Re: Seymour's Suicide
oconnort@nyu.edu
Thu, 17 Jul 1997 00:19:43 -0400 (EDT)
It's been really a delight to see the various reactions to this thread.
I've never been completely happy with any conclusion about the "why" of
"Bananafish," and I appreciate all JDS's retrofitting of the Glass family
onto the old "Bananafish" story, but I can relate the experience of a
close friend who did not end himself as Seymour did, but who experiences
much of the modern-day equivalent.
He is a rather melancholy guy -- a clinician would probably tag him as a
depressed personality, and I guess that's reasonably accurate -- and
like so many people who drifted into it, he found himself married to
someone he loves the way he loves puppies and kittens and other people's
kids. The problem is that he's a reasonably complex person (and not
always a joy to be with; even he admits this) and his wife is not.
In many ways, his wife is like Muriel. There is her close focus on
what's in the window of Saks, with the complete disregard for certain
aesthetic things my friend appreciates. And he accepts this, most of
the time. He's rational enough to know that they're just two different
people, and that just as she may not respond to a poem he happens upon
and loves, he couldn't care a bit about what's in the window at Saks.
And like any sensible, realistic person, he doesn't let these
differences get in the middle of himself and his wife.
But there have been moments, and he freely admits they are irrational
moments, when they'll happen upon something innocent, and the gap
between them shows dramatically. One episode I recall hearing about
was a ride on the subway, where there was a little kid who just stared
ahead until my friend made a funny face, at which point the kid
started to giggle.
My friend was only on there with his wife for a few stops, but in
that time he got a real joy out of making funny faces at the kid and
getting the kid to laugh. He said it was a real laugh, a genuine laugh,
and not intellectual or ironic. And his wife didn't get it at all,
didn't know why he even bothered.
When they got home, he said, he was just so damned sad, because on
the train with the kid there was some kind of pure fun. And when it
was time to go home with his wife, there was something stifling about
it in comparison, and to cap it all off, they got the mail and it was
full of catalogs from all the stores his wife shops at, and that did
it for him as far as despairing over things that night.
I should add that my friend does NOT care for Salinger, and may not even
know the story "Bananafish," so it is not some kind of weird emulation
on his part.
The point is, I guess, that sometimes these things just happen. You get
an introspective fellow married to someone who has different priorities,
and the two of them just don't see things the same way. He cares about
her and he loves her, but he knows they won't quite have similar
outlooks in their lives. And most of the time I believe he accepts it.
Though there are times he calls me to get the load off his mind, and,
sure, I worry about him. He wouldn't hurt her. But the sadness he
radiates is something you can almost touch. But it's directed at
himself and the chasm between the life with his life and the life beyond
his wife's world.
And that, in many ways, is how I read the 1948 Seymour, before Salinger
tried to tie him together into some larger mosaic.
I don't mean to discredit anything that has been said before on this
topic, but just as in Zen the point is -- boom -- the cold slap of
experience, sometimes in stories or in life, things don't happen for
literary reasons. They simply happen, like the sound of one hand
clapping, and you can take it or leave it.
--tim o'connor