Re: FW: gunnery
Sam Rosenthal (sam.rosenthal@ucop.edu)
Thu, 08 Jan 1998 14:46:39 +0100
i guess so -- it was worth a shot, so to speak -- i figured seymour wasn't
a clothes horse & most of the luggage was muriel's clothes & the shorts
were muriel's & the undershirts seymour's & ok, seymour brought muriel the
"ladies gun" but her mother insisted she pack a gat 'cause of seymour & the
trees, & granny's chair, & the window, & the bermuda pictures, etc. -- you
think about salinger long enough & you start to trip over details & you're
not sure if it Means Something or not -- i commented a month or so back
that seymour shooting himself was an echo of him throwing a rock at
charlotte -- that whatever the hell he was thinking on the driveway that
day with charlotte was somehow connected in his mind, by some seymour
logic, to throwing a rock at himself -- so i think, is there anything else
in the canon to relate to it? -- seymour shooting marbles on the streets of
nyc? -- he told buddy to try not aiming so much -- seymour's aim is true --
so he meant to hit charlotte -- he meant to shoot himself "through his
right temple" -- meaning through the "correct" temple? -- that is, HIS
temple & not muriel's -- marriage partners are to "serve" each other --
what kind of "room service" are we witnessing in perfect day? -- seymour
hits the water & says it's cold -- muriel tells her mother she's hot --
somebody got bananafever here? -- who's a bananafish & what (or whom) is a
banana? -- seymour kisses sybil's foot & she disapproves with a "hey!" to
which seymour responds "hey, yourself!" -- in the elevator the scene is
echoed with seymour in sybil's position -- seymour's imaginary tatoo? --
calfskin luggage? -- mark of cain? -- abel kept sheep -- cain said his
punishment was greater than he could bear -- is seymour being punished? --
cain dwelt in the land of nod, on the east of eden & knew his wife --
didn't seymour meet muriel on the upper east side? -- didn't the tigers in
little black sambo run around until they turned into butter? -- muriel got
sunburned & has a jar of bronze -- i think i've been belching up this cud
so long i'm seeing patterns where they don't exist
>In a message dated 98-01-07 11:20:23 EST, you write:
>
><< It seems more likely that seymour would have brought the gun home from the
> war than muriel would have brought a gun from her mom...so much more
> likely that I wonder if sam could find anything real in the text that
> actually links gun to muriel at all? will >>
>
>yeah, I looked for that myself. I remembered Muriel's mother was freaked
>about Muriel's marriage to Seymour, even considering him a dangerous
>character. So I thought she may have given it to her daughter. But I
>couldn't find a hint...
>
>Jim