Subject: Re: Teddy killed booper [was Alexander's Salinger Biography]
From: Pasha Paterson (gpaterso@richmond.edu)
Date: Mon Feb 28 2000 - 01:33:32 EST
At 12:50 02/28/00 -0500, Madhava wrote:
>[...]OK, very speculative and doesn't really
>make sense. Maybe the scream is no reason to
>suspect anyone's dead. But the reading where
>he does die is the one that seems most likely
>to me. Which leaves te question why the
>ambiguities?
As we've discussed before, it seems highly unlikely that Teddy would scream
if he was falling to his death. Since the scream is "all-piercing,
sustained" (198), we can probably be safe in ruling out a simple scream of
pleasure like the one Sybil gives Seymour (16). (It interests me how these
two "screams" so effectively mirror each other in the _Nine_ and yet were
contrived very separately at first. Hmmmmm.) But who's to say what really
happens? Does Booper push Teddy into the pool? Does she simply find him
dead? Even more intriguing: Might Teddy have pulled her in with him?
As for "why the ambiguities?" ... Well, isn't that what Salinger is all
about, especially in these nine stories? Salinger never gives us any sort
of closure. Even when Seymour shoots himself, it is only the beginning of
what is about to happen (since Muriel will certainly wake up at the sound)
and is also only the opening of the book, a sort of strange prelude to
haunt the other eight stories with lingering questions. Even the stories
that look like they have moral import (like F&Z) end as puzzlingly as they
begin. If the ending wasn't ambiguous, it wouldn't be Salinger. Besides,
writing the ending this way makes us think about it much more than we would
have if it had said "Nickolson leapt off the stairs in time to see Teddy
disappear over the edge of the pool, with Booper, arms extended, standing
over him. She screamed."
_________________________________________________
Pasha Paterson gpaterso@richmond.edu
Owner/Designer/Operator, The Digital Dustbin:
http://www.student.richmond.edu/~gpaterso/
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