some reflections from my writings on Salinger.-Ron in Australia:tup:
-----------------
THE SEARCH
Some sympathetic critics of American writer J.D. Salinger seem to have found a philosophical basis for his silence. They try to establish that Salinger's silence after he achieved fame by writing The Catcher in the Rye was not merely an act of whimsy or a publicity stunt, but a conscious intellectual and spiritual stance worthy of sober critical attention by critics. The silence of Salinger, the cessation of his language output, is difficult to understand. Salinger's gesture of silence and withdrawal may be part of a larger effort to enact in life the values he hitherto problematized in art.
Ultimately, in silence, his ideals of life and art coalesce. Two of the most fundamental concerns of Salinger's career have been his search for "right living" as a human being and "right expression" as an artist. Moreover, he is one of the few modern writers whose art and life complement each other so well that one seems to be the extension of the other. Ian Hamilton records Leila Hadley remembering Salinger talking of Holden Caulfield, the main character in Catcher, as a "real" person. He represented Salinger's own aversion to cliches and his measured speech habits and silence, like his own character Raymond Ford in The Inverted Forest: "He did not speak much; he did not speak unless he had to speak." -Ron Price, "Source Unknown," The Internet, 20 September 2002.
Ron Price, the author of this prose-poem, was beginning to acquire both sympathetic and unsympathetic critics as well as not a few enthusiasts. He had not achieved the kind of fame that Salinger acquired in the 1950s through his novels and he was notlikely to do so. And so he did not have to withdraw into silence because of this fame to protect his personal privacy. Price's withdrawal from the world of employment and the demands of what he had found to be extensive community responsibilities into his world of writing was part of that same search of Salinger for "right living" as a human being and "right expression" as an artist, at least what was right for him in the middle years(65-75) of late adulthood(60-80) and old age(80++), if he lasted that long. Price saw his art, his poetry, and his life as a compliment to each other, an extension of each other. Price had come to require large quantities of silence. Creativity and silence contained great healing. He felt the need for their healing waters. He also found an amount, a quantity, a modicum of the social, one he wanted to keep within bounds and that fitted into his solitude. In the global Baha'i community you could have wall-to-wall people or complete solitude or anything in-between. For everything there was a season and for him, after 50 years of the social-season(1949-1999), he was ready for solitude.-Ron Price, Pioneering Over Four Epochs, 20 September, 2002 updated on hearing of the death of J.D. Salinger at age 91 on 30 January 2010.
Did you find your
right living, J.D.?
Did you find your
right expression??
after all that
David Copperfield
kind of crap..........
you had to endure.
I found it, J.D......
way back in '59 &
have spent all my
years giving form
and expression to
its enfless ways...
circumambulating
the City of God....
the celestial Kaaba
that has so recently
descended from.....
a heavenly source.
Ron Price
20 September 2002
updated 30/1/10...
--------------------------------
DEEP SPIRITUAL SATISFACTION
For several years in the late 80s and early 90s I taught Roman history: 133 BC to 14 AD and Greek history: 78 BC to 4 BC in a Tafe College in Perth Western Australia. I could not help, during those years, but be drawn to the similarities, usually arguable, between Roman and Greek civilization and our new and emerging global civilization. Tonight the Great Railway Journey: London to Arcadia on ABC TV reminded me, yet again, of these similarities. The following poem grew out of the contemplation of these similarities. -Ron Price, Pioneering Over Three Epochs, Unpublished Manuscript, 1999.
Your world1 was in endless turmoil
until he came2
and your prescription was
the virtues of rural life
in an Augustan empire.
In the end, though,
it was all a chimera
as you surmised in
your trenchant pessimism.
The Genuine Article
was just around the corner.3
We who are your heirs
have rejected your heritage.
I taught one of the last
classes in Roman history
outside the universities
in western civilization.
Rome had ceased to
satisfy deep spiritual
needs for some time,
at least since that
David Copperfield
kind of crap Salinger
wrote of back in 51.4
From where would
this satisfaction come?
1 the Roman poet Virgil(70-19 BC)
2 the emperor Augustus
3 Christ was born 15 years after the death of Virgil. Lack of reconciliation is a theme that permeates Virgils epic The Aeneid. Virgil was personally pessimistic about the future. Virgil saw a rampant materialism and a spiritual chaos all around him. He was personally preoccupied with the notion of unity, partly because all his life in the Roman Republic he had seen wars and heard of rumors of wars. What Rome needed was insight not cleverness; true unity and spirituality. Virgil did not see it anywhere, although he did enjoy a nostalgic romanticism, rooted in ancient rural life in the Roman world, at least in his more optimistic moments.
4 J.D. Salinger, Catcher in the Rye, 1951, these words are from the opening lines.
Ron Price
13 November 1999
-----------------
THE SEARCH
Some sympathetic critics of American writer J.D. Salinger seem to have found a philosophical basis for his silence. They try to establish that Salinger's silence after he achieved fame by writing The Catcher in the Rye was not merely an act of whimsy or a publicity stunt, but a conscious intellectual and spiritual stance worthy of sober critical attention by critics. The silence of Salinger, the cessation of his language output, is difficult to understand. Salinger's gesture of silence and withdrawal may be part of a larger effort to enact in life the values he hitherto problematized in art.
Ultimately, in silence, his ideals of life and art coalesce. Two of the most fundamental concerns of Salinger's career have been his search for "right living" as a human being and "right expression" as an artist. Moreover, he is one of the few modern writers whose art and life complement each other so well that one seems to be the extension of the other. Ian Hamilton records Leila Hadley remembering Salinger talking of Holden Caulfield, the main character in Catcher, as a "real" person. He represented Salinger's own aversion to cliches and his measured speech habits and silence, like his own character Raymond Ford in The Inverted Forest: "He did not speak much; he did not speak unless he had to speak." -Ron Price, "Source Unknown," The Internet, 20 September 2002.
Ron Price, the author of this prose-poem, was beginning to acquire both sympathetic and unsympathetic critics as well as not a few enthusiasts. He had not achieved the kind of fame that Salinger acquired in the 1950s through his novels and he was notlikely to do so. And so he did not have to withdraw into silence because of this fame to protect his personal privacy. Price's withdrawal from the world of employment and the demands of what he had found to be extensive community responsibilities into his world of writing was part of that same search of Salinger for "right living" as a human being and "right expression" as an artist, at least what was right for him in the middle years(65-75) of late adulthood(60-80) and old age(80++), if he lasted that long. Price saw his art, his poetry, and his life as a compliment to each other, an extension of each other. Price had come to require large quantities of silence. Creativity and silence contained great healing. He felt the need for their healing waters. He also found an amount, a quantity, a modicum of the social, one he wanted to keep within bounds and that fitted into his solitude. In the global Baha'i community you could have wall-to-wall people or complete solitude or anything in-between. For everything there was a season and for him, after 50 years of the social-season(1949-1999), he was ready for solitude.-Ron Price, Pioneering Over Four Epochs, 20 September, 2002 updated on hearing of the death of J.D. Salinger at age 91 on 30 January 2010.
Did you find your
right living, J.D.?
Did you find your
right expression??
after all that
David Copperfield
kind of crap..........
you had to endure.
I found it, J.D......
way back in '59 &
have spent all my
years giving form
and expression to
its enfless ways...
circumambulating
the City of God....
the celestial Kaaba
that has so recently
descended from.....
a heavenly source.
Ron Price
20 September 2002
updated 30/1/10...
--------------------------------
DEEP SPIRITUAL SATISFACTION
For several years in the late 80s and early 90s I taught Roman history: 133 BC to 14 AD and Greek history: 78 BC to 4 BC in a Tafe College in Perth Western Australia. I could not help, during those years, but be drawn to the similarities, usually arguable, between Roman and Greek civilization and our new and emerging global civilization. Tonight the Great Railway Journey: London to Arcadia on ABC TV reminded me, yet again, of these similarities. The following poem grew out of the contemplation of these similarities. -Ron Price, Pioneering Over Three Epochs, Unpublished Manuscript, 1999.
Your world1 was in endless turmoil
until he came2
and your prescription was
the virtues of rural life
in an Augustan empire.
In the end, though,
it was all a chimera
as you surmised in
your trenchant pessimism.
The Genuine Article
was just around the corner.3
We who are your heirs
have rejected your heritage.
I taught one of the last
classes in Roman history
outside the universities
in western civilization.
Rome had ceased to
satisfy deep spiritual
needs for some time,
at least since that
David Copperfield
kind of crap Salinger
wrote of back in 51.4
From where would
this satisfaction come?
1 the Roman poet Virgil(70-19 BC)
2 the emperor Augustus
3 Christ was born 15 years after the death of Virgil. Lack of reconciliation is a theme that permeates Virgils epic The Aeneid. Virgil was personally pessimistic about the future. Virgil saw a rampant materialism and a spiritual chaos all around him. He was personally preoccupied with the notion of unity, partly because all his life in the Roman Republic he had seen wars and heard of rumors of wars. What Rome needed was insight not cleverness; true unity and spirituality. Virgil did not see it anywhere, although he did enjoy a nostalgic romanticism, rooted in ancient rural life in the Roman world, at least in his more optimistic moments.
4 J.D. Salinger, Catcher in the Rye, 1951, these words are from the opening lines.
Ron Price
13 November 1999
