Subject: Re: Literary Faith
AntiUtopia@aol.com
Date: Sat Jan 22 2000 - 23:26:48 EST
In a message dated 1/22/00 6:53:25 PM Eastern Standard Time, wh14@is9.nyu.edu
writes:
> Yes! I think there's something about the fictive reality of Salinger's
> later texts that makes spritiual imagining more viable than reading
> bibles, I Ching, Upanisads, etc..
>
> DDSBP for example, does more to give me a sense of epiphany and clear
> realization than reading about satori as a god seeker. I
> always thought it was the aesthetic context of it that tickled my
> spiritual buzz but there may be more here than spiritual and aesthetic
> linking...why is Salinger attracting spiritual readings with relatively
> littel spritual text?
>
> will
Salinger is distilling the essence of the Upanishads, Bible, etc., and
recontextualizing (in his own way) them in a world with which you are
familiar. I don't think the message is substantially different, just the
cultural referents within which it is placed. Easier to empathize with Zooey
arguing with his mother in the bathroom than with David tending sheep. We've
all done the former, and few of us can even imagine very well what the latter
is like...
Jim
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