Form in Salinger’s Shorter Fiction

Form in Salinger's Shorter Fiction G. E. SLETHAUG In nearly all the fiction of J. D. Salinger, the characters have difficulty accepting the use of conventions, whether they govern literature, sports, or life itself. Such an individual as Franny Glass objects to social forms that unnecessarily restrain her individual will. Ironically, however, she finds it equally difficult to reject such forms and consequently reaches a point where, being caught between the opposing forces of form and formlessness , she is unable to function. It is this dilemma and its solution which is the informing vision of the greater part of Salinger's important short fiction, including "The Laughing Man," Franny and Zooey, and Raise High the Roof Beam, Carpenters and Seymour - An Introduction. In his shorter fiction, Salinger writes of at least two people who., unable to accept the irregularities of society and willing only to overturn the entire social structure, move toward a basic form of anarchy. These two characters are Franny and the Laughing Man. In an early story, "The Laughing Man," Salinger presents a picaresque anti-hero who as a baby was branded by some bandits. The bandits "placed the little fellow's head in a carpenter's vise and gave the appropriate lever several turns to the right." 1 After this painful disfigurement, the nameless Laughing Man remained with the bandits, although hiding behind a mask of poppy petals and therefore reeking with opium. Because of his ugliness, the Laughing Man evidently believed he could not return to society. So he picked up the trade secrets of the bandits and improved upon them, setting "up his own, more effective system. On a rather small scale at first, he began to free-lance around the Chinese countryside, robbing, highjacking , murdering when absolutely necessary" (p. 89). The Laughing Man outsmarted his fellow bandits as well as the law, inaugurating his own system of justice, punishing with impunity and rewarding with grace. His activities were not limited to one province, but encompassed an international area extending from Tibet to Paris. Through such an unbelievable tale, Salinger presents us with a child's hero who can do whatever he wishes without consulting anyone. In god-like fashion he can abolish whatever aspect of society most displeases him. But Salinger THE CANADIAN REVIEW OF AMERICAN STUDIES VOL. III, NO, 1 1 SPRING 1972 emphasizes that such a world exists only in a make-believe framework. When Dufarge, the French detective, captured and killed the Laughing Man's confederate, Black Wing, Laughing Man no longer cared to live. He had to face up to the reality of his friend's death, and as a result could no longer perpetrate the charade of life; so he put off his red poppy mask, symbolic of fancy and illusion, and accepted the reality of death. To persist in anarchical practices, to break down the systems of the world in an arbitrary way, is thus seen as a failure to accept the self and society as they are. In Franny and Zooey, Franny experiences problems similar to the Laughing Man's. She cannot accept society as it is and strenuously objects to the various kinds of hollow formalism evidenced by students, academics , and poets. She objects to the many Wally Campbells in a university who "look like everybody else, and talk and dress and act like everybody else." 2 She objects to those Bohemians who also act as a group in formalized, albeit anti-social, responses. Furthermore, she dislikes the Professor Tuppers who enjoy appearing as frowzy-haired academics and offer nothing of wisdom to their students. Finally, she complains of the poets such as Manlius and Esposito who fail to say anything beautiful, because they concern themselves only with 0 terribly fascinating, syntaxy droppings" (p. 19), that is, with form for form's sake. Franny does not want more talent in her poets, the simple ability to work well within a given form; she wants genius, the ability to explode out of the form in order to say something profound and wise. Ironically, though Franny hates conventional, formalized responses, though she criticizes those who use conventions as a mask to hide their real (or lack...