Introduction and "Hapworth 16"
Ahimsa2000@aol.com
Thu, 05 Feb 1998 00:23:06 -0500 (EST)
Hello, all. I'm fairly new to the list and have only posted once, I believe,
largely due to lack of time, though I try to read the posts every day.
Briefly, my name is Pauline Yearwood, I live in Chicago, I'm a writer for a
weekly newspaper here but have aspirations more literary than journalistic.
Enough about me, except to say that I am, naturally, a longtime -- very
longtime -- devotee of JDS.
That's why I was so surprised to discover, upon receiving from my daughter a
photocopied version of "Hapworth 16" from the June 19, 1965 New Yorker, that I
must not have read it, although that was the year I graduated from college and
I was definitely already infatuated with the works of JDS. I actually thought
I had read and somehow forgotten it. But that could not have been true.
ANYway -- and please forgive me if you have been over this territory before --
could anyone say anything articulate about "Hapworth" beyond a wordless
exclamation halfway between terror and exhilaration, which was my response? I
mean, Seymour was only SEVEN years old, for God's sake! And yet, this story
seems to fill in some gaps in my understanding of SG and rest of the Glass
family, as well as throwing up some obstacles to that endeavor as well. Right
now, having just finished it, I am really too stunned to be very intelligent
about it. One thing that I did underline was his statement that "I also give
you my word of honor that one of us will be present at the other chap's
departure for various reasons; it is quite in the cards, to the best of my
knowledge." (I assume he means departure from the current "appearance," as SG
refers to this life.) But that didn't happen. But maybe it did, in a way that
I don't yet understand. I mean, it didn't happen in the obvious physical
sense. But that is just one tiny, tiny point of fact that happened to snag my
mind -- probably not very important in the long run? So, while I remain in a
semi-inarticulate (probably semi-comatose would be more accurate) state from
the shock of reading the long-sought-after "Hapworth," can anyone else offer
their thoughts about where all this fits in to the Glass family canon, what
its prime significance is, etc. etc.?
Just let me say in closing that for the most part, I enjoy the list immensely.
The posts I don't enjoy, I just delete immediately. Problems solved.
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