Subject: Re: Digesting four weeks & John Keats...
From: citycabn (citycabn@gateway.net)
Date: Wed Apr 12 2000 - 12:18:50 EDT
Mattis, our magician of the space bar, wrote:
> Do you, Cecilia, care to elaborate on your previous post?
> Or does anyone else have an opinion?
>
And Cecilia, the Chicago Cubs' most articulate and beautiful defender (even
with a spot of orange in her hair), did elaborate.
My recycled reply-post (below) probably makes little sense without the
original post (an extra-inning effort by Cecilia A. Baader, pinch hitting
for a Mr. Alsen--but I'll leave that one in the Archives for her to find).
--Bruce
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----Subject: Alsen's royal pain From: citycabn (citycabn@gateway.net) Date: Mon Jan 31 2000 - 19:33:33 EST
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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.)
I don't think Buddy wrote Hapworth. (I don't care how many mirrors Buddy might deploy or how many cigarettes he smokes.) If Alsen's thesis hinges on this, well, that's just too tortured an interpretation for me.
I don't think Seymour went wrong with his quest and has taken a step backward.
I don't think we can totally explain or solve or understand-with-a-nifty-thesis S.'s suicide. (But I recommend rereading the opening pages of SAI--up to "Oh, this happiness is strong stuff.")
I think the real "culmination" to the Seymour story is not Hapworth (for that is the beginning: the 7-year-old S., and from whence he progressed), or the atmospherics in Bananafish (for that is an end-result of the rehabilitated, German typewriter), but the Introduction itself.
I still endorse what "The author writes" on the dust jacket of RHTRBC & SAI in '63, : ..."Seymour Glass, who is the main character in my still-uncompleted series about the Glass family."
--Bruce
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