Gratuitous

Adam Kirsch means this to be a criticism of J.D. Salinger:

The obsessive inventory of the family's apartment in "Franny and Zooey"—there are page-long lists, one of which includes "three radios (a 1927 Freshman, a 1932 Stromberg-Carlson, and a 1941 R.C.A.)"—is not the kind of detail novelists use to capture social or psychological truth. It is more like the gratuitous, self-delighting detail children use when inventing fantasy worlds.

Kirsch thinks that on the evidence of the later published work, Salinger was moving toward a fiction that was "not a way of exploring reality, but a substitute for it." If it turns out that additional work by Salinger exists and that it further extends this emphasis on "inventing fantasy worlds" and eschews the futile gesturing after "social or psychological truth," I'll actually be much more likely to read it.

Comments

[Michael Lockridge]

Ah, inventing fantasy worlds! Which, of course, is what I do. I have not read Salinger for quite some time, something with this reminder I intend to correct. "Filtered through as a kind of lament" lends a bit of perspective for the reading.

You are invited to read Marcus of Abderus and the Inn at the Edge of the World, the first novel in an exciting new fantasy adventure series. Did you enjoy visiting Middle Earth? Valdemar? Spend some time at the Edge of the World. Come for the view. Stay for the adventure.

[David "Waggish" Auerbach]

Those minor authors Homer and Joyce also made extensive use of lists.

[Frances Madeson]

“How can you grieve for a writer who has been, for all practical purposes, dead for half a century—one defined by his refusal to publish or even to appear in public?”

Well, Jack, just imagine a world where everyone acted like Salinger, refusing to participate in celebrity culture, refusing to bring more product to market. These are “unwholesome” positions to the WSJ, if one thinks being made whole always refers to money, positions that render Salinger not just a worthy, but necessary, target for mockage, ideologically speaking. If Kirsch has to struggle to make the case editorially it hardly matters because the headline says it all. They don’t just want Salinger dead, they want him long dead.

[Jack]

So what is Mr. Kirsch's point?

[Josh]

Are you saying that capturing is impossible, so all gesturing is futile?

[Edmond Caldwell]

And from the immortal Jay McInerney:

“As for the purported trove of fiction, I’m skeptical. Not of its existence, but of its quality. Anyone who’s read “Seymour: An Introduction” or most especially his last published work, “Hapworth 16, 1924” will wonder just how readable his later fiction is. “Hapworth” is a rambling, self referential, improbable letter home written by an alleged seven year old at camp. By the time he wrote it, Salinger seems to have decided to dispense with most of the niceties of storytelling, and to be talking to himself more rather than to the readers of Catcher in the Rye. I suspect we are going to be disappointed, but I would love to be proven wrong.”

Rambling monologues that dispense with the niceties of storytelling -- horrors! Even worse -- Austrian!!!

[Jacob Russell]

"It is more like the gratuitous, self-delighting detail children use when inventing fantasy worlds." This is really quite breathtaking... that he would see this as a fault! Oh my god, lets us above all things, never confuse art and literature with PLAY!

I first read Franny and Zooey in my late 40's--and was astonished at how fresh it seemed... enchanting, in the best sense of that word--and it was precisely what Kirsch finds objectionable (what a sad stuffy old fusspot!) --a marvelous sense of the everyday... the everyday as marvelous, as a child might discover it. Yes, with Salinger it is filtered through as a kind of lament, as something lost, but for the reader, it's something that one might find again if only one could shake off the layers of false sophistication.