Re: Kerouac and Shade / Salinger and Nabokov -Reply -Reply

Daniel Mahanty (MAHANTYD@ojp.usdoj.gov)
Tue, 18 Aug 1998 13:06:20 -0400

I never actually heard "Bucks Fizz" - just a hearsay question...sorry to
have attributed "Australian" to a British band. 


>I don't think so. In one of my earlier posts on this subject I worked out
>that the dates are such that Nabokov could have well and truly read
>`Zooey'
>by then.

I suppose I would rather infer that they are similair without a literal
relationship, although it would be great to know if in fact Nabokov was
influenced by F&Z, especially Z.

>Yes, that's true ... but I'm talking about Seymour's more self conscious
>`creations' - i.e. his poems. But that raises an interesting point -
>Salinger has in Hapworth deliberately chosen to depict Seymour at a
>time
>when he is not `performing for the Fat Lady' so to speak - thus, again,
>avoiding the problem of authentically rendering the poetry of a genius.
>As
>for `who wrote Hapworth?' I've been having a lot of thoughts about that
l>ately. About the position of Buddy in relation to Salinger, and Seymour,
>and so on. It intrigues me that Buddy always has his little editorial gloss
>in there before he quotes Seymour. And who's to say Buddy isn't
>altering
>things here and there to perpetuate the image of Seymour? Adding
>things?
>Subtracting things? (could a seven year old boy *really * write a letter
>that long??) Who's to say Buddy *didn't* write Hapworth? 

I think its highly possible, perhaps even probable. Seymour is to Buddy
as Buddy is to Salinger?? Seymour is Buddy is Salinger. Kimbote is
Shade is Nabokov.
Seymour wrote Hapworth? Buddy wrote Hapworth? Salinger wrote
Hapworth.


>That's the point
>I'm making when I say that Salinger doesn't let us make our own
>decision on
>Seymour.

No?

 Everything in what we know of the Glass world is tailored to >the
>irrevocable image of Seymour as the family Genius. 

Perhaps, but  I would offer the notion that  the fabric of Glass may be 
sewn more with the eccentricity and genius of all of the Glass "kids".
The image of Seymour may serve, in my opinion, more as a sort of
ground zero for discourse.


>Actually the opposite theory has been much espoused (the author of
>`Nabokov
>>>
he creation of John Shade! He quotes an unpublished section of
>Nabokov's
>`Speak, Memory' in which he more or less admits to this.It does make a
>.lot
>of sense in some ways - Kinbote being in every way opposite to
>Shade, who
>you could see as oppressed by his very normality, through which he
>escapes
>via a faked shooting into his own fantasy.

!!!!!
Ok, you've definitely got me thinking about this one - which makes more
sense? I have no idea.

>This, I think, is an interesting
>theory (I don't necessarily agree with it) and sheds an interesting
>possibility in the Glass direction - IS SEYMOUR REALLY DEAD??? We
>don't
>know it. The only record we have of it is Buddy's. He already admits in
>`S:AI' that he was `lying' about Seymour's character - who's to say
>he's
>not lying about the suicide?

Somehow, the suicide of Seymour is real to me.

 The beautiful idea, to me ,(not to state the obvious, but then again...) is
that Salinger wrote Hapworth. Salinger wrote RHTRBC, and Bananafish,
and SAI, as Nabokov wrote _Pale Fire_.
The idea that the author, in these circumstances, can make us question
the intent, the identity and the validity of a fictional first person is
remarkable.

Satis verborum for now, I reckon.

Dan