All entries for Saturday 30 September 2006

‘The phonies were coming in the goddam window”– not quite what you might be expecting.

No, don’t be alarmed, I’m not writing about The Catcher in the Rye, despite the references to goddam phonies. Although I would like to, having poured over it innumerable times in the depths of teenage blues, and beyond- and the protagonist being my first true love at the age of 13 (who could resist a 17yr old who says: “Sex is something I really don’t understand too hot. You never know where the hell you are”?). But it’s part an unwillingness to align myself with John Lennon’s assassinator Mark Chapman- who famously held Salinger’s book when committing the infamous act-, part avoidance of cliché, and part total fascination with a less-known writer whom I heard of through Holden Caulfield, protagonist of Catcher.

Ring Lardner- one of the few writers whom Holden would very much like to ring up and chat to (that is his definition of a top class author), one of the highest-paid US authors of his time, one of the not-quite forgotten greats. What attracts me to his works is the authenticity of the real American voices he captures, and the ambivalence with which he treats these voices. A friend of mine, also claiming Catcher to be one of her ‘significant’ books (a claim held my many, and a claim also not altogether invalidated by the number of people who make it), was trying to describe to me Franny and Zooey (another book of Salinger’s). I foolishly asked: “What happens in it?”, to which she mockingly replied: “Well, what happens in Catcher?”. ‘A young man leaves school and runs off to NYC for a couple of days’ hardly captures the essence of this book- because the essence of this book does not lie in its plot: instead, its power lies in its protagonist’s voice, the style of the narrative, and this like Lardner at his most modern. Take, for example, the short story that has been dubbed his most modern and experimental: Golden Honeymoon. It depicts a couple taking a winter holiday in Florida in a resort filled with elderly people. They meet another couple there, and the huisband of this couple is a former beau of the narrator’s wife. They pass the time together, play games, quarrel, then depart from each other’s company. That’s is, as far as plot goes, but it is the style that makes this narrative.

David Lodge describes this short story as: “positively Chekhovian in the flawless realm of its surface and the ambiguity of its import”. I remember being enthralled by the discovery that it was OK to be bored by Chekhov because Chekhov was meant to be boring- precisely because life is boring (after that, he became significantly less boring). Life is largely constituted by trivial occurrences and daily humdrum- so where is the truth-value in writing something chock-full of melodrama, when it represents perhaps 5% of our existence?
But the real question with Lardner and his beautiful ambiguity is: does he redeem these characters, through the honesty and humour in his depiction of pure, ordinary humanness, or does he condemn them for this banal, ordinary humanness? Is this affection, or damnation? The cynical heavy drinker, whose enjoyment of liquor (I’m far too hedonistic to write “weakness for”) contributed significantly to his premature death, was far too wry to be truly ‘affectionate’, but all too human to be misanthropic. His greatest strength lies in his ability to so accurately (and hilariously) capture the semi-literate vernacular of the ordinary American people- an ability which furthers this ambiguity.

According to Dorothy Parker: “Lardner, Fitzgerald, Faulkner, and Hemingway- they were the real giants”. Yet the latter three’s fame surely far outstrips Lardner’s- and why? The lack of novel is the answer to that question, or so it seems to me. Everyone has at least heard of The Great Gatsby, The Sound and The Fury, Fiesta, but Alibi Ike? It is an inevitable fact that, if the writer limits himself, or finds himself limited, to short narratives, they also limit their long-term impact. Lardner himself once wrote: “I seldom write a story of more that 5000 words- my mind seems geared to that length”. Argentinean writer Jorge Luis Borges- one of the greats from the South American literary scene- also only wrote short poetry and prose pieces, due to what critics have called a “lofty laziness” and was dubbed “probably the greatest writer to never receive the Nobel Prize”. There must be a tenable link between lack of prestige- in whatever form- and lack of novel, although there is certainly no link, tenable or not, between the lack of novel and lack of good quality writing- just a hint, perhaps, of some wasted potential.

Although Lardner’s name remains highly praised by Holden, one of the most famous and widely-read anti-heroes of our times, that might not be enough to keep him in print in the long run, as for a period not that long ago in Britain many of Lardner’s narratives were no longer in print. Maybe he wouldn’t have even viewed Salinger’s homage with much reverence. But his short stories truly are high quality writing- or, as Caulfield puts it, he’s “at least funny once in a while”.

: 30 Sep 2006 15:48 |  Comments (2) |  Close comments |  Report a problem