Subject: Re: Seymour's yellow hand
From: Matt Kozusko (mkozusko@virtual.park.uga.edu)
Date: Fri Apr 04 1997 - 00:48:42 GMT
On Thu, 3 Apr 1997, Jon Tveite wrote:
> I don't see him killing himself to achieve the spiritual perfection of a
> child. To me, it's more like, he senses that this incredibly strong love
> he has for children threatens to undermine his own spirituality. This is
> not to say that he's got pedophilic tendencies; rather, it's just that
> intense emotion is seen in Eastern religions as an impediment to
> enlightenment. Like the bananafish, Seymour has glutted himself -- with
> too much emotion -- and he can't get out of the hole.
The grand conclusion of all my thinking and writing about "Bananafish" to
date centers on the idea that Seymour has glutted himself (a tenet central
to Wiegand's article, as well). What he has glutted himself upon varies
from viewpoint to viewpoint, reading to reading, but that he is the
bananafish and that he is stuck in the world is unmistakable.
"Teddy" is an undisguised rewriting of "Bananafish," and as such, it
provides some clues about Seymour's suicide, as Salinger saw it five years
(exactly five years, to the publication date) later. It is no mistake
that Teddy talks of apples--of the apple in the garden of Eden--and it is
no mistake that he explains so clearly to Nicholson what Seymour insisted
on being clever and abstruse about. If we are paying attention, we see
Teddy and his apples and we think immediately of Seymour and his bananas.
"A Perfect Day for Applefish" would have been too obvious.
"Logic. Logic and intellectual stuff." Two pieces of fruit set in the
middle of two stories, each story about the death of a genius seeking
enlightenment, one opening a collection and the other closing it, with a
period of precisely five years separating their publication dates. two
such pieces of fruit cannot fail to collide when the stories are read side
by side. The fruit on which the world has glutted itself is full of
logic--or it is full of emotion or any other substance, good or bad, so
long as it is fit for overconsumption (Zooey reminds us that spiritual
treasure is just as gross at material treasure)....
Mammon
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mkozusko@virtual.park.uga.edu
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