Subject: Oh, I'm sorry...did somebody mention Seymour's suicide?
From: Matt Kozusko (mkozusko@parallel.park.uga.edu)
Date: Thu Feb 17 2000 - 13:02:21 EST
Bruce quotes a bit from _SAI_:
> "I wholeheartedly fear that there is a type of reader who may find it
> somewhat winning of me to have lived to be forty; i.e., unlike Another
> Person on the page, not to have been 'selfish' enough to commit suicide and
> leave my Whole Loving Family high and dry.
This is "why Seymour shot himself, revised by JDS, via Buddy, post
1953," part II.
In JDS's later understanding of Seymour's suicide (though the
syntactical tweezers with which he handles "selfish" indicate a more
or less permanent ambiguity), Seymour up and left as soon as he was
ready. "Selfish" because, well, really, it is selfish. Seymour may
have been ready to achieve godhead, but to go ahead with it was a
self-interested thing to do. A non-selfish Seymour would have stuck
around to entertain his immediate family, until someone else came
around to clang the damned bell.
Teddy was kind enough to wait for a little girl to shove him into an
empty pool (though again, one does want to enclose the entire last
page in those same syntactical tweezers). Seymour, lacking such
singular patience and indifference (thank God, I suppose), only hung
around until a little girl figuratively pushed him into a pool.
But as I say, thank God. Teddy was pedantic, bordering on
insufferable.
-- Matt Kozusko mkozusko@parallel.park.uga.edu - * Unsubscribing? Mail majordomo@roughdraft.org with the message * UNSUBSCRIBE BANANAFISH
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