> First, I would like to consider the story in relation to "A Perfect Day..." >What would we think of the scenario, Seymour's disappearance, the revelation >of the depth of his love for Muriel and his happiness, his eventual >marriage, if we did not already know what happens in the final chapter, >so to speak. Is there anyone who actually read RHTRBC before APDFBF? >>From the other direction, would anyone have considered Seymour as the >holy man he is finally labeled from just reading APDFBF, without this story? I'm going to have to take some more time with your post, but if you'll allow me to be rather waspish, I should point out right here that Buddy does, at the beginning of "Carpenters", tell us in his very queer, peripheral way that Seymour killed himself. Seymour's suicide is, I think, his defining moment--or rather Buddy's defining moment...Because everything that Seymour does has and will always lead up to his inexorable death, Buddy won't let us forget that for a second. I don't know whether anything would have changed if I had read "Carpenters" before "Perfect Day"... If there is a place for something like that *to* happen, it must be in "Carpenters", because any other of Buddy's Seymour dissertations regards Seymour as Dead, Long Dead, Don't Even Try Think of Him As Alive, He's Gone, Let's Canonize Him--while "Carpenters" takes Seymour out of his casket for a longer span than a Buddy Anecdote...in "Carpenters", Buddy lets Seymour breathe a little...but oddly enough (once more), we never can get our hands on Seymour in "Carpenters". While his journal gives us a view from the inside, he is so conspicuously physically absent. It would seem that Buddy, even while he lives his life to share Seymour with us, is subconciously keeping the totality of Seymour to himself. Brendan ______________________________________________________ Get Your Private, Free Email at http://www.hotmail.com