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
______________________________________________________
Get Your Private, Free Email at http://www.hotmail.com