Re: GG: The Ostwald Book -- Being Picky

["Gary W. Thorburn" <thorburn@aics.net>]

Elmer Enscribed...

> When you come to the conviction that you admire an artist,
> I think it's important to suppress your curiosity about
> him/her ... not entirely, not inhumanly ...
>
> J.D. Salinger. . . a woman who once flang with him when she
> was very young . . .has made a private cottage
> industry of writing Bad Nasty Stuff about this tawdry
> quarter-century-old episode, and even started auctioning
> off his love letters to her on her website. . .

Good comments, Elmer.   Half of the solution to recovering
an ethos where greatness can be recognized is, as you
say, to ignore the gnats, and resist the temptation become
a gnat.  In other words, control that tabloid curiosity
about that which does not pertain.  We live in an age
which fastens on the small and dirty, so this is difficult.

But the other half requires that we come to grips with the
reality that greatness is rarely great in all dimensions.
This is not something to sigh about, its actually a very
exciting aspect of our humanness.  This is how genius and
greatness often work.  Its exciting because maybe there
lurks a special talent in you or I that awaits cultivation,
even if we go home at night to eat beans over the sink.

When the ordinary characteristics of a person have a homely
charm, like, say, GG's dress or eating habits, they may
actually provide an endearing context for greatness.  But
that's not always the case.  The great are often dead ordinary
in other areas.  I am a Charles Ives fan, but frankly,
his political writings are just pedestrian opinions that
perhaps would have rested in the obscurity they probably
deserve, had his fame as a composer not facilitated their
publication.  I am still undecided about the Solitude
Trilogy.  It's kinda neat.  But so were a lot of audio
experiments of that age.

Occasionally there is justice in this world.  The name of
the whining Salingerette to whom Elmer alluded is Joyce
Maynard.  Perhaps some of you are familiar with Christopher
Lydon and his erudite NPR talk show, "The Connection".
I will never forget the day that Joyce Maynard was his
guest.  For an hour, she painted the sorry picture of her
alleged abuse-by-surly-disregard as Salinger's young lover.
Lydon, in his direct but generally supportive way,
gently asked, in effect, "who cares?".  If there was ever
a doubt about the power of dead air, that argument was
clinched in that moment.  Maynard's case crumbled into dust.

Gary W Thorburn
gary@thorburn.org