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I
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SALINGER'S
AUDIENCE
597
intent on each drop of "perspiration" that appears on his troubled
face. Unlike the cold cold world-or even the Youth Culture-the
Glass family is a realm where there is no danger of one's very own
emotions slipping by unnoticed or unappreciated.
As the college student feels time running out on him, there is a
terrible temptation to rebel, to welsh payment on the leisure he's had,
to say
"All
right, then, I'll
go
to hell!" but that's Huck Finn talking,
not Holden Caulfield. Salinger'S stories are designed for the vast
majority who must somehow expunge such temptation, for those who
are instinctively aware that they lack the will to take on the world
and make their own value in it (how could they, considering Dad–
dy?). The problem for these tempted ones is somehow to turn down
the painful alternative of rebellion without admitting (even to them–
selves) that they are exactly like everyone else. The solution lies in a
safe rebellion through some Special consumption of high culture, and
for innocents like these, Salinger is Gautama, Lao-tse, Shankaracharya,
Hui-neng and Sri Ramakrishna rolled into one.
For Salinger offers no difficult visions; he's guaranteed not to
disturb. He permits his reader to eat his cake and have it too-secure
in the knowledge that he deserves better cake, but there is none to be
had. Salinger is not concerned with genuine (or at least, possible) al–
ternatives to the values and life-styles he deplores. His technique for
handling the individual vs. society situation is simply to divide the
world between the sensitive few and the vulgar many. You, my reader,
he assures us, belong to an elite-not because you want to live dif–
ferently, but because you are sensitive. You have religious experiences,
you have special affinities with little girls, you can't stand phonies,
you
understand.
You are so sensitive it's a wonder you can go on. In
fact, Salinger implies,
you are a hero and your heroism is not based on
heroic action but on mere existence.
It is logical then, perfectly logical, that Seymour the Saint should
have married an ordinary, vulgar, grasping woman. He was merely
accepting that burden which all Salinger readers must accept, the
unutterable deadness of the organization-man society. Since they are
sensitive, they see through the game they are playing, and they
suffer. But that doesn't mean they want to do anything about it. They
are at their best when they simply go on with it; because ultimately it
is the path of all-knowing acceptance that leads to
satori
and a glimpse
of the godhead. Naturally there are severe crises on the path to
serenity, and when they come it is doubly handy to be an honorary
Glass, and to revel in the comfort of long special letters from Buddy
