Re: Bananafish
Tim O'Connor (tim@roughdraft.org)
Sun, 30 Aug 1998 21:43:14 -0500
Lomanno said:
> I cannot read the story without seeing Seymour as a closet
> pedophile who loathes himself for it. The way he befriends this little
> girl and coaxes her out into the water alone with him, then talks
> about BANANAFISH and kisses her foot all seems a little too creepy
I have to admit that this is the first time I've seen this kind of reading
taken to such an extreme. (Previously people have talked about the
pedophilia angle, but not that it led, through self-loathing, to the
suicide. I don't agree with this, but I admit that it's intriguing.) The
unnerving detail is how, later in the Glass stories, Buddy says his family
has complained ("Alley Oop," he says) that the character in the story may
have been named "Seymour," but that he was really Buddy. In their eyes.
The angle you posit is also comparable to Leslie Fiedler's view of Huck and
Jim in The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn. I don't know the exact piece,
but I'll bet that John or Will or Matt may know the essay.
> However, I have not yet worked
> through the first half of the story that illustrates his wife's
> character. She just seems kind of oblivious to him.
See, I think this is much more a key to Seymour than any speculation about
pedophilia. Seymour and Muriel, no matter how much we're willing to spot
Seymour in terms of his spirituality, make such an unlikely couple, I
occasionally wonder how he managed to make it all the way to Florida with
her in the car without pulling out the gun and blowing his head out the
window.
In "Hapworth," I think Salinger was showing us (albeit absurdly) that lust
is so NORMAL that, look, it's even in a little boy. I didn't read Seymour
as some kind of deviant, there or elsewhere. And I have occasionally
thought of it as a case of Seymour seeing Sybil (pardon the alliteration)
as the child he never dared to be, or never could have been, knowing what
we know of him by the time we meet him in "Hapworth."
But please don't take this as a criticism; I think it's a good point to
throw in the hopper of thoughts about the story. Anyone other than Jim
have a reaction to this? I'd be interested in hearing about it, pro or con
-- and I'll bet other people here would, too.
--tim o'connor