Seymour, the Rain King

Brendan McKennedy (suburbantourist@hotmail.com)
Sat, 21 Feb 1998 22:22:51 -0800 (PST) 

Recently I decided to expand my narrow reading experience, and took out 
a book by Saul Bellow, an author I had never read before, but an author 
who, for some reason, came highly recommended.

I took out "Henderson, the Rain King", and was thoroughly 
disappointed...I'll admit I quit about halfway through and started on 
"Dead Souls" which was much more worth my time.

The first chapter of "Rain King", however, promised a great 
experience--but only because of some things that I interpreted as rather 
thinly-veiled allusions to Salinger's fiction, which was just shy of 
contemporary with Bellow's (very) minor masterpiece.

In the first chapter, Henderson's demeanor resembles a bit of a 
Holden/Seymour hybrid, but I didn't notice until Henderson tells us that 
he interrupted his socialite wife's tea party wearing a robe and a Red 
Hunting Cap (my capitalization).  That alone startled me, but later 
Henderson is vacationing at a resort on the Gulf of Mexico (Florida, 
perhaps?), where he shoots a slingshot at bottles.   The other guests of 
the hotel start complaining about the "broken Glass" (again, my 
capitalization)--and when Henderson's wife (who resmembles a Muriel 
Fedder with a great deal less understanding by Bellow) passes the 
complaint on to Henderson, he goes crazy--he threatens to blow his 
brains out, tells her that he didn't forget to pack his pistol.  Remind 
you of anything?

In the immediately following chapters, there are a few more direct 
references to Henderson's red hunting cap, and then he goes off to 
Africa and blunders around a bit, a field anthropologist's nightmare, 
sounding terribly fake with his American witticisms...calling everyone 
"buddy" and ending sentences with "hey", in a fashion that is 
reminiscent of someone who decides that they want to write a book just 
like Salinger.  I didn't stick around to see what happened after that.

If anyone has any insight into this anomaly, I'd love to hear it.  I 
don't recommend anyone read the book, or at least any of the book past 
the first three chapters.  I for one am not a person who completes a 
book just to say I did.  "Dead Souls" by that brilliant naturalist Gogol 
was well worth a forgone American novel of mediocre merit, even a 
forgone American novel of mediocre merit that tries to emulate Salinger.

Brendan

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