Учебно-методическое пособие по работе с книгой Девять рассказов Дж. Сэлинджер

indirect way possible and always with the feeling that the rationality of words can never wholly describe his message as one critic puts it

When the gesture aspires to pure religious expression, language reaches into silence.

The attraction of the koan (and the Japanese haiku poem, another of Salinger's fixations which is named after the great koan writer Hakuin Ose) is its compactness, its emotional detachment yet quiet passion -qualities best characterized by the term "moksha". Moksha is a state of impersonal compassion, an attempt to avoid worldliness and replace it with an effortless and continuous love.

And this is the main aim of nearly all of Salinger's characters. One book puts it as "a condition of being without losing our identity, at one with the universe, and it requires... a certain harmony between our imaginative and spiritual responsiveness to all things." This is an almost perfect description of the aims of Salinger as a writer and his characters as people. They crave oneness and sense from the nonsensekoan that is the world, but instead are hindered by the human egos of themselves and those around them. This is the spiritual search Salinger expresses in his writing.

Writer

One of the problems posed for a nonconformist artist is whether he should be a sellout and please the public for easy money or pass it up and work for his own sake (Salinger 57). This is the main issue in "The Varioni Brothers", the story in which the misfit hero first appeared. This was also a problem for Holden's older brother D.B., who "used to be just a regular writer", but is now "out in Hollywood, D.B., being a prostitute" ("Catcher in the Rye").

Writing is the common method of communication for Salinger's heroes. Joe Varioni is a writer, Raymond Ford is a poet, and Seymour and Teddy keep diaries. Writing is a symbol of the artist's honesty and creativity, while the spoken word is not trustworthy. In the case of Seymour, his brother Buddy, as narrator of Raise High the Roof Beam, Carpenters and Seymour: An Introduction, attempts to resurrect his

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dead brother through a thorough description of his life and philosophies.

Salinger writes that we can't live without love.

In Salinger's writings, only children and adults influenced by children are capable of loving; those who can't love are prostitutes and phonies (Heiserman, Arthur and James E. Miller, Jr. "J.D. Salinger: Some Crazy Cliff").

NINE STORIES

By J. D. Salinger.

Threads of Innocence

By EUDORA WELTY

J.D. Salinger's writing is original, first rate, serious and beautiful. Here are nine of his stories, and one further reason that they are so interesting, and so powerful seen all together, is that they are paradoxes. From the outside, they are often very funny: inside, they are about heartbreak, and convey it; they can do this because they are pure. The whole nine have an enchanting ease about them, a deceptively looseappearing texture, a freshness and liveliness which might bid fair to disarm the reader, as he begins, say, the remarkable "For Esme with Love and Squalor." Nothing could be further from what Mr. Salinger is about to do to him.

The stories concern children a good deal of the time, but they are God's children. Mr. Salinger's work deals with innocence, and starts with innocence: from there it can penetrate a full range of relationships, follow the spirit's private adventure, inquire into grave problems gravely – into life and death and human vulnerability and into the occasional mystical experience where age does not, after a point, any longer apply. Mr. Salinger's world urban, suburban, family, mostly of the Eastern seaboard is never a clue to the way he will treat it: he seems to write without preconception of shackling things.

He has the equipment of a born writer to begin with – his sensitive eye, his incredibly good ear, and something I can think of no word for but grace. There is not a trace of sentimentality about his work, al-

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though it is full of children that are bound to be adored. He pronounces no judgements, he is simply gifted with having them, and with having them passionately.

The material of these stories is quite different, again, from his subject. Death, war, the flaws in human relationships, the crazy inability to make plain to others what is most transparent and plain to ourselves and nearest our hearts; the lack or loss of a way to offer our passionate feeling belief, in their full generosity; the ruthless cruelty of conventional social judgements and behavior; the persistent longing – reaching sometimes to fantasy – to return to some state of purity and grace; these subjects lie somewhere near the core of J.D. Salinger's work.

They all pertain to the lack of something in the world, and it might he said that what Mr. Salinger has written about so far is the absence of love. Owing to that absence comes the spoilation of innocence, or else the triumph in death of innocence over the outrage and corruption that lie in wait for it.

The feeling may arise from these warm, uneven stories (no writer worth his salt is even, or can be) that Mr. Salinger has never, here, directly touched upon what he has the most to say about: love. Love averts itself in pity, laughter, or a gesture or vision of finality possibly too easy or simple in stories that are neither easy nor simple in any degree.

Mr. Salinger is a very serious artist, and it is likely that what he has to say will find many forms as time goes by – interesting forms, too. His novel, "The Catcher in the Rye," was good and extremely moving, although – for this reader – all its virtues can be had in a short story by the same author, where they are somehow more at home.

What this reader loves about Mr. Salinger's stories is that they honor what is unique and precious in each person on earth. Their author has the courage – it is more like the earned right and privilege – to experiment at the risk of not being understood. Best of all, he has a loving heart.

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APPENDIX 2.

It is well known that Salinger’s writing is influenced by Buddhism. His works are written in accordance with art of Zen and Sanskrit poetics. Among their principles are:

1.The principle of equal creating activity of the writer and the reader as the creator and the one who accepts the aesthetic object respectively. The ability to see and decipher the message is as important as to create it. (It results in a lot of ambiguities and absence of direct explanations made by the author.)

2.The principle of inexhaustibility and eternity of the world. It causes inevitable gap between the object one wants to depict and the depicted result. The writers depict the complicated through simple things, which must reveal unexpected depth.

Besides, a real work of art is supposed to have two layers - explicit and suggested (implicit). The more the author’s views are veiled, the better. The essence of art is to evoke images with the help of faint hints and reminiscences. You must pay attention not to what is said, but to what is implied.

The hidden message is understood only by those selected few who have supersensuous ability and in whose souls there are reminiscences about the previous incarnations.

According to the theory of Dhvani (the revealing, implicit meaning) this hidden message may be:

•a simple idea

•a figure of speech

•a certain poetic mood (Rasa)

The latter is considered the main aim of literature. (You can find the types of Rasa on page 217 of your book.)

(If you want to learn more about principles of Sanskrit poetics and aesthetics, go to http://ignca.nic.in/ps_03008.htm)

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APPENDIX 3.

A Perfect Day for Banana-fish

Bananafish is a kind of herring. But Banana

1)in Indian mythology is connected with love;

2)is considered a symbol of weakness, because the banana tree has no wood trunk, it is made of leaves.

In psychoanalysis feet are considered connected with carnal desires.

Seymour’s name is pronounced as ['si:mə]

Number 6 is connected in Zen-Buddhism with the number of evil passions – love, hate, pride, ignorance, doubts and false views. They are believed to cause zest for life – the main cause of sufferings.

Uncle Wiggily in Connecticut

Hoopla = here: how people are.

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