J. D. Salinger: "The Sound of One Hand Clapping" Author(s): Tom Davis Source: Wisconsin Studies in Contemporary Literature, Vol. 4, No. 1, Special Number: Salinger, (Winter, 1963), pp. 41-47 Published by: University of Wisconsin Press Stable URL: http://www.jstor.org/stable/1207183 Accessed: 02/06/2008 12:51 Your use of the JSTOR archive indicates your acceptance of JSTOR's Terms and Conditions of Use, available at http://www.jstor.org/page/info/about/policies/terms.jsp. JSTOR's Terms and Conditions of Use provides, in part, that unless you have obtained prior permission, you may not download an entire issue of a journal or multiple copies of articles, and you may use content in the JSTOR archive only for your personal, non-commercial use. Please contact the publisher regarding any further use of this work. Publisher contact information may be obtained at http://www.jstor.org/action/showPublisher?publisherCode=uwisc. Each copy of any part of a JSTOR transmission must contain the same copyright notice that appears on the screen or printed page of such transmission.

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J. D. SALINGER: "THE SOUND OF ONE HAND CLAPPING" TOM DAVIS

Since the publication of "Teddy" in 1953, certain aspects of Zen Buddhism have become standard fixtures in the stories of J. D. Salinger. Each member of the Glass family, for example, has become more and more involved with Zen, until finally, in "Seymour: An Introduction," Buddy Glass sounds like a Zen master lecturing to a class of disciples - except, of course, Zen masters never lecture. Why Salinger uses certain symbols and ideas of Zen, however, is not so clear as the obvious fact that he does use them. Arthur Mizener suggests that allusions to Eastern myths and symbols are "efforts to find alternate ways of expressing what his stories are about." On the other hand, George Steiner asserts that Salinger's "cunning and somewhat shoddy use of Zen" is primarily commercial - "Zen is in fashion." Steiner's essay is petulant -

and superficial

-

for

Salinger's interest in Zen goes back more than ten years and is almost scholarly in its orientation; Zen is, in fact, the dominating force in most of his later fiction. It is the purpose of this paper to discuss the two central aspects of Zen thought, and to show, by contrasting "For Esm--with Love and Squalor" with "Zooey" that Salinger

fluenced by Zen.

is deeply -

perhaps harmfully

-

in-

In recent months the first signs of a rift in the love affair between Westerners and Zen Buddhists have appeared. Robert Elliot Fitch in The Odyssey of the Self-Centered Self writes that Zen is "not religion as the opiate of the people" but "religion as the opiate of the intelligentsia." In The Lotus and the Robot Arthur Koestler points out that the Zen Buddhist's ... impartial tolerance towards the killer and the killed,

a tolerance devoid of charity, makes one sceptical regarding the contribution which Zen Buddhism has to offer to the moral recovery of Japan - or any other country.

...

It has become a kind of moral nerve-gas

- colourless and without smell, but scented by all the pretty incense sticks which burn under the smiling Buddha statues. Such reactions may be due in part to the sometimes wildly extravagant claims made for Zen. One editor, for example, while admitting that he is making a "large claim," states that "we Westerners have only recently come to face certain realities of "One Hand Clapping"

41

life with which the Oriental has been living for centuries."l Since Zen is not a philosophy, ethical system, religion, or what have you, it is difficult to say what it is. Yet in the introductory remarks to his four volume set of haiku, R. H. Blyth (who should know) suggests that Zen is a certain way of thinking about life, a way of "living in accord with reality." And while Zen may be a many-headed monster there are two primary concepts which are central in Zen thought. One basic difference between the Eastern and Western way, according to D. T. Suzuki, is that in Zen there is "no struggle . . . between the finite and infinite, between the flesh and the means the "unspirit." To experience satori (enlightenment) the confusion of in of hitherto a new world unperceived folding a dualistically trained mind." To a member of the Zen sect, there are no contradictions, no polarities, no theses-antitheses - only the Tao, the Great It. That such Buddhist concepts are central to an understanding of Japanese fiction is noted by Nancy Wilson Ross in the introduction to The Temple of the Golden Pavilion by Yukio Mishima, Japan's most prolific young novelist: The 'moral' position from which we, as Westerners with a Puritan tradition, are accustomed to judge beIn fact haviour ... is missing from these pages. ... there seems to be little, if any, stress on familiar 'values'. Those dualisms iof black and white, body and soul, good and evil that we take so for granted are not to be found in The Temple of the Golden Pavilion. According to Zen, life itself is a unity, and the Western predilection for ignoring that unity results, so we are told, in the anxietyridden society of the West. In contrast, however, American fiction is not essentially monistic, but dualistic. The basic division in our literature, as R. W. B. Lewis describes it, is between the "party of memory" which is convinced of man's Original Sin and the "party of hope" which is convinced of man's innate goodness. Our greatest fiction (the party of memory) presents the conflict between stark opposites - guilt and purity, good and evil, experience and innocence. The oldest Buddhist poem ("The conflict between right and wrong/ Is the sickness of the mind") stands in direct contradiction to the polarities which have provided Western writers with the creative tension of art. Another major East-West difference is found in the Buddhist concept of detachment, a mental stillness, a complete release from attachment to the objective world. The term or the 1 "Introduction,"Zen Buddhism: Selected Writings of D. T. Suzuki, ed. by William Barrett (Garden City, N. Y., 1956), p. ix. 42

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idea occurs in almost every treatise on Zen - Zen in archery, in swordsmanship, in painting, in poetry, in flower arrangement, in calligraphy, and so on. It is one of D. T. Suzuki's favorite expressions. Yet Suzuki points out that Westerners have used the term in characterizing Western saints, and that he is "firmly convinced that the Christian experiences are not after all different from those of the Buddhist. Terminology is all that divides us and stirs us up to a wasteful dissipation of energy."2 It is true that the term has been used by Western writers, Meister Eckhart for one. Eckhart, however, is hardly the majority spokesman for Western faith; though detachment is an aspect of Western piety, it is a minor component, and no more, of the central body of Western religious philosophy. The common Western use of the concept is stated by St. Paul: "You are to be in the world, but not of the world." The Buddhist's use of the term is more "Not in the world nor of the world." Zen is, of course, not so simple as the above summary implies. But neither is it totally incomprehensible (as we are often told) to the Western mind. Though any summary version of Zen may be treating a complex historical-religious tradition with more abruptness than it deserves, the concepts of oneness and detachment are clearly stated in nearly every discussion of Zen; they also provide a clear index to the differences between the Salinger of "Esme" and the Salinger of "Zooey." It has become popular in the last year or so, especially since the publication of Franny and Zooey, to be "judicious" in praising Salinger's work, to put him in his "true" (second-rate) place in American fiction. So he has been called "cute," "irritating and pretentious," "catty and snide and bigoted in the most thorough sense."3 Though Salinger's reputation may be out of all proportion to his relatively slender output, it is not wholly undeserved, for as even his most antagonistic critics will admit, Salinger is an enormously gifted writer. "Esme," generally considered his best story, and perhaps destined to be one of the most famous stories of the twentieth century, is a clear example of the "magic" of Salinger's talent. For one thing, Salinger's control of the structure of the story is an excellent example of fictional technique. In "Esme," 2 D. T. Suzuki, "Meister Eckhart and Buddhism," Mysticism: Christian and Buddhist (New York, 1957), p. 8. 3 The first comment is, of course, Alfred Kazin's. His remark is qualified enough so that the criticism is partially offset by his admiration of Salinger's talent. The last two comments occur in essays printed in a Ramparts symposium on Salinger (May 1962).

"One Hand Clapping"

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Salinger balances two different points of view: first person narration in section one; center of consciousness in section two. The pattern is not new: Faulkner's use of balancing points of view is far more complex in The Sound and the Fury and the Snopes trilogy. But the movement from one section to another ordinarily involves an undesirable break in direction (technically far more of a problem in shorter fiction than in the novel). Salinger avoids the break by the direct address to the reader at the beginning of both sections, and by the "clever disguise" of the first person narrator as Sergeant X in section two. Character development, impossible through first person narration, is accomplished by the objective distance gained by the shift in point of view. The story then concludes with a direct address to the reader (and to Esme), by the letter-writer of section one and the Sergeant of section two, whose facilities are now, six years later, intact. Each section supplements the other: section one leads us back in time, to a "time without parallel"; section two reveals that time as the "suffering of being unable to love"; and the final paragraph brings the circle to its close in the present, for the watch, a symbol of time overcome by love, has destroyed Sergeant X's hell. Salinger's method of avoiding a broken-backed story (not quite as successful in "A Perfect Day for Bananafish") is so obvious that one wonders why someone else has not used it this way. Salinger did - and the technique is old. "Esme" also reveals Salinger's unmistakable method of characterization, his uncanny power of observation which is one of the clearest marks of his talent. Most of the secondary characters in the story are quite recognizable types. Yet in his identification of the type, Salinger's characteristic touch adds a certain roundness which is both visual and precise. In "Esme" there are the narrator's "breathtakingly levelheaded" wife, the choir coach, "an enormous woman in tweeds," the children who lift their hymn-books "like so many underage weight-lifters," Charles, whose eyes are full of the "pride of someone who knows a really good riddle or two," and Clay's girl friend, who writes from "a paradise of triple exclamation points and inaccurate observations." Esme's description is "classic" Salinger: She was about thirteen, with straight ash-blond hair of ear-lobe length, an exquisite forehead, and blase eyes that, I thought, might very possibly have counted the house. Her voice was distinctly separate from the other children's voices, and not just because she was seated nearest me. It had the best upper register, the sweetestsounding, the surest, and it automatically led the way. 44

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The young lady, however, seemed slightly bored with her own singing ability, or perhaps just with the time and place; twice, between verses, I saw her yawn. It was a ladylike yawn, a closed-mouth yawn, but you couldn't miss it; her nostril wings gave her away. Salinger's "magic" is surely tied up in his ability to create a gallery of characters, with a precision and wit clearly his own. As Zooey would say of his creator: "you jump straight the hell to the heart of the matter." And even Steiner admits that '4Esme" is a "wonderfully moving story, perhaps the best study to come out of the war of the way in which the greater facts of hatred play havoc in the private soul." "Esme," strikes the central note in all of Salinger's work - a world without love is a hell of a world. Few writers have presented that world as convincingly as Salinger does in "Esme." "Esme" is in the central tradition of the "party of memory" and presents those dichotomies which are basic to Western fiction - love and squalor. "Zooey," however, is the product of a Zen-infected guru and reveals the things which many critics have begun to question, especially in terms of direction, in Salinger's latest work. The story is not as successful as the earlier stories, partly because Salinger is too consciously working out his saga of the Glasses, planting dates, leading the reader, inserting footnotes, and so on; and partly because the story is an uneasy marriage of East and West. There is no reason, for example, why the story could not begin with the scene between Zooey and his mother - no reason except that the prologue and long letter provide Salinger with a chance to get on with his saga-making and Zen indoctrination lectures. And if Salinger's central concern is the "search for love," then "Zooey" reveals a kind of love which is a strained synthesis of East and West and, in the end, a kind of love which is unsatisfactory. In "Zooey," the story of Franny's spiritual crisis is resumed, apparently one week later. But it is incorrect, I think, to read "Zooey" as a companion piece to the earlier story simply because it resolves Franny's conflict. It is Zooey's story; and the spiritual crisis involved is as much his as Franny's, and perhaps more. Zooey's flights of wit are colored by his cynical tone and bitter remarks. About Seymour and Buddy he says: ... I'm so sick of their names I could cut my throat.... This whole goddam house stinks of ghosts. I don't mind being haunted by a dead ghost, but I resent like hell being haunted by a half-dead one. The narrator comments that Zooey treats his mother with the "doting brutality of an apache dancer toward his partner." "One Hand Clapping"

45

Franny says to Bessie Glass: "He's so bitter about everything." Buddy cautions him: "You demand something from the performing arts that just isn't residual there. For heaven's sake, be careful." And his mother adds: "You can't live in the world with such strong likes and dislikes." For all his precocious wit, Zooey is involved in a spiritual crisis as much as Franny. Franny's experiences have been his own - are still his own, for the world of television is the collegiate world under floodlights. Franny, with her "Jesus prayer," comes straight out of Zooey's past to upset his uneasy truce; he is compelled to think through the dark night of his own soul. And Zooey's offering is Seymour's "Fat Lady" who is, of course, "Christ Himself." In terms of the story, the image of the Fat Lady is partly acceptable, for it apparently works for Zooey, at least where members of his own family are concerned. It also seems valid to Franny. The solution which Zooey proposes, however, is born of desperation and is his uneasy truce with a world of "writers and directors and producers" and "Mr. Tupper and his goddam cousins by the dozens." Ivan Karamazov remarks to Alyosha (the one member of his family whom he appears to love): "One can love one's neighbours in the abstract, or even at a distance, but at close quarters it's almost impossible." Zooey is related to Ivan in this respect, for Zooey's love is chillingly impersonal, centered in an abstract and distant image. He tells Franny, "What I don't like . .. is the way you talk about all these people. I mean you don't just despise what they represent - you despise them. It's too damn personal" [italics mine]. And again, over the telephone: ". .. the only thing that counts in the religious life is detachment.... Detachment, buddy, and only detachment." Love, in the Western tradition, is a personal relationship where it is impossible to be detached. For loving means being involved with people, concerned about them, and sometimes sharing their suffering and pain. But Zooey's practical relation with people is not one of love

but judgment: ". .. I sit in judgment on every poor ulcerous I judge straight from the colon when I bastard I know. ... judge. .. ." At close quarters, Zooey's judgment and bitterness

destroy the Fat Lady image. Alyosha, interestingly enough, is for Dostoyevsky a symbol of universal love, for Alyosha never judges. For Zooey, love for the "fat lady" in the family is one thing - he loves Bessie. But the Fat Lady in the audience is an impersonal and abstract image, cancerous and ugly - and distant. When Buddy Glass writes to Zooey that "all legitimate religious study must lead to unlearning the differences, the illusory 46

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differences, between boys and girls, animals and stones, day and night, heat and cold," he is parroting any one of a dozen writers on Zen. And when Zooey insists that "detachment" is the only thing that counts in the religious life, he is doing the same. Seymour's Fat Lady, strikingly like the "fat Buddha," is a comfortable way of evading the responsibilities inherent in the recognition of right and wrong; it is also a way of holding life at arm's length. A symbol of the humanity Zooey cannot stand (which must also include Lane Coutell, as Carl Bode has rightly pointed out) and of a world view not hindered by a "dualistically trained mind," the Fat Lady indicates how far Salinger's search has led himfrom Father Zossima to Bodhidharma - and his East-West attempted merger has led him into a masked form of and withdrawal. rejection In a way which Salinger cannot possibly have intended, the koan headnote to Nine Stories sums up just how much he has been influenced by Zen Buddhism: ". . . the sound of one hand clapping." To deplore the influence of Zen on Salinger's art is not to indulge in cultural chauvinism, but simply to state that Zen's oneness and detachment are alien to the Western artist's struggle between love and squalor - the sound of two hands clapping. One hand does not clap; it only waves in a vacuum where the battle is never joined.

"One Hand Clapping"

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