Re: Glass Yogis


Subject: Re: Glass Yogis
From: citycabn (citycabn@gateway.net)
Date: Thu Apr 13 2000 - 13:30:38 EDT


Dear Madhava,

Thank you for your, as usual, thoughtful, earnest, welcomed post.

I see you understand my recycled reply-post was a stark, unadorned "position
paper" issued without footnotes (or clear thinking) in opposition to
Cecilia's reading and summation of the thesis (Ph.D.?) of Alsen's book, _The
Glass Stories as a Composite Novel_ (which I still haven't had the pleasure
to hold in hand).

What bothered me, and still bothers me, about most literary critics
(Laughing Man, quick, please quote the section re critics from _Godot_) is
their smug insistence that they (oh lucky them! and soon unlucky us) have
found the _key_ to whichever novel, story or poem one just happens to be
having a love affair with. And that this _one_ key, let's say, is going to
fit each and every locked door to each and every room of the Glass mansion.

I have no doubt that JDS has read and practiced a great deal of Yogic
Philosophy, and I believe it is fairly certain he was initiated into the
Ramakrishna-Vivekananda Vedanta Society (and hence my nod to Advaita
Vedanta), and I know we have the good word of Joyce Maynard re the
importance of homeopathy in the personal life of that chicken-hawk of
Cornish, but, what I was whispering to myself was, oh, along the lines of,
no, I don't believe there is any one key to the Glass Family which you must
find (like looking for that kid Waldo, is it?) OR otherwise these stories
are closed to you, the uninitiated. In my senility I actually believe that
dedication at the outset of RHTRBC & SAI. But I also believe that remark by
Zooey that there are honorable men in the university (I myself sat at the
feet of one when I still had a full head of hair and periodically drove my
father's VW bug up to Hollywood (of all places) to step across the threshold
of the Vedanta Society's bookshop and occasionally the temple). I nod to the
sad fact that the more one knows about all these references within the
stories,--things Teddy advises us to get rid of (in this case, from
vaudeville to Vedanta (sorry, Teddy, even Vedanta is the apple))--, the
richer, fuller, the stories become; (but I would give one of my 49-year-old
eyes to read them all again just once more with those 19-year-old eyes
back in '70). So I'm not arguing against your perceptive post; I even agree
Seymour is yogic (_Hapworth_ really reinforces that) in parts of his life,
but I don't buy that he is limiting himself to _only_ yogic philosophy--look
at his reading list. And his insistence on trying to become a poet. Some
fool just might develop a thesis, a really horrid ill-thought-out thesis, a
_key_, and say Poetry is the key to the Glass Saga, and JDS's failure to
become a poet (the poet he secretly yearned to become) is the Answer to ...,
oh, next paragraph.

I guess I'll just say a few words about the last years of Seymour's life and
go quietly. I keep getting the sense that a great many fish--nearly
all--believe the suicide somehow cancels out all of the life that went
before. I don't know why he killed himself. Or I don't know how to put
into words why I think/feel/sense he did. (What I don't want is a nifty
"theory".) But I do know there isn't this crippled post-WWII Seymour as
opposed to the "other" Seymour. Buddy himself (yes, I'll call that liar to
the stand) lets the cat out of the bag when he tells us he's been sitting on
a loose-leaf notebook which is home to the 184 poems Seymour wrote during
the _last three years_ of his life. Seymour during that time wasn't
crippled--he was in flight, he was the curlew sandpiper.

I'll close with calling to the stand Seymour's only great poet of the 20th
century. (I've counted the later votes and he still wins.) How should we
read these stories? How should we read period?

"With nothing can one approach a work of art so little as with critical
words: they always come down to more or less happy misunderstandings.
Things are not all so comprehensible and expressible as one would mostly
have us believe; most events are inexpressible, taking place in a realm
which no word has ever entered, and more inexpressible than all else are
works of art, mysterious existences, the life of which, while ours passes
away, endures." (Rainer Maria Rilke, 2/17/03, Paris, in a letter to Franz
Kappus)

We read with the eyes. The answer is within the pupil.

love,

Bruce

-----Original Message-----
From: Benjamin Samuels <madhava@sprynet.com>
To: bananafish@roughdraft.org <bananafish@roughdraft.org>
Date: Wednesday, April 12, 2000 7:59 PM
Subject: Glass Yogis

>Interesting post, Bruce. Thanks for pointing me towards some interesting
>discussion that took place before this banafish egg hatched. Seems some of
>the topics really do go around and around like fish in bowl. Cecelia's
post
>that your message is in response to is familiiar to me as a perspective I
>tried, with less success, to elaborate on when I joined. So let me take a
>crack at answering some of the points you raise here.
>
>
>> I don't think Yogic Philosophy or Advaita Vedanta or Homeopathy is the
key
>> to the Glass Family.
>>
>>
>> I don't think Seymour rejects everything else (and everyone else) to try
>to
>> advance toward enlightenment.
>>
>>
>> I don't think Seymour switches from one form of yoga to another like so
>many
>> brands of vitamins. I even don't think _he_ would assert he was following
>> any particular form of yoga at any particular time. (The idea that he
>> married Muriel to advance toward Go! on the Monopoly Board of
>Enlightenment
>> really seems a stretch.)
>
>This mostly seems reaction against using the ideas in yoga philosophy to
>understand the Glass Families. More fairly, maybe it was rection directed
>towards certain excited voices. Yoga philosophy is a powerful mode of
>thinking, one that Salinger was obviously quite influenced by. What is
>meant by the *key* is a bit fuzzy of course, but should there be such an
>unlikely thing except in our overexcited and joyful imaginations Yoga has
>some good qualificatios for nomination. You say that you don't think
>Seymour would consider himself a follower of yoga but I disagree. I think
>Seymour would understand the yogic story of life and reflect regularly on
>what spiritual progress he is making. I think he would be quite familliar
>with all the vitamins and perhaps even take some, whether as a regular part
>of his diet or not, and with what other dietary supplements you might have
>to consult with his homeopothist to find out. I'm sure even his marriage
to
>muriel would have at some time or another crossed paths in his mind with
his
>conception of himself as a yogi.
>
>In my travels through the archives I also noticed this posting made in the
>same discussion by Scottie:
>
>
>> I think yogic philosophy must obey the same sort of rule as faith
>> in socialism. Anyone failing to respond to it at twenty has
>> no imagination. Anyone still stuck with it at forty has gone mad.
>
>As a yogi in my early 20's with definite signs of madness already setting
in
>I'm quite curious to hear more from him about this. What is it on the
other
>side that may still save me from this insipent madness?
>
>Love,
>Madhava
>
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