Mary Sisney's Blog - Posts Tagged "wright"
Universal versus Relevant: Why I Love Catcher in the Rye and The House of Mirth
Pursuing my new career as a basher of James Joyce's so-called masterpiece, I joined the conversation of a group of Linked/In literature lovers, who were discussing the topic: "What is the most overrated novel?" Of course, I knew the answer. "It's ULYSSES, everybody," I confidently declared. "Not only is it the worst novel ever written; it was named the best novel of the 20th century on some phony list." After offering my two cents, I was generally content to read other people's comments without responding, except when someone suggested that the second novel on that phony list, GREAT GATSBY, was also overrated. I defended Fitzgerald's novel by describing it as a book that could be read many ways by different readers and then presenting a brief synopsis of my unique "black" reading. I was quiet again until another person suggested that Salinger's A CATCHER IN THE RYE was overrated because her working class nonwhite students could not relate to Holden. Since I was a working class nonwhite student who had no trouble relating to Holden when I was a junior in high school, I described what is still my most memorable experience reading a book.
I was sitting in a beauty shop in Evanston, Illinois, having my hair fried and reading Salinger's novel for my English class. I was a very quiet teenager, who usually said nothing during my two to three hours in the beauty shop. When I read the passage where Holden says that his teacher was holding his paper like it was a turd, I laughed loudly for several minutes. All of the women in the beauty shop stared at me as if I were crazy. When my beautician nervously asked why I was laughing, I was too embarrassed to quote the passage, so I just said, "This is a really funny book."
The Linked/In group members already knew that I was a black woman, but since I was living in Evanston, they might have thought I was an upper-middle-class black person with educated parents. So I let them know that I had little in common with Holden. Two years before I read CATCHER, I was living with my illiterate grandmother in her rundown house in Henderson, Kentucky. My maternal grandmother's house did not have hot water when I lived there from 1962 to 1964. I also said that I worked as a live-in maid, called a Mother's Helper, when I was fourteen and fifteen. Still, I could relate to Holden.
As I said to the Linked/In group, I don't believe in universal themes and texts. I loved teaching HUCKLEBERRY FINN, but I don't see anything universal about a black man and a white boy going down the river on a raft. But there are universal feelings and emotions. We can all laugh, cry, and feel embarrassed or angry. And no matter who we are and where we come from, we can all hate ULYSEES and love HUCKLEBERRY FINN. Even though I am now old enough to be Holden's grandmother, I still share his distaste for phonies. And I still appreciate his anger at the woman in the movie theater who was crying over something on the screen but wouldn't take her child to the bathroom. In fact, literature teachers could use that passage to teach the students who have trouble relating to Holden about sympathy and empathy.
If I had been able to relate only to characters like me, I would have been very lonely in my English classes. The slave Jim might have been the first black character that I met in literature read in school, and he appeared the same year (1965-66) that I was first introduced to Jay Gatsby and Holden Caulfied. Several times in my graduate seminars, I discussed reading books from the inside versus reading them from the outside. I claimed that I read books by black writers like Richard Wright, Ralph Ellison, and Toni Morrison from the inside and those by writers like Fitzgerald, Edith Wharton, and Joan Didion from the outside. But I now realize that I have more in common with Lily Bart from Edith Wharton's HOUSE OF MIRTH than I do Richard Wright's Bigger Thomas from NATIVE SON. Like Bigger, I am black, was born in the South, and lived in the too cold and snowy Chicago area when I was young. Also like Bigger, I worked for somewhat wealthy white folks when I was very young--in fact, younger than Bigger was when he started working for the Daltons. But Bigger was a thief, rapist, and murderer. He also liked to drink and was a physical bully. Bigger's behavior was so shocking to me, in fact, that at one point I had to leave his consciousness. I couldn't stay with him when he decided to cut off Mary's head so that he could fit her body in the furnace.
While I often found Lily annoying, nothing she did was shocking, and she was sometimes admirable. On the surface, she and I seem to have less in common than Bigger and I do. I am not a beautiful white woman raised to marry a rich white man and be ornamental. However, I identified with Lily when she couldn't stand the idea of having to listen to boring Percy Gryce for a whole weekend just so that he would marry her and bore her for the rest of her life. And I sympathized with her when she was betrayed by her sly, slick, and wicked frenemy Bertha Dorset. I wasn't as appreciative of her decision to protect Selden by not using Bertha's letters to blackmail her as some readers are, but I did admire her in the scene when she used her superior manners to stand up to potential rapist Gus Trenor. I, of course, would have handled the situation differently. I would use my sardonic wit to throw shade and snark at gross Gus, telling him what I would rather do (clean toilets) and whom I would rather do (boring Percy) than have sex with him. And if that didn't make him open the door for me, I'd kick him in the groin. We use the weapons we have; I have a bad attitude and size 11 1/2 feet. But the more fragile Lily didn't have my weapons, and so it took more courage for her to stand her ground. Not only was that scene her bravest moment in the novel, her standoff with Gus was one of the bravest moments by any character in American literature.
Literature teachers should not allow students to get away with the not-relevant-to-me argument. They should use the strategy that the character Bernadette in Maria Semple's current bestseller, WHERE'D YOU GO, BERNADETTE, uses when her daughter's friend claims to be bored when they go on an outing. She challenges Kennedy, the friend, to stop being bored. She doesn't say what I might have said, "Maybe that's because you're boring," but that's clearly her point. Literature teachers should challenge their students to find the relevance in texts the same way they find the meaning.
And humanities teachers need to focus on teaching empathy. If we allow poor black and brown girls to say that they can't relate to Holden, how can we ask rich white boys to relate to Morrison's Sula or Cisneros' Esperanza?
Obviously, it's hard for even the most empathetic people to walk in other people's shoes as those people. I can't imagine being Lily and don't want to imagine being Bigger, but we can at least imagine walking in their shoes as ourselves. I'm annoyed that Lily didn't at least threaten Bertha with those letters because that's what I would have done in her shoes, but I admired the way she handled Gus Trenor. Her approach was so much classier and braver than mine would have been.
THE HOUSE OF MIRTH and CATCHER IN THE RYE are not universal texts, but they are relevant to people of all classes and races. That's why they are not overrated.
I was sitting in a beauty shop in Evanston, Illinois, having my hair fried and reading Salinger's novel for my English class. I was a very quiet teenager, who usually said nothing during my two to three hours in the beauty shop. When I read the passage where Holden says that his teacher was holding his paper like it was a turd, I laughed loudly for several minutes. All of the women in the beauty shop stared at me as if I were crazy. When my beautician nervously asked why I was laughing, I was too embarrassed to quote the passage, so I just said, "This is a really funny book."
The Linked/In group members already knew that I was a black woman, but since I was living in Evanston, they might have thought I was an upper-middle-class black person with educated parents. So I let them know that I had little in common with Holden. Two years before I read CATCHER, I was living with my illiterate grandmother in her rundown house in Henderson, Kentucky. My maternal grandmother's house did not have hot water when I lived there from 1962 to 1964. I also said that I worked as a live-in maid, called a Mother's Helper, when I was fourteen and fifteen. Still, I could relate to Holden.
As I said to the Linked/In group, I don't believe in universal themes and texts. I loved teaching HUCKLEBERRY FINN, but I don't see anything universal about a black man and a white boy going down the river on a raft. But there are universal feelings and emotions. We can all laugh, cry, and feel embarrassed or angry. And no matter who we are and where we come from, we can all hate ULYSEES and love HUCKLEBERRY FINN. Even though I am now old enough to be Holden's grandmother, I still share his distaste for phonies. And I still appreciate his anger at the woman in the movie theater who was crying over something on the screen but wouldn't take her child to the bathroom. In fact, literature teachers could use that passage to teach the students who have trouble relating to Holden about sympathy and empathy.
If I had been able to relate only to characters like me, I would have been very lonely in my English classes. The slave Jim might have been the first black character that I met in literature read in school, and he appeared the same year (1965-66) that I was first introduced to Jay Gatsby and Holden Caulfied. Several times in my graduate seminars, I discussed reading books from the inside versus reading them from the outside. I claimed that I read books by black writers like Richard Wright, Ralph Ellison, and Toni Morrison from the inside and those by writers like Fitzgerald, Edith Wharton, and Joan Didion from the outside. But I now realize that I have more in common with Lily Bart from Edith Wharton's HOUSE OF MIRTH than I do Richard Wright's Bigger Thomas from NATIVE SON. Like Bigger, I am black, was born in the South, and lived in the too cold and snowy Chicago area when I was young. Also like Bigger, I worked for somewhat wealthy white folks when I was very young--in fact, younger than Bigger was when he started working for the Daltons. But Bigger was a thief, rapist, and murderer. He also liked to drink and was a physical bully. Bigger's behavior was so shocking to me, in fact, that at one point I had to leave his consciousness. I couldn't stay with him when he decided to cut off Mary's head so that he could fit her body in the furnace.
While I often found Lily annoying, nothing she did was shocking, and she was sometimes admirable. On the surface, she and I seem to have less in common than Bigger and I do. I am not a beautiful white woman raised to marry a rich white man and be ornamental. However, I identified with Lily when she couldn't stand the idea of having to listen to boring Percy Gryce for a whole weekend just so that he would marry her and bore her for the rest of her life. And I sympathized with her when she was betrayed by her sly, slick, and wicked frenemy Bertha Dorset. I wasn't as appreciative of her decision to protect Selden by not using Bertha's letters to blackmail her as some readers are, but I did admire her in the scene when she used her superior manners to stand up to potential rapist Gus Trenor. I, of course, would have handled the situation differently. I would use my sardonic wit to throw shade and snark at gross Gus, telling him what I would rather do (clean toilets) and whom I would rather do (boring Percy) than have sex with him. And if that didn't make him open the door for me, I'd kick him in the groin. We use the weapons we have; I have a bad attitude and size 11 1/2 feet. But the more fragile Lily didn't have my weapons, and so it took more courage for her to stand her ground. Not only was that scene her bravest moment in the novel, her standoff with Gus was one of the bravest moments by any character in American literature.
Literature teachers should not allow students to get away with the not-relevant-to-me argument. They should use the strategy that the character Bernadette in Maria Semple's current bestseller, WHERE'D YOU GO, BERNADETTE, uses when her daughter's friend claims to be bored when they go on an outing. She challenges Kennedy, the friend, to stop being bored. She doesn't say what I might have said, "Maybe that's because you're boring," but that's clearly her point. Literature teachers should challenge their students to find the relevance in texts the same way they find the meaning.
And humanities teachers need to focus on teaching empathy. If we allow poor black and brown girls to say that they can't relate to Holden, how can we ask rich white boys to relate to Morrison's Sula or Cisneros' Esperanza?
Obviously, it's hard for even the most empathetic people to walk in other people's shoes as those people. I can't imagine being Lily and don't want to imagine being Bigger, but we can at least imagine walking in their shoes as ourselves. I'm annoyed that Lily didn't at least threaten Bertha with those letters because that's what I would have done in her shoes, but I admired the way she handled Gus Trenor. Her approach was so much classier and braver than mine would have been.
THE HOUSE OF MIRTH and CATCHER IN THE RYE are not universal texts, but they are relevant to people of all classes and races. That's why they are not overrated.
