Subject: Re: Hapworth Revisited
From: Victoria Lloyd (v_k_lloyd@hotmail.com)
Date: Tue Jan 02 2001 - 13:06:15 GMT
Hello all,
Thought I’d stop lurking for a moment to join in the Hapworth discussion. I
read it recently, well, I say read but I really couldn’t stick with it
through to the end. Disappointed is not the word.
I’d been looking forward to reading it for ages, and expected to devour it
when I finally did get my hands on a copy, but it entirely lacks all those
things I like best about Salinger. In fact, reading Hapworth made me think
about what exactly it was that I do (or did) like about his work. I’m not a
big fan of Catcher in the Rye (expel me for heresy) but I do love those
pesky Glass family stories. Perhaps I made the mistake of thinking along
soap opera lines. There I was happily following the Glass saga, waiting for
the next instalment, when suddenly the author changes the rules, and with
one carpet tugging sweep, whips the foundations out from underneath the
characters I felt I knew, and re-writes them as gruesome little
quasi-prophets. A change so fundamental, not “they became” but “they always
were” is hard to swallow. Harder if you read them chronologically by
publication date (or lack thereof). The other way seems more palatable –
“they started out really obnoxious, but got a lot better…”
What I like best about Salinger are those little pockets of clear prosaic
beauty that crop up here and there – mainly in the short stories - which
don’t try to do anything except describe, or at least don’t seem to. That
simple old fashioned “way he writes” thing. My favourites: Seymour: an
Introduction, Raise High the Roofbeams O Carpenters, Down at the Dinghy all
of which have those lovely moments of (albeit verbose) clarity and
well-defined “walk off the page and meet you down the street”
characterisation.
I don’t want to be force fed dubious metaphysics. Blame my obnoxiously
religious childhood, but every time I come up against one of those baby
Buddhas my mind rebels on me. Try as I do to enjoy “Teddy” or “Hapworth”
(and I did try) I just can’t do it. There’s something horribly evangelical
about those self indulgent little stories. I get the feeling that they’d be
better received by the fans of improving pamphlets for the spiritually
destitute than they are by the general public.
There’s nothing wrong with examining spirituality in fiction, and what an
author does with his characters is entirely his prerogative. Whether or not
it is worth hanging on for the next release is another matter. I was feeling
rather optimistic about those catalogued future masterpieces that just might
be waiting in the wings. Until I read Hapworth. As someone said already the
fact that Hapworth has been singled out from the unpublished stories and
scheduled for publication does give it a more credible position in
Salinger’s work – this is not one of those he’d rather hide.
This morning I read a review of “Closing Time” by Joseph Heller, which made
me think about all of this again. An extended period of literary silence,
despite my wishful thinking, doesn’t seem to lead to great things.
Victoria
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This archive was generated by hypermail 2b25 : Wed Feb 21 2001 - 09:44:22 GMT