There is something Griceian about Salinger. There is something Popperian,
possibly; but that might be more difficult to falsify. In any case, it may all
connect with L. Helm, and that’s the main reason why I’m sharing it with
Lit-Ideas (also because it might connect with Lionpainter J).
There is this essay, “Grice without an audience”. It attempts to refute Grice,
but it ends up re-validating him!
In any case, Salinger, of Park Avenue (as some called him!) loved to write
poetry – even if ‘loved’ is a bit of a Griceian hyperbole. Here is a sample:
Hide not thy tears on this last day
Your sorrow has no shame;
To march no more midst lines of gray;
No longer play the game.
Four years have passed in joyful ways
Wouldst stay those old times dear?
Then cherish now these fleeting days,
The few while you are here.
The Griceian connection (“Grice without an audience”) seems to connect with one
of Helm’s interests: an author’s addressee (where ‘author’ is standard for
Griceian ‘utterer’)
Salinger seldom spoke to the press except when, trying to fend off the
unauthorized publication of his uncollected stories, he told a reporter from
The New York Times lines which seem to come straight from Grice’s journal
(“Some people think that I see ‘meaning’ as people-oriented. I don’t. I may
very well write an entry in my journal, and open it with “Dear Diary,”
intending myself to be the intended addressee at a later stage. Or something.”
Grice, The William James Lectures on Logic and Conversation, Harvard, Lecture
V).
“There is a marvelous peace in not publishing,” Salinger told the NYT reporter.
"It is *peaceful*.”
(I realise I shouldn’t be stressing this too much when Helm makes the effort to
SHARE and PUBLISH his poetry et al. with _us_)
“Still.” – Salinger goes on.
“Publishing is a terrible invasion of my privacy.”
“I like to write.”
“I love to write.”
[This is a bit of what Grice would call a ‘scalar implicature’ – Grice would
focus on the illogical literal interpretation of “I do not LIKE to write; I
LOVE it!” – for Grice, ‘to love’ entails ‘to like’ – but Grice would catch
Salinger’s implicature – in the rye or elsewhere).
“But,” Salinger concludes, “I write just for myself and my own pleasure.”
which has something Griceian and Grecian about it!
Cheers,
Speranza
