Subject: Re: hapworth/Updike
From: citycabn (citycabn@gateway.net)
Date: Fri Apr 07 2000 - 13:29:10 EDT
Well, will's post ends this vigil of silence.
will, many thanks for sharing the Updike postcard. Though I could care less
about Kakutani, the sentence about _Hapworth_ was worth reading thrice and
one's mind does drift off and.... Part of the fun, I think, at this late
stage in the game, is pondering the Salingerian silence and where it might
have led him (if one indeed believes, unlike Scottie and Paul Alexander,
that he actually continued to write and continues to this day).
As for the Capote quote: I assume you--I know _I_ am shaking my head--don't
believe _that_ from the word go. And I infer Updike doesn't believe it
either.
I haven't read _Hapworth_ cover to cover in umpteen years, but from dim
memory I'd say: I always loved Buddy's opening statement--a real gem. The
initial sketches of camp life were pretty darn good: Hammersmith ? and
Mrs. Happy and the heartless crew cooking the food. I think one winces at
Seymour's prose and behavior in places, but feel that's intentional. Being
afflicted with Glassitis, any tidbit of info re the family I found to be of
great interest, though I fear readers without said affliction drop out
pretty quickly. The book list, well, I just can't assent wholeheartedly to
that. Buried within it, yes, are great passages, like the paragraph re
Conan Doyle and the lists one should have with one at all times. From
_Hapworth_ I have always remembered S.'s nod to Vivekananda; his "glimpse"
re his own short life (length of a good telephone pole); S.'s lament re the
gulf between the emotional and non-emotional people of this world; the
interesting passage re sensuality, Les and the darker lower lip; S.'s
concern re the construction of the human heart; S.'s "glimpse" of Buddy
writing the short story about that important party back in '26; that
wonderful quote Gabe quoted ten days ago re kindness and originality being
in short supply on this old marvellous muckball we're standing on (via the
grace of gravity); and, well, I should just go and read the damn thing.
Is what you wrote on _Hapworth_ on the Web? And where's the Updike
interview destined for?
--Bruce
-----Original Message-----
From: William Hochman <wh14@is9.nyu.edu>
To: bananafish@roughdraft.org <bananafish@roughdraft.org>
Date: Friday, April 07, 2000 5:24 AM
Subject: hapworth/Updike
>I"ve been working on the proofs for an interview with John Updike coming
>out this summer and found a post card he sent me. I had sent him a piece
>on Hapwroth I wrote and he responded by saying "How odd Kakutani [the NY
>Times reviewer who had ripped Hapworth to shreds when word of its
>republication was buzzing] called it charmless, when her prose is about as
>charmless as it gets. Hapworth etc. is indubitably a work from the
>Master's pen, but it shows the pen in the process of exploding, and I
>can't imagine what would have come next, on this expanding curve. No less
>an authority than Truman Capote (a terrible liar) repoted to me that he
>heard Shawn, in tears, rejecting the next story over the phone."
>
>For those reading Hapworth (still one of my favorite Salinger texts!), I'd
>like to know what parts work best for you, will
>
>ps: the double irony to Updike's comments about Kakutani is that in the
>interview we talked quite a bit about critics based on "Beck Noir," a
>story in which a writer responds to criticism like a hit man...
>
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