Re: sighunctific rigger

Brendan McKennedy (suburbantourist@hotmail.com)
Sat, 04 Apr 1998 22:16:05 -0800 (PST)

>GETTING BACK TO SALINGER....  I have often wondered (as so many of us 
have)
>what ear was at the other end of Holden's monologue. Sometimes I 
imagine a
>befuddled Viennese fellow with beard and spectacles (the perverse part 
of
>me likes to imagine this, someone like Muriel's mother's analyst as I
>imagine that man), and sometimes I have imagined (nobody throw anything 
at
>me) it's Seymour, or even Buddy.  

I'm not throwing this at you, only passing it the way my brother used to 
pass a basketball to my face with the advice, "THINK FAST."  I realize 
it was only a sort of speculation, but I have a very hard time thinking 
Holden was giving his story to Seymour or Buddy; I think they would have 
been so aggravating to him that we would scarecely have gotten through 
the first couple of chapters.  I imagine Seymour sitting on a bar stool 
next to Holden, nodding his head through the entire story, grinning 
wildly, loving the whole story, until Holden finally says, "What the 
hell do you think is so goddam funny?"  Buddy, of course, would have 
launched in with his own take on the story before it ever began, and we 
would have ended up with "Holden: An Introduction."  

Don't get me wrong...I love Seymour's character, though I'm not sure I 
would have found him tolerable in real life...I'm sure some of the 
writers on the list know what I mean...You've created such a great 
character, one who does all the work for you, a character of whom you 
are so proud until you meet someone just like him or her, and you can't 
stand that incarnation of your lovely brainchild.  Buddy I find less 
tolerable than Seymour, although I'm while his writing frustrates me it 
also attracts me--it's so audaciously adverse to the stipulations of his 
contemporaries.


Brendan

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