Suffer the Little Children – Not Fools

I assure you: Whoever does not welcome the kingdom of God like a little child will not enter into it. – Mark 10:15

The passing of J.D. Salinger last week has unleashed a pack of tenured hounds to give mouth in the hunt for the stag of truth. That most of those loosed are curs incapable of discerning the back trail from the front and who will bark on covered sign like they’re running by sight will not diminish their marks since all the judging is done, these days, from around the fire. You can get points just for being loud. It is a time for all to return in thought to their glory days, for retrospectives, for recalling how the works of Salinger changed the direction of American literature and their own lives.

I might as well join in – old hound that I am. I never hunted much with the pack and could never run the front, except maybe on the occasional cutback where I’ve been known to swing a little wide at the risk of getting thrown. I am not registered with the academic AKC, have no hope of winning best of show (I do know my line for the last couple of generations), and I am certainly no Salinger scholar. In fact his death surprised me, as I had no idea he was still alive. His writing has been so long dead to me that I suppose I assumed he was as well. This is not to say that Salinger’s best-known novel, Catcher in the Rye, is without literary merit. I can appreciate his skill in sustaining a unique and memorable voice throughout the work – as for the rest … well … you know those pictures they show to high school assemblies – the ones of smashed, bloody cars resulting from reckless or drunken driving? That’s my view.

Holden Caulfield might agree with Jesus concerning little children. He would probably say that a little child can get into the kingdom because the child is not a phony. Yet it never seems to occur to Caulfield that one could possibly regain the innocence of childhood without being childish. He would never have grasped the paradox Jesus articulates in urging us to be wise as serpents and harmless as doves. He would have dismissed the too large, too deep concept as he did in mocking the morality of a well-to-do Christian undertaker. Holden’s fantasy job that gives the book its title does pay homage to protecting innocence, but he appears unwilling to surrender any of his own adolescence to mature into childlikeness. Given Caulfield’s macabre clinging to a passing hormonal state, is it any wonder that this book is required reading among two or three waves of the indoctrination syndicate’s literature goombas? They do not want us to believe in Paradise Restored. We should learn to embrace the emptiness and celebrate it. We are brave when we do so.

Catcher in the Rye and Franny and Zooey are akin to sacred scripture of the leftists for in these books Salinger gave them the authority of naming their own Unforgiveable Sin: phoniness. But we all know that. There is a more subtle error in Catcher in the Rye that bothered me when I first read it in high school. I was unable to say why it was wrong but it nagged me for years.

At one point, we read of an exchange between Holden’s older brother, D.B., and his since-deceased younger brother, Allie, with regard to D.B.’s service in World War II. Allie suggests that D.B.’s writing might benefit from his wider experience in the war. D.B. counters by asking Allie who is the better “war poet”: Emily Dickinson or Rupert Brooke. Allie responds correctly that it is Emily Dickinson.

The truth is, of course, that Dickinson is simply the better poet – period – whether speaking of wars or roses. Brooke is, like many a minor poet, content with sentimentality well-expressed. His work is patriotic and inspiring but no where near the universal human truth turned up by the genius of Dickinson. Salinger cleverly implies that Brooke was the lesser poet because he was a soldier. Brooke knew war in a way Dickinson never could. That he was unable to convey that in poetic form does not take away from the truth of it. It is ironic that Salinger follows Brooke in settling for sentimentality well-expressed rather than a full pursuit of the truth in his own writings.

As an off the point thought, this may help us understand the left today. To the adolescent mind winning an argument is the same as being right.

Salinger’s work is deceiving. He holds up a mirror to us, but, like all mirrors, it shows only the surface. Slyly handled, mirrors can give the impression of depth that does not exist. His post-modern heroes study their own faces intently -- but never search their souls, which is to be expected since the post-modern hero has no soul.