Re: throwing rocks at himself (was: gunnery)

Mattis Fishman (mattis@argos.argoscomp.com)
Thu, 15 Jan 1998 16:04:31 -0500 (EST)

Lagusta writes:

>hmm...i think this one of the best explanations of seymour's suicide i've
>ever heard. i never thought to directly link it to the rock-throwing
>insident, although if i had thought about it i would have realized that
>they are basically the same act. 

Thank you for the compliment. However, the original thought, that
Seymour's suicide was linked to the rock throwing, was suggested
recently in a post by Sam Rosenthal, and I was merely expanding upon
his suggestion. It may even have been presented a few months ago, though
I cannot remember by whom.

further she pens:
>ok, i'm not exactly positive if i have what you're asking, but here are
>the reasons that seymour gives in his journal entry for wanting to marry
>(or for simply loving) muriel (well, mostly the things that seem to make
>him so happy in relation to muriel):
>... snip ...

Thank you for the quotes, they are worth saving, but rather than
seeking what Seymour loved in Muriel, I was looking for something more
directly related to the topic. That afflicted with happiness (perhaps
an unnecessary paradox - better, immobilized with happiness),
do we know what enabled him to overcome his paralysis and go through
with the marriage? Brendan (and I myself, in the original post) suggests
that he was simply crowd-shy, and perhaps knowing how Seymour felt
about bathrobes on the beach and people staring at his feet, this explanation
fits. But I am not sure that simply eloping solves the problem of being
too happy, one can be too happy to elope, presumably. Do we have to
conclude that Seymour merely went into "remission" and that ultimately,
as underscored by Seymour's suicide, there is no cure for banana
fever? Am I the only one who finds this suggestion disturbing?
(As the quipster remarked about the actor who, playing Abraham Lincoln,
took to going around town in a stovepipe hat and all the other accoutrements
of the late president, "That fellow won't be happy until he's assasinated")

Advice-from-the-geriatric-set-department (all right, I'm not *that* old):

I imagine that David's italic's only show up to those of you who read
your email from a web browser. I get embedded tags such as <Italic>
<\Italic> which are far from attractive, but still leave the text readable.
As you may have observered, it has been fairly common on the internet to
surround a word or phrase with asterisks, *like this*, to give the effect
of italics. Of course, over using this, just like overuse of actual italic
fonts, gets tedious (take it from a former typesetter)

All the best,
Mattis