Subject: Re: Seymour
From: Dan Owens (lorena@computer-services.com)
Date: Tue Feb 11 1997 - 17:06:50 GMT
oconnort@nyu.edu wrote:
>
>
> > We must remember that the story is supposed to stand on its own.
> > It is not just a story detailing Seymour's suicide so we know what
> > Buddy is talking about later on. Buddy's stories are of course
> > about his dealing with Seymour's death, as many of us have pointed
> > out. I think the story is about how war destroys a man. It seems
> > clear to me that Seymour is insane at this point, yet he was a
> > very intelligent and sane man before the war as we are shown in so
> > many stories by Buddy. I have the feeling that I have just
> > embarrassed myself and that I will be banashed from bananfish but
> > please gie me some feedback so that I can understand Salinger's
> > stories correctly if I am not.
>
> It would be a most un-Seymour thing for you to be banished!
>
> I agree with you that it is most important to remember that "Bananafish"
> is, after all, a standalone story. That it happened to plant the seed
> in the writer's mind for a later series of remarkable stories is
> interesting but not pertinent to any consideration of this one story.
>
> I'm not sure I would agree with you that Seymour was *insane*, though
> there are other, less severe, clinical terms that could be used to
> describe his behavior throughout the story.
>
> JDS, like many writers since the '20s, was quite aware of Hemingway's
> fiction, and I suspect that if we could ask him about it, we would
> find that he had read and absorbed Hemingway's "Big Two-Hearted River."
>
> Hemingway described his writing of that story as an attempt to write
> about war without mentioning the war. (He was illustrating his point
> about making a story stronger by omitting certain facts, which readers
> would then infer by reading what had *not* been omitted. His theory
> was that it made the story stronger.)
>
> And so we see Nick Adams coming back to a forest-fire-scarred world
> carrying his physical baggage and learning again how to do the things
> he used to do when he was younger and more innocent.
>
> Aside from the obvious need to eat and find a comfortable place to
> sleep, and to catch fish, and to stay warm, Nick is (we infer) a
> man coming home from some brutal experience and trying to find for
> himself what "peace" really means. Nick Adams has a strong, if
> slightly cracked, foundation for his new-found peace. Seymour is
> quite the opposite. He is fragile and set to detonate --
> emotionally -- at the slightest pressure.
>
> Nick Adams found his sanctuary in the woods of Michigan, which was
> the exact right place for him. Seymour was in precisely the wrong
> place, almost certainly with the wrong person, when he discovered
> that he was nowhere near the sanctuary he needed. And so he made
> his choice.
>
> It is imagining the moment after the gunshot in "Bananafish" that
> has always been an irresistable exercise for me. I cannot help
> envisioning Muriel's reaction upon being awakened by the noise.
> What did she think? Annoyance at being disturbed? Grief for
> Seymour? Pity for herself? And I wonder about those perfectly
> manicured nails, and the motions they made in the air....
>
> This moment-after-the-ending is one reason, I suspect, that the
> story has such a hold on my imagination.
>
> --tim o'connor
>
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I read somewhere that JDS met Hemmingway in Paris or something. ANyone
else know about that?
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