character of the one novel I’ve published. Actually, most of these people haven’t asked me, they’ve told me. To protest this at all, I’ve found, makes me break out in hives, but I will say that no one who knew my brother has asked me anything of the kind—for which I’m grateful...”
Holden was obviously a moneymaker when "Nine Stories" was introduced, so you would think his appearance in "Nine Stories" would have been a lucrative way to sell the collection.
But Holden, as famous as he was, did not fit into Salinger's plan.
The
Four Noble Truths and the Glass Stories
The first Noble Truth tells us that dukkha — suffering — is a key factor to life.
The second Noble Truth seeks the origin of dukkha.
The third Noble Truth is the cessation of dukkha.
The fourth Noble Truth charts a path to the end of dukkha.
Now, in light of that, chart the publications this way:
• “Nine
Stories” — All the stories have a theme or deep undercurrent of human suffering.
• “Franny
and Zooey” — These two stories examine the origin of Franny Glass's suffering
and, by extension, the suffering of the other members of her family.
• “Raise
High The Roofbeam, Carpenters and Seymour An Introduction” — These two stories
are told in a state of bliss, a cessation of dukkha
• “Hapworth
16 1924” — A litany of all that which gives (and will give) Seymour happiness;
it is a virtual menu of — the path toward — everything that Seymour thinks will bring him bliss.
In the primer “Buddhism In Ten,” by Annellin
Simpkins and C. Alexander Simpkins, tell us that the first noble truth is this: “Life is suffering, not just in the narrow sense of pain or discomfort,
but as a broader, existential condition. Buddha described six kinds of
universal suffering: 1) Suffering begins with the trauma of birth. 2)
Throughout life we all must deal with the pain and discomfort of sickness. 3)
Old age inevitably comes with its infirmities and limitations. 4) The
ever-present fear of death is always there. 5) Throughout life we have to be
involved with things we dislike. 6) We suffer when we are separated from what
we love."
This is important because the mention of being "separated" is, in Salinger’s world, supremely significant. Everyone in Salinger’s world is
separated, physically or psychologically, and almost all his characters masochistically wallow in their own pain. “Detached” is a word that pops up
frequently in Salinger's work.
Salinger believes that people have separated themselves from what truly makes them happy. Their pursuit worldly goods or sensual desires makes them unhappy.
Salinger believes that people have separated themselves from what truly makes them happy. Their pursuit worldly goods or sensual desires makes them unhappy.
The
First Noble Truth: “Nine Stories’
By
1953, Salinger would of course been aware of the Four
Noble Truths. He had been, by that time, following Vedanta Buddhism for years.
Deeply committed to his beliefs, it is easy to see how Salinger would not only
want his life, but his work, to intertwine.
In “Nine Stories,” Salinger was starting out on his path of discovery, and so were his characters. One of the first stories featuring a member of the Glass family, "Uncle Wiggily in Connecticut," begins when Mary Jane, a suburban housewife, loses her way to her friend Eloise's house. Mary Jane and Eloise find no solace in their suffering. They drink all afternoon.
In “Nine Stories,” Salinger was starting out on his path of discovery, and so were his characters. One of the first stories featuring a member of the Glass family, "Uncle Wiggily in Connecticut," begins when Mary Jane, a suburban housewife, loses her way to her friend Eloise's house. Mary Jane and Eloise find no solace in their suffering. They drink all afternoon.
In the story "Pretty Mouth and Green My Eyes," a drunken, disembodied Arthur (we only hear him over the phone), asks his friend Lee if he saw his wife leave the
party they had both attended. "Why? What's up? Joanie lost?" Being
lost generates fear and uncertainty, as it does in "Uncle Wiggly."
Arthur
tells his friend, who may or may not be having an affair with the missing wife, that he comes
home almost every night in a jealous rage: "I practically have to keep
myself from opening every goddamn closet door in the apartment—I swear to God.
Every night I come home I half expect I have expect to find a bunch of bastards
hiding all over the place. Elevator
boys. Delivery boys. Cops—"
This
story is a veritable catalogue of suffering.
There
is more, in "Nine Stories," including descriptions of violence (“The
Laughing Man”), the effects of war (“For
Esme — With Love and Squalor”), and, of course, suicide (“A Perfect Day for
Bananafish”).
The
last story in the collection, "Teddy," ends with a haunting
description of the possible murder of the sister by the main character, the precocious, eerie, Teddy
McCardle. Teddy, all of 10, is detached from his own
emotions, as he tells his interlocutor, Bob Nicholson. Teddy quotes Japanese
poetry. ("They're not full of a lot of emotional stuff."— Teddy
says.")
Teddy has apparently just returned from Boston after being examined by psychologists. He is asked if he is a follower of "the Vedantic theory of reincarnation," to which Teddy replies that this religion is not a "theory." There is a discussion about where God can be found — including a glass of milk. Teddy talks about death, and speculates how he might be pushed into an empty swimming pool by his sister.
Teddy has apparently just returned from Boston after being examined by psychologists. He is asked if he is a follower of "the Vedantic theory of reincarnation," to which Teddy replies that this religion is not a "theory." There is a discussion about where God can be found — including a glass of milk. Teddy talks about death, and speculates how he might be pushed into an empty swimming pool by his sister.
The
story ends — and the collection itself — with Nicholson walking down to the
pool where Teddy is having his swimming lesson with his sister.
"[Nicholson] was a little more than halfway down the staircase when he
heard an all-piercing, sustained scream—clearly coming from a small female
child. It was highly acoustical, as though it were reverberating within four
tiled walls."
These stories are infused with suffering and physical pain.
These stories are infused with suffering and physical pain.
The
Second Noble Truth: “Franny and Zooey”
The second Noble Truth recognizes that
there is a basic cause for suffering, which is self-centered desire. This is
almost exclusively what these two long stories are about: The impact of
self-centered desires on our true contentment and the paths available to rid
ourselves of these self-centered desires.
“The problem with selfish cravings is
that it tends to take over and compel us on a narrow course, limiting our
potential,” write the Simpkins in their Buddhist primer. Both Franny and Zooey
Glass obsess over whether they are living up to their potentials; if they are
doing the right thing with their lives.
The story “Franny” begins with Franny’s
boyfriend, Lane Coutell, waiting at the station platform for Franny. They are
physically separated, though Lane is hoping this weekend will result in a
sexual encounter with Franny (a hope he selfishly clings to even after she has
broken down). Lane is the embodiment of self-serving desire. He’s a sensualist.
He eats frog’s legs and talks endlessly about a paper he hopes to get
published.
(Salinger even takes a moment to show
us how the Eightfold Path to happiness can be perverted. The Eightfold Path is:
Right View, Right Intention, Right Speech, Right Action, Right Livelihood,
Right Effort, Right Mindfulness and Right Concentration. As Lane and Franny sit
down in Sickler’s, the restaurant that is the “highly favored place among,
chiefly, the intellectual fringe of students at the college — “, Lane takes
care to notice that he is “in the right place with an unimpeachably
right-looking girl.”)
Franny is, however, experiencing some
disorientation. She orders food but does not eat it. She drinks martinis and
smokes. She is a bundle of anxiety and unhappiness. She is carrying a mystical
little book, “The Way of the Pilgrim” — an allusion to another path — and she silently repeats its prayer.
Lane puts a question to Franny that
goes to the root of the Second Noble Truth: “You’ve got a goddamn bug today—you
know that? What the hell’s the matter with you anyway?” In the Second Noble
Truth the question of the source of our suffering is only acknowledged. It is
not answered and the origin of Franny's bug is not answered here.
In delicate moments Salinger is able to
portray the physical and emotional gulf between Lane and Franny, the negative
detachment that leads to unhappiness: “Franny quickly tipped her cigarette ash,
then brought the ashtray an inch closer to her side of the table.” There begins
the great divide. A page later, Salinger gets more specific. When speaking of
Lane, Salinger writes: “Quite probably, he resented and feared any signs of
detachment in a girl he was seriously dating.” Salinger wrote with precision,
and it is easy to see here he crafted a sentence that could have the signs of
detachment refer to the divide between Franny and Lane or the divide within
Franny herself.
“Zooey” also begins with a physical
divide: Zooey (Zachary Martin Glass) is in the bathtub, cocooned by a shower
curtain (“scarlet, with a design of canary yellow sharps, clefs and flats on
it” — a color scheme not unlike the iconic paperback cover of “The Catcher In
The Rye”). Zooey is reading another long Glass letter, and then his mother
comes in to talk about the crisis that Franny is experiencing. Franny, too, is
separated; she is in another room in the apartment, lying on the couch.
Salinger
has Zooey tell Franny to reject her selfish cravings, her "wrong"
reasons for wanting to be an actress, and her wrong reading of the Jesus
Prayer, because she is expecting to receive something from it. “You can see the
Jesus Prayer from now till doomsday, but if you don’t realize that the only
thing that counts in the religious life is detachment. I don’t see how you’ll ever even move an inch. Desirelessness. ‘Cessation from
all hankerings.’”
Salinger is not only talking about
himself — he’s talking to the reader. He is reiterating the tenets of the
Second Noble Truth. He is moving closer to his own path.
Even during the justifiably famous
conclusion to “Zooey,” during which Zooey offers his own counsel to Franny
about how she can experience some contentment once again, where she can find
God (it doesn't matter how, as long as one does), Salinger seperates his
characters. Zooey is talking to his sister on the phone even though they are in
the same apartment.
But Zooey's advice has the desired
effect on Franny. If we remember, at the conclusion of "Franny," she
lying on the couch in the restaurant manager's office. Lane pretends to care
about her health, but only because he wants her to get better because it's been
"Too goddamn long between drinks. To put it crassly."
This is how the story ends:
"Alone, Franny lay quite still, looking at the ceiling. Her lips began to
move, forming soundless words, and they continued to move."
What happens at the end of “Zooey” is
the mirror image, the happier version, of that tableau. Franny is listening to
the dial tone after Zooey has hung up. This is how Salinger frames her mindset
now:
"When she had replaced the phone,
she seemed to know what to do next, too. She cleared away all the smoking
things, then drew back the cotton bedspread from the bed she had been sitting
on, took off her slippers, and got into the bed. For some minutes, before she
fell into a deep, dreamless sleep, she just lay quiet, smiling at the
ceiling."
As we get closer to the end of “Zooey,”
Salinger becomes more explicit about his intentions, both artistic and
spiritual. He gives us clues. When Zooey walks into the old bedroom that
belonged to his brothers Seymour and Buddy, he reads some of the quotations
that Seymour had copied onto an old board. The first of which Salinger quotes
is not ambiguous:
“You have the right to work, but for
the work’s sake only. You have no right to the fruits of work. Desire for the
fruits of work must never be your motive in working. Never give way to
laziness, either.” This is from the Bhagavad Gita. This is the cessation of all unsatisfactory sensations.
The third noble truth:"Raise High the Roofbeam, Carpenters" and "Seymour An Introduction"
“Raise High the Roofbeam, Carpenters and Seymour An Introduction” combines two long stories that seek to find a way out of the suffering some members of the Glass family have experienced over the years. The writing here begins, very early, to let the reader (and certainly those critics who started to turn on Salinger) that the Glasses, and Salinger himself, and the very book they have in their hands, no longer exists for their, or Salinger's enjoyment. This is an exercise in melding the beliefs of the writer into the very DNA of the text itself — and further than that, into the experience of reading that text. It is the sound of the words, much like the saying of the Jesus prayer, that should bring the reader happiness, not in anything in it that is actually being said.
These
two stories show Salinger in a great mood. “Raise High The Roofbeam, Carpenters”
is one of the loveliest, most sustained pieces of comic writing accomplished by
any American writer. There is a happy mix of voices and activities. You can see
and hear these people. There are none of the “phonies” we’ve come to expect.
There isn’t an adolescent in sight (unless one wishes to count the immature
Seymour, who of course remains off stage.) As you read this story, you can
almost physically feel Salinger letting go, getting closer to how people should
feel when they no longer suffer, when they become whole with themselves.
The famous ending is not really so
ambiguous when you realize that Salinger was reducing everything to its
essence, and that if you let go of everything, you can be happy with yourself.
There is no need to explain, or even do anything, to be true to yourself.
If each of the nine stories in the
original collection were composed to express the notion of ever-present pain,
and if “Franny and Zooey” is an attempt to articulate the origin of that pain,
then, in these penultimate stories, the reader can see that Salinger (and his
characters) are letting go of that pain.
In “Seymour An Introduction,” the pain
of Seymour’s suicide is often referenced, but there is little residual pain of
this event as expressed by Buddy Glass about his brother.
Salinger also isn’t any longer
interested in making the reader happy. He’s immersing himself in the process of
the work he is doing: “And while I think an ecstatically happy prose writer can
do many things on the printed page—the best things, I’m frankly hoping—it’s
also true, and infinitely more self-evident, I suspect, that he can’t be
moderate or brief; he loses very nearly all his short paragraphs. He can’t be
detached—or only very rarely and suspiciously, on down-waves.”
He’s telling the reader what he’s
doing. Salinger is going to be happy in his work, and you can take it or leave
it: “Worst of all, I think, he’s no longer in a position to look after the
reader’s most immediate want; namely, to see the author get the hell on with
his story.”
Salinger then takes off on his own
sweet ride, taking issue with critics and academics — all of whom, he believes,
have misinterpreted his work — core religious issues (“But where does by far
the bulk, the whole ambulance load, of pain really come from?”), reader
expectations (he plainly tells the reader that his plan to lay out the history
of Seymour Glass in more detail has been abandoned), literary expectations (“…I
don’t dare go anywhere near the short story form. It eats up fat little
detached writers like me whole.” And even his voice, so immediately and widely
praised, he freely lets go of. “Oh, this
happiness is strong stuff” he writes in all italics, something the earlier
Salinger would never have done.
He also says this: “… the true poet has
no choice of material. The material plainly chooses him, not he it.” He is
being guided.
For more than 100 pages, Salinger
rambles about Seymour’s poems, his attitudes, his profession, his philosophy on
shooting marbles, and on the way he looks, the way he dresses, his athletic
prowess, a raggedy list of anything and everything that either amused Seymour
or someone else in the family, whether it was a ride on a bike or the memory of
something simple (Seymour’s cut hair jumping about in the barber’s chair).
Salinger (and Buddy) are deliberately
obtuse about everything: Seymour was either a great athlete, or not. He was
either handsome, or not. He was either amused, or not. He was an aesthete, or
not. He was sociable, or not. You decide.
This kind of dualism, in the writer, in
the narrator, in the characters and possibly in the reader, needs to be made
whole. It's even given a name in the "Seymour" story: Yankauer. This
is the last name (first name Ira) of a boy the Glass brothers played marbles
with. Ira Yankauer’s name begins with a syllable that is a colloquialism for an
American, most decidedly an American soldier. But it has a distinctively
Germanic sounding ending. The Yankauer. The Buddhist combat veteran. The
Irish-Jewish New Yorker who moved to the country. The most famous recluse in
the world. You name it.
Say what you will about the story, and
it is no doubt challenging to get through, there is no rancor in it. It may be,
as Salinger himself called it, “literary Cubism,” but he’s having a high old
time, reader (and critic) be damned.
One last thing. Salinger knows this is
all a cosmic joke. He titled this story, “Seymour An Introduction” but knew,
and the world knew, that Seymour was actually introduced to the world in 1948,
when he committed suicide.
The Fourth Noble Truth: "Hapworth
16, 1924"
Salinger, in “Seymour An Introduction,”
tells the reader what's in store with “Hapworth 16 1924.”: “I feel I have a
knowledge, a kind of editorial insight gained from all my failures over the
past eleven years to describe him on paper, and this knowledge tells me
[Seymour] cannot be got at with understatement.”
"Understatement" is not a
word that a reader or critic would ever attach to this odd piece of writing, although "odd" itself is an understatement. Had there been a more
quixotic piece of writing to ever appear in a modern mainstream publication?
Had there been comparable instances where a writer of proven abilities abandons
those abilities in order to achieve such personal and private goals?
("Hapworth" appeared in a single issue of The New Yorker in 1965.)
("Hapworth" appeared in a single issue of The New Yorker in 1965.)
"Hapworth 16 1924" is not, in any
way, an experimental piece. It isn't attempting to stretch stylistic boundaries of
short fiction. It's just that it's so absurd as to be utterly unbelievable. So
what was Salinger thinking?
He was thinking of the Fourth Noble
Truth, which is the Noble Truth of the Way Leading to the Cessation of
Suffering. It is the Noble Eightfold Path, that is to say: Right View, Right
Intention, Right Speech, Right Action, Right Livelihood, Right Effort, Right
Mindfulness and Right Concentration.
One
definition puts it this way: "This Noble Truth must be penetrated to by
cultivating the Path..." It is the way out of suffering, both for Seymour
and his creator.
The respected Salinger blog
"Dead Caulfields" puts Salinger's twinning of his work and faith this
way: "But perhaps the single teaching of Vedanta that most
informed Salinger's work—and possibly most affected his life—is the Vedantic
concept of karma yoga. Karma yoga teaches that everything in life—from one's
vocation to the smallest daily duty—can be approached as an act of service,
accomplished as a prayer, as a meditation, and can lead to a clearer
realization of God. Salinger readily embraced the concept of karma yoga as an
interpretation of his own craft. In short, he came to believe that his own work
– his writings – were potentially holy and he learned to regard his work as a
path to unity with God if approached and executed with humility."
Fully a quarter of this novella
is devoted to a catalogue of books and other writings that Seymour wants to
read during the weeks he has left at camp (Seymour is only seven
years old). Other moments in the story mention those things that make him
happy, whether it is his lustful thoughts about Mrs. Happy, the mother of a
fellow camper, to his fond thoughts of all his brothers and sisters. Seymour's
letter is a tone poem to bliss and happiness.
This is not the same thing as
saying it is a successful piece of writing. It isn't. But this is the Seymour
before any damage was done to him by war, by the world, by the cruelties that
other human beings can inflict on each other even during peacetime. This is the
happy Seymour, not the paranoid, damaged, off-putting Seymour of
"Bananafish." This is a Seymour that is pure and whole, one that is
almost pure energy and thought.
I
think Salinger made Seymour such an old soul (his vocabulary is absurdly
mature) in this story because he regretted the literary stunt that he pulled
off to such great success in 1948, when he had Seymour commit suicide. I
thoroughly agree with Charles McGrath in an essay he wrote for The New York
Times in 2008, called "Still Paging Mr. Salinger:" "It’s as if
Mr. Salinger realized, belatedly, that he had prematurely killed his best
character and wanted to make it up to him." I think that's entirely true.
Seymour was only 31 in "Bananafish," but how much fuller those 31
years would seem if he was intellectually and sexually fully developed by the
age of seven. Killing Seymour was the one thing Salinger could not undo,
literally speaking, so he was going to make it up to him.
So
pick a page, any page, in "Hapworth," and one finds the words
overflowing with a kind of generosity of spirit that is very much absent from
almost all of Salinger's earlier works: "Piled on top of all this good
fortune, what else does one find? A
capacity to make many wonderful friends in small numbers whom we will love
passionately and guard from uninstructive harm until our lives are finished and
who, in turn, will love us, too, and never let us down without very great
regret, which is a lot better, more guerdoning, more humorous than being let
down without any regret at all, be assured."
Or:
"I
quite ask you, though, to imagine how marvelous it is to see this chap, your
son Buddy, spring in a trice from a lad of five, who has already lost his heart
to every pencil in the universe, into a mature, swarthy author! How I wish I could lie on a pleasant cloud in
the distant future, perhaps with a good, firm, Northern Spy apple, and read
every single word he writes about this eventful,
pregnant party in the offing!"
But
if the Fourth Noble Truth is the path away from suffering or from material
gain, then it also must provoke the writer not to publish any more, which
requires satisfying vanity and may end in material gain.
Salinger admits this
"Seymour," and he knows it will cause him trouble:
"'Silence! Go forth, but tell no
man!' said the splendid Tsiang
Samdup. Quite right, though very
difficult and widely abhorred."
And then, at the end, Salinger says
"goodbye." After mentioning what kind of writing tablets Buddy
prefers to write on, Salinger says this: "Also worth keeping in mind, it
is this chap’s leonine devotion to his literary implements, I give you my word
of honor, that will be the eventual cause of his utter release, with honor and
happiness, from this enchanting vale of tears, laughter, redeeming human love,
affection, and courtesy.
"With
50,000 additional kisses from the two looming pests of Bungalow 7 who love you,
Most
cordially,
S.
G."
In this story, Salinger doesn't believe that the world is
a horrible, brutal place, full of phonies and section men and unthinking
academics; it is, rather, a "an enchanting vale of tears," a place of
laughter and "redeeming human love."
We have learned, in the the years since his death, that Salinger was not the recluse everyone once thought. He was involved in his community, but also fiercely protected by those lovely New Hampshirites in the town of Cornish.
What we now know is that he was trying to pursue, as the youthful, loving Seymour said, and as the Fourth Noble Truth would have it, the continuing utter release from all that caused him suffering and pain. He was trying to do it through his art.
Lars Trodson is the author of two novels, "Eagles Fly Alone" (http://amzn.to/1uRsL0E) and "Tide Turning." (http://amzn.to/1v38X9O)