Subject: Re: Hapworth Revisited
From: Jive Monkey (monkey_jive@hotmail.com)
Date: Sat Dec 30 2000 - 16:43:54 GMT
here's my take on what jds was doing when he wrote this story:
first off, he's not trying to say anything. at no point, as you said, does
he tell us anything about our common humanity. i believe that is because
he's already written a bunch of stories that do just that. what he has
written, with hapworth, is pure invention, a letter written by a seven year
old boy genius at summer camp, with no moral implications whatsoever. do
you expect that he would keep writing citr and for esme over and over again,
until he dies? isn't that intellectual suicide? hapworth is in fact a
story about seymour, nothing more, nothing less, and whether anyone in all
the world gives a damn about seymour means not a thing to the author.
"Given the circumstances, any of us could have been Holden
or the Sergeant. But who ever encountered a family of Glasses?
They tell us virtually nothing about our own common humanity.
They're a fantasy representing various facets of his own personality
contructed by a rich, clever, Upper East Side boy"
which, i believe, is exactly the point. i am willing to wager that jds
doesn't give a damn whether or not he impresses anyone with his work, or
whether they approve, or whether they could care less. he sits at home, and
writes his heart out, and he's probably as happy as he can be, or at least
as content.
so, the question remains as to whether the story is any good. personally, i
can't stand it, and for all the reasons you don't like it either. there's
really no point in reading it, except to learn a few things about the glass
family. it's long and repititious, it has no point, it's a letter from a
seven-year old seymour to his family. who would really want to read it
besides his family? probably almost no one.
andy
ac
From: "Scottie Bowman" <rbowman@indigo.ie>
Reply-To: bananafish@roughdraft.org
To: <bananafish@roughdraft.org>
Subject: Hapworth Revisited
Date: Sat, 30 Dec 2000 18:26:59 -0000
I've now read, more or less, every word of Hapworth -
& with as careful attention as I could manage. I've also
trawled a fair sample of the relevant posts in the Archives
- though not, of course, each of the 854.
What strikes me is how rarely list members express a personal
response to the story. There seems to be a slightly hang-dog
evasiveness. Plenty of stuff about how hard it is to get hold
of a copy; when will it be published between covers; what are
the implications of all this; & so on. But, apart from the
apparently deliberate incongruity of a young boy expressing
such views in such a voice & a couple of approving nods
for Seymour's reading list, no one seems inclined to say
whether or not they liked the thing: whether or not they were
moved or amused or thrilled by it.
Our own Prof - alone I think - finds it one of the most exciting
of the Salinger texts. The 'Salinger expert' from George Washington
University, Faye Moskowitz, says: 'Darling, cut, cut, cut ...Tedious
... in short, it bored me to tears ...' And Updike likens it to: '...
the
Master's pen in the process of exploding,'; & tells us he '... can't
imagine
what would have come next ...'
For me it seems simply the end state of what was beginning
to be evident in Seymour: an Introduction & the other late
published pieces.
The prodigal squelching-about in words, the endless, neurotic
modifications & self-monitorings - the reader no longer feels
any inclination to share in the experience - as he once did with
Holden, for example, or with Sergeant X. He is, instead, trapped
in the role of alienated spectator watching a wearisome, slightly
distasteful exhibition of juvenile smart-assery.
Given the circumstances, any of us could have been Holden
or the Sergeant. But who ever encountered a family of Glasses?
They tell us virtually nothing about our own common humanity.
They're a fantasy representing various facets of his own personality
contructed by a rich, clever, Upper East Side boy - treasured
throughout his life, I suspect, for his uniqueness, his giftedness,
his fastidiousness, his charisma, & so on - & who long ago retreated,
literally & metaphorically, into an increasingly barren, increasingly
solipsistic fantasy of his own particularity.
Does anyone after the age of sixteen - when most of us give up
the fantasy of being that special, that royal, that love child of
genius
- really give one damn about Seymour Glass or any of his precious
siblings?
What a pity Salinger never seems to have found - or perhaps was
never able to love - a Norah Barnacle who could have laughed
at him, told him to catch himself on, kept him gratefully rooted
in the good soil. And maybe turned him into a contender for
the Joyce Cup.
Scottie B.
-
* Unsubscribing? Mail majordomo@roughdraft.org with the message
* UNSUBSCRIBE BANANAFISH
_________________________________________________________________
Get your FREE download of MSN Explorer at http://explorer.msn.com
-
* Unsubscribing? Mail majordomo@roughdraft.org with the message
* UNSUBSCRIBE BANANAFISH
This archive was generated by hypermail 2b25 : Tue Jan 02 2001 - 18:02:58 GMT