Construable

I'm a teenager struggling to make the world a better place by writing words, taking photos, and building up excitement. Hoping to find some good in humanity, I built a construable proximity, where words intertwine with each other, trying to find all their right places. Kaj Palanca is a thirteen-year-old student. He tries to make his life eventful by writing, reading, and thinking about everything. He spends his spare time in making the world grand. @paleoutboy The Salinger Project Contact Us

[theconstruableproximity-blog]

Piece of Advice

I am the Narrator. I'm always sad, and I never really find the right things to make myself happy. There are always contradictions, things that prevent me from achieving my number one goal--that is, to be absolutely, genuinely glad about the life I live. Needless to say, I'm far from achieving that goal, although I'm still really hopeful. I never want to give up. I never have, and I never will.

At times, I try to dig up my liveliest memories and then try to relive them. I like to relive things. I just wish I could record a life-changing moment so I can watch it again and again--so I can change my life constantly. I don't like that dull monotony. I hate feeling it. If there's one thing I completely detest, that's feeling the dull monotony of life.

Sadly, I feel it all the time.

One night I was strolling down the memory lane, trying to find the right one that could help me. Sometimes I stumble upon miserable memories. When I do, I try not to grab hold of them. I let them go. But that night something completely different happened--I stumbled upon something that I thought I'd forgotten. That never happens a lot. Usually the memories I'd forgotten are bad ones, but this one--the one I felt that night--made me feel unsure. So I decided to grab hold of it.

It was one of my earliest memories. I was still an innocent little child--how silent those days were--and I knew absolutely nothing about the physics and the behavior of the world. I noticed how weird my eyelids were. I realized that they were always closing and opening, and that just felt weird for me, mainly because I wanted my eyes to be wide open all the time. I wanted to see the world. I wanted to venture out. I wanted to know.

So I was afraid of those blinks. As that little child, I just plainly hated blinking. I was interested in the world; I was interested in what it had to offer.

But now, looking back, I feel ridiculous about myself. Part of me just wants to go back to that memory, to just feel what it felt not to know of the world and all the horrid things it contains. But then part of me just wants to stay where I am right now, where I'm aware of all those horrid things. Part of me wants to again be innocent; part of me just wants to be conscious of the world.

I, the Narrator, have for one experienced the world. There are nice memories, of course, but there are also the bad ones, the ones that haunt you in your sleep. What you need to know, however, is that you can control these memories. Let the good memories overpower the awful ones. Just don't let the world beat you. You know the world, and you know it's dangerous. Stay on guard.

In conclusion, I guess it's somehow nice to have your eyes open, to get to witness the world. But there are times when it's better just to close your eyes, to stay away from all the awful things.

Open your eyes. Just please know that sometimes they need to be closed.

-Kaj.

[theconstruableproximity-blog]

Intricate

For lack of a better thing to do, I’m spending most of my summer vacation reading Internet literary guides of Salinger’s novellas, novel, and short stories, and I thought I’d share with you whatever knowledge I’ve picked up from them. Stories, excuse my literary-dorkness, that have changed my life, in a way.

I’m going to share four posts. Each post will revolve around one of his stories and whatever I have to say about it.

This is the fourth one.

Nine Stories, as the title might imply, is a collection of nine stories, each with a different theme and message. Most of the stories here were published in The New Yorker, and they received the attention they deserved, mainly because these stories were things that helped people become aware of the world’s many uncertainties.

Now, it may not seem like it, but I don’t have the time to write a review for all the stories. As much as I’d like to do that, there are other things I have yet to attend to—like feeding my dog or walking to Mcdonald’s. So instead of staying in front of my laptop for hours, I’m just going to write the analysis of the most famous of the stories and my personal favorite, A Perfect Day for Bananafish.

A Perfect Day for Bananafish

This story’s basically the continuation of Raise High the Roof Beam, Carpenters, a novella about the events that followed Seymour’s wedding. Few of you know that Seymour and his fiancé actually eloped. That’s right: Seymour decided that he wanted to stay with Muriel. They chose to stay at some resort hotel. They were merely stalling for time.

The story opens with Muriel talking to her mother. Throughout the entire conversation, it was apparent that her mother didn’t want Muriel to marry Seymour. Muriel’s mother had a notion that Seymour was one big lunatic, filled with thoughts no one could ever understand. If you come to think of it, that’s true: Seymour was a complicated being, almost like a puzzle no one could ever decipher. Still, Muriel dismissed this, saying that Seymour’s irrational behavior was controllable and benign (though deep inside she knew that Seymour did have problems).

While Muriel was talking to her mother, Seymour was sitting on the beach. At this point we meet four- or five-year-old Sybil Carpenter, who was, to Seymour, too young to be wearing a two-piece bathing suit. Unsupervised, Sybil sought the unprecedented guidance of Seymour. She found him lying in solitude on the beach, talking to no one, looking at nothing. Thereafter, the two was engaged in a conversation about Seymour permitting another little girl, Sharon Lipschutz, to sit with him while he was playing the piano at the grand hotel. Seymour, with dead-seriousness, attempted to give Sybil consolation, but to no avail.

After a while, they went for a swim. Seymour told Sybil that he wanted to catch “bananafish," but Sybil wasn’t being attentive, apparently still irritated about Seymour’s friendliness to Sharon Lipschutz. He would later point out something that made Sybil listen to Seymour with attention. Seymour then put the girl on a rubber raft, telling her the tragic tale of the bananafish: In their gluttony, they fill themselves with bananas—and because of this, they become too swollen to escape their feeding holes, letting themselves die. This is, of course, a fictional tale.

Seymour then kissed the girl and returned her to the shore. He walked back to the hotel to see his wife taking a nap. Exhausted, he grabbed a handgun from his luggage and then, willfully, took his own life.

And the analysis itself:

If you’ve read the Glass stories, you’ll know that Seymour is a strange being, filled with thoughts and ideas that oppress him. There’s a reason behind that, though. Seymour wouldn’t be so sad if he didn’t have any reason to.

Seymour served during the war. He experienced a lot of things, and these things stuck with him. Seymour’s case, however, was far different than others: He believed that he was a person with pride, a person who fed his ego until he couldn’t take more of it. That’s what the war did to him.

I think what you have to understand is that Seymour was alone. He was helpless, and there was no one to help him. He had to make a lot of choices. Those choices were the reason behind his loneliness, and during the war, his ego was his first choice.

Like the bananafish, he fed himself with this harmful ego until he couldn’t take any more. He couldn’t get out of his own system; he was trapped, just as bananafish would be trapped in their feeding holes.

No one was there to help him, in short. And that’s why he killed himself. That’s the meaning behind the title of this wonderfully poignant short story: “A Perfect Day for Bananafish" means “a perfect day to die."

[thechekhovreader]

(Salinger with Erik Ross, credit: The New Yorker online) 

I know I don’t even cut close to being a decent Salinger fan because I didn’t particularly enjoy Catcher when I read it in high school (so moony! so vague! but this was a time when I was more concerned with the homecoming dance and Taco Tuesdays). And because one of the girls in my writing workshop loved Salinger and took every opportunity to note that she loved, loved, loved Salinger. 

I’d read somewhere that Yates, too, loved Salinger and used to rush out to his mailbox every week for the latest issue of The New Yorker to scan for a new Salinger story. And it’s always helpful and revealing to read your favorite writer’s favorite writer. I found an old Signet copy of Nine Stories in a used bookstore and the first story in the collection, “A Perfect Day for Bananafish” just knocked my socks clean off. That dialogue between Sybil and Seymour! I hate to call it ‘realistic’ because it doesn’t even seem the right word for how perfect in tone and language the voices are rendered. 

I was waiting out the rain in the library this afternoon and picked up Franny and Zooey off the shelf. I figured if I hated the first few pages, I’d ditch it before I left. Reader, I brought it home. I’m still no Salinger fanatic (shout-outs to every self-labeled ‘alternative’ kid in my freshman year dorm who wore a red beanie and tattooed a carousel onto their ankle) but great writing endures trends, academic syllabi, critical reviews, and even the pasty kids whose worst insult in their arsenal is “you phony.” And Salinger is a great writer. 

There are tons of Salinger headshots, all from the same place and time, but I linked the one above because it looks like a quiet scene from some ordinary man’s life, and not the image of a literary legend constructing his face into an artificial expressionlessness. 

[theconstruableproximity-blog]

Not Describable

For lack of a better thing to do, I’m spending most of my summer vacation reading Internet literary guides of Salinger’s novellas, novel, and short stories, and I thought I’d share with you whatever knowledge I’ve picked up from them. Stories, excuse my literary-dorkness, that have changed my life, in a way.

I’m going to share four posts. Each post will revolve around one of his stories and whatever I have to say about it.

This is the third one.

Seymour and Buddy are the eldest of the Glass siblings, and they, together, have sealed in their younger brothers’ and sisters’ minds how important it is to be intelligent, precocious, and spiritual. Yes, Seymour and Buddy do sound like perfect people, but the truth is, they have some problems of their own.

In “Raise High the Roof Beam, Carpenters,” Buddy narrates the events that followed Seymour’s wedding—or the events that followed after its non-occurence, actually. Here Buddy tries to tell us how broken Seymour is—he tells us why Seymour chose not to appear at his own wedding.

Buddy also is the narrator of “Seymour: An Introduction.” This is not as much a short story as it is his attempt to describe Seymour to us. It doesn’t have a plot; it’s a piece of literature shared in fragments.

I read these two short stories shortly after having read Franny and Zooey. It is something that will never be forgotten—something that has brought something extraordinary to me, my intellect, and my knowing of the universe.

Raise High the Roof Beam, Carpenters

As mentioned above, this story’s about Seymour’s wedding and his running away from it. Buddy was the only one who could attend it—he even took a three-day leave from the Army just to attend this really special day in his brother’s life. So he was somehow disappointed to find out that Seymour stood up to his bride, leaving her alone with the fading hope that Seymour would ever be sane.

The parents of the bride still decided to push through the reception part of the wedding, despite the emotional distress of the bride and basically everything else. Buddy would find himself stuck in a car with four strangers, one of which judges Seymour so harshly.

After a turn of events (which I’m too lazy to write about) Buddy would lead these strangers to his old New York apartment, something he and his older brother shared. Here he would find some memories that, at the end, would make him nostalgic.

I guess what makes me like this story is its having no plot. I mean, there is a plot, but not one that would show you what’s inside the character’s minds. Buddy adores his brother. He wants to see for himself what happens on this day—and what he witnesses leaves him disappointed.This shows us how peculiar Seymour is, if not insensitive and tactless.

What forged this kind of special bond between Seymour and Buddy is subtly told. They were both intelligent, and they know a lot about the universe and its properties. Yet, even if it isn’t really necessary to mention, they were, somehow, emotionally unstable. I say “somehow” because you wouldn’t really find out; they’re just these interesting beings who have a lot to offer to the world. They’re likable, yes, but they share this thing, which I can’t physically describe.

Needless to say, Buddy understands Seymour. Hearing those harsh comments from the stranger wasn’t entirely hurtful—over the years he’s learned that not all people are as informed as they are—but they were definitely something he wanted so badly to disprove, mostly because he felt what Seymour felt, saw what Seymour saw, and thought what Seymour thought.

Seymour: An Introduction

This one doesn’t have a plot. It’s just a piece of fiction written as if it were non-fiction. But through this small piece we can see Buddy’s desire to write Seymour—to put him on paper, to transfer what he was into words. And, again through this seemingly incessant rambling, we could see his failure to do so, his mental struggle to deal with the unit of complexity that takes the form of Seymour Glass.

It’s obvious that Buddy was trying to make his readers like the idea of Seymour—that though he was just a human, he was still a human. And there we see that he, not only as a brother but as a remote confidant, appreciated what Seymour thought of the world. We get to see Buddy, too. We learn that he was a professor at a girls’ college. We learn that he lived remotely. And we learn that he’s just Salinger in disguise.

He mentions, too, that the Glass siblings were all entertainers, including himself. So the question lets itself out: How is Buddy an entertainer?

Well, to start with, he was a writer. That’s simple, but once you get to see him, get to know what thrives in that brain of his, we’ll learn that he’s a writer with special intentions—to inform the world of what he already knows, knowing that in some way this would help the human race to be better.

Through these two pieces of literature we understand that Buddy loved Seymour so much that he wanted us to know all that he’s learned from him. There are many things that come in between, but the two most important themes of this book are, strongly, love and isolation. And Buddy was capable of doing that: he mixed love with isolation to describe his brother.

-Kaj.

[theconstruableproximity-blog]

Meliorism

Meliorism is the belief that the world gets better. This is a collection of short stories that, with great hope, will...

[worldofpollux]

J.D. Salinger’s Glass Family, in cartoon form, by Pollux.  Since they never made a movie adaptation of Salinger’s stories (correct me if I’m wrong), I always wanted to imagine in my head what the characters looked like.  Being a twin myself, I wish we knew more about Walt and Waker, the Glass twins.  I decided to draw the family in unauthorized cartoon form. 

[theconstruableproximity-blog]

What They Had Left

For lack of a better thing to do, I’m spending most of my summer vacation reading Internet literary guides of Salinger’s novellas, novel, and short stories, and I thought I’d share with you whatever knowledge I’ve picked up from them. Stories, excuse my literary-dorkness, that have changed my life, in ways unimaginable. 

I’m going to share four posts. Each post will revolve around one of his stories and whatever I have to say about it.

This is the second one.

Franny and Zooey is a book comprised of one short story and one novella. The short story is known to the mass as Franny, which also happens to be the name of this story's lead character. Zooey, quite apparently, is the novella, and it takes up most of the book. 

These are stories about the Glass family. The Glass family's comprised of Les and Bessie, the parents, and of course, their children: Seymour, Buddy, Boo Boo, Waker, Walt, Zooey, and Franny. As adolescents they were part of a radio show called "It's a Wise Child," which basically showcased the incredible wit and intellect of each Glass child, starting from Seymour, the eldest, down to Franny, the youngest (who also appeared to be the most vulnerable).

I decided to read this book because of an obvious reason--that it was written by Salinger, the, dare I say, venerable author of The Catcher in the Rye. I didn't expect much from it, really; I just wanted to read it for the sake of reading it. But this book has contributed much to what I know about the world. It's really, really informative.

Franny 

This story starts with Lane Coutell meeting his girlfriend, Franny Glass, for the upcoming football weekend. This weekend was supposed to be enjoyed with each other's company, but during their first lunch together, Franny had a breakdown--physically, emotionally, and spiritually. 

Franny couldn't stand Lane's incessant talk about college and his English paper and how high his grades were, so she told him about what she really felt about the phoniness of college and the egotism of the faculty. She had quit the play she was supposed to be in, mainly because of how everyone in her school seemed like liars, sugar-coating everything he or she says. 

After a while she got worked up and told Lane about the Jesus prayer--which she picked up from the book she was reading--but Lane wasn't interested at all. Franny would take notice of this and eventually realize that Lane had become the perfect depiction of things she hated. 

She then excused herself to go to the bathroom. On the way there, she fainted. After a seemingly long time, she woke up on a couch. Lane attended to her immediately and told her exactly what had happened. Finally Franny told Lane to get her water--when, in truth, she just wanted to be alone. Confined in the room, she closed her eyes and recited the Jesus prayer continuously.

Yes, it's a beautiful story. Yes, you should read it. Yes, that was an unnecessarily long summary. Let's get to the review itself.

Franny was really enthusiastic about seeing Lane. She wanted to be with him, to spend the weekend with him. But then Lane started to talk about himself and his paper--he started to become some egotistical maniac. Franny felt disenchanted with college, both socially and academically. And that was probably why she was disenchanted with Lane, too: Lane had become the thing Franny most wanted to avoid. 

Yet she decided to tell him about this book she was reading--about this Russian pilgrim who, apparently, gave her some kind of mystical enlightenment. And she, almost unconsciously, related this book to her situation. She thought that, in some way, saying the Jesus Prayer would rid her of her problems. 

Zooey

At the start of this novella the narrator introduces himself. He claims to be Buddy Glass, one of Franny and Zooey's older brothers. He tells the reader that the story he's about to tell is a "prose home movie"--home movie in writing (whatever that means). He also tells us that Zooey believes that the story is a mystical tale, contrary to the fact that he, Buddy, believes it to be a love story. After the introduction he refers to himself in the third person.

It was the Monday after the weekend Franny had a breakdown, and Zooey was at home at New York City with her mother. Franny, apparently, was in the living room, still in a state of breakdown. Bessie, the mother, told him to talk to her sister and fix all of it, which, after stages of unwillingness, he eventually did. The two of them had a long and important philosophical conversation. We would later learn that they had been raised on a blend of different religions and philosophical beliefs by their older brothers Buddy and Seymour. Over the course of this discussion, Zooey helped Franny with her beliefs. Both of them, by the end of the novella, were able to find peace.

And, the review itself:

What Buddy and Zooey thought of this story was mentioned in the introduction. Buddy believed that this one was a love story; Zooey, on the other hand, believed it to be somehow a mystical tale. At the end this would be resolved: It would turn out that it is, on one side, a love story, and on the other, a mystical one. 

The whole story was set in enclosed spaces, which gave account to how they spoke and moved. For instance, while Zooey was talking to her mother, his tub was covered by a drape. This, I think, signified how well they could really interact despite all the hindrances between them. 

It was also obvious how prevalent their dialogues were. Every uttered word was important and contributive to Bessie, Franny, Zooey, and Buddy. Throughout the conversations between Franny and Zooey, we were able to know of the influence Buddy and Seymour had left for both of them.

Quite apparently, spirituality is an important theme in this novella. In fact, it may just be the one thing this story is about. Buddy and Seymour had always wanted to teach their younger siblings that spirituality was all about respecting and giving honor to other human beings. Zooey passed this along to Franny, giving her the idea that even if some people are relentlessly unlikeable, she should still respect them and their choices. 

So, love and respect. Each Glass child had learned to love their parents, who, obviously, are not as gifted as they are. They had learned to bond with each other. They had learned how to go through all the obstacles while keeping their family intact. Family, to them, is just as important as anything else they had had to experience. 

At the end of the novella Zooey called Franny and told her he was Buddy (Franny would later figure out it was Zooey, anyway). They had a lengthy conversation about Buddy and Seymour. From this conversation, one thing struck me, and it's about Seymour always telling Franny to shine her shoes for the Fat Lady. Zooey would later tell Franny that Fat Lady was Christ, that Fat Lady was the humanity, that Fat Lady was all of us.

Franny and Zooey is profound. It taught me a lot of things. (It also took away an hour of my life spent writing this review, but whatever.) The themes in this book are closely related to the other themes of Salinger's works, but what sets this one apart is the fact that Salinger seems to acknowledge that even the stupid, egotistical individuals should be respected.

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[booksdirect]

“Synonyms for ‘said’.”

[theconstruableproximity-blog]

The Phony Holden

For lack of a better thing to do, I'm spending most of my summer vacation reading Internet literary guides of Salinger's novellas, novel, and short stories, and I thought I'd share with you whatever knowledge I've picked up from them. Stories, excuse my literary-dorkness, that have changed my life, in ways unimaginable. 

I'm going to share four posts. Each post will revolve around one of his stories and whatever I have to say about it.

This is the first one.

Salinger. The Catcher in the Rye. That's the first thing you'd think if you heard that name announced somewhere. I hope everyone reading this post has read the book. If you haven't, I suggest you stop reading this incoherent long post and get a copy.

I read this piece of art when I was eleven, and back then, after having read it, I wasn't as awe-struck as I am today. Looking back, I guess I wasn't really that aware of the actual things the words in this book symbolize and patronize. 

Nonetheless, I enjoyed reading it. I'm going to reread it sooner or later, and this time, I'll try to be more, uh, connected with Holden. Does that make any sense at all?

(This photo is not mine. If you want to be given credit for it, just go and tell us, and we'll gladly remove whatever you want removed.)

So, yes, it's about Holden and his red hunting cap (an important symbol of his importance and uniqueness) and how he spent his weekend waltzing around New York and complaining about everybody's goddam phoniness. (According to a certain source, Holden said "phony" forty-four times and "goddam" two hundred and forty-five times.)

Basically, Holden got kicked out of his boarding school because he flunked four of his classes. He was scheduled to return to his hometown, Manhattan, but he just couldn't wait to get his fumy ass out of the school, so he left three days early. He then took the next train to New York. Once he arrived there, though, he chose not to proceed to his family's apartment; instead, he checked in a hotel. Smooth, Holden. 

Anyway, throughout this New York "journey" he met certain people who have either given him hope or taken whatever belief he still had for the human race. I think the thing is, he wanted to be understood, and no one quite ever understood him, except maybe his sister Phoebe.

Phoebe's a nice girl who just went along with whatever her older brother had to say. She seemed to understand her brother's problems, and she was constantly trying to make him feel better. Holden appreciated her, but he wasn't quite aware that her sister was trying to fix him, to help him, to make him not worry too much about things.

Holden was in a constant state of worry and curiosity throughout the novel. He worried about his sister and where the ducks went when the water had frozen. He worried about the entire world, really, and I guess it goes without saying that Holden was a boy, a man, who wanted to see some changes in the world--even if he was not doing anything to be or make those changes. I guess you could say he's phony in that way.

See, Holden was threatened by the adult world. He had this notion that all adults were pretentious. He liked children better, naturally, and he didn't want them to become adults. Thus, the title. He wanted to be the catcher in the rye; he didn't want children to fall out of innocence and become, in his own words, phony grown-ups.

Though I can't say his observations are inaccurate, I still think they're not enough reasons to withdraw in a constant state of worrying and being alone and not being able to speak out. I myself somehow worried about him (I was an eleven-year-old, not a tactless peanut). 

People don't understand him, perhaps because he's not good at negotiating. That aside, I just think it's really cool how he managed to express his thoughts wildly, without boundaries. It's the only real thing that appeared even remotely fascinating to me back when I was eleven. 

I can't say much more about this novel, but I can assure you that it will most definitely set high standards for your perception of concrete fiction.

Kaj.