Re: Glass Theory 101

Camille Scaysbrook (verona_beach@geocities.com)
Sun, 02 Aug 1998 21:30:15 +1000

Hoo boy ... there's some of those little western koans we call `conundrums'
crawling in these waters .... Right from the outset though I wish to make
one thing clear : we can NEVER talk about `Is Character (or even Sergeant
(: ) X Real?'. To me, as soon as a character hits the paper, he or she is
fictional. A character named JD Salinger could have been substituted for
Buddy Glass and it still wouldn't make any difference. What we *can* talk
about is intended surrogates, so in answer to your question:

> 1)  Who exactly is Buddy Glass?  Is he the "Alter Ego" of JDS only in the
> Glass stories, or in the others as well.

Yes, you could say Buddy Glass is, as many have noticed, a surrogate for
JDS. But I think it's too facile and unproductive a viewpoint just to say
JDS=BG, Q.E.D. Salinger *knows* we think he's Buddy Glass. And he runs with
this idea. He *wants* to take us on this particular wild chicken soup
chase. Yes, he gives us biographical details which equal those of himself,
but I don't believe it's his way of saying `Yes, I am Buddy.' Rather, it's
a `Hey guys! Wanna figure out if I am Buddy?' - a question rather than an
answer (which, to quote Bush, is Everything Zen (: I hate Bush.) All
through his career Salinger was asked `Are you Holden? Was there really a
Seymour? Was there really a Sybil? (to the point where a very respectable
newspaper combed the country for what they called `Mr Salinger's cupboard'
of potential real life Sybils) To me, Salinger's use of Buddy is the
biggest and classiest possible nose-thumbing at those sort of people.

It is, however, an interesting proposition to speculate that the character
of Buddy Glass wrote `A Perfect Day for Bananafish'. This would certainly
call a whole lot of things into new questioning. It would mean that every
single perception of Seymour we receive has been filtered through Buddy's
consciousness. To me, this calls to question the reliability of the
narrator. How could we ever be sure that he doesn't tinker with the
evidence? He always *tells* us if he is about to quote from Seymour (for
example, at the beginning of Hapworth) but how can we know his quotes are
accurate - that he hasn't omitted crucial details? After all, as Buddy
continually tells us, Seymour is some kind of saint-seer. How do we know he
isn't shaping the evidence to support his opinion? In a way, Salinger the
Author is - would we have believed, for example, that Seymour is the genius
he tells us he is only on the basis of `Bananafish'? Or, as you pointed out
... how do we even know that Seymour did commit suicide. True, Buddy has
other characters say so, but ... (long pause). As you say, 

> After all, in "Seymour, an Introduction", Buddy says
> that there are 2 Seymours, the real life one and the one that he has
written
> about. 

Which makes an interesting point - Seymour is in some ways a fictional
character created by a fictional character. Buddy admits his inherent
unreliability - I don't believe he's exaggerating at all, he's being very
truthful, which does make a case for Buddy's reliability as a narrator -
after all, the familial ties that bind him to Seymour evidently cause him
to respect him enough to be official archivist to his life ... but then
again, Seymour is what keeps Buddy the writer enfranchised.

An excellent point of reference here is that text I keep mentioning (for
good reason) - Vladimir Nabokov's `Pale Fire'. Because it's an exploration
of a very similar thing - an archivist who is in this case very obviously
unreliable (but exactly how much is never made totally clear), and who is
likewise preserving the greatest work of a deceased genius - but even his
status as genius is questioned. A very interesting book and one highly
reccommended to anyone interested in the `unreliable narrator' debate.

As for which text reveals the Real Salinger ... it's so, *so* hard to tell,
and I for one doubt we'll ever know. To me, `To Esme with Love and Squalor'
and `The Laughing Man' come closest to straight autobiography, but I'm
never sure whether it's because he's a great craftsman with a big
imagination or it really did happen like that. Probably a bit of both. If
you're a writer you naturally have your radars on `scan' 24 hours a day.

Anyway, to the 5 or so Bananafishers who made it this far in *my* posting -
(((())))) The ever trusty bunch of parentheses (:

Camille 
verona_beach@geocities.com
@ THE ARTS HOLE
www.geocities.com/Hollywood/Theater/6442
THE INVERTED FOREST
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