Subject: Hapworth Revisited
From: Scottie Bowman (rbowman@indigo.ie)
Date: Sat Dec 30 2000 - 14:26:59 GMT
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.
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