Re: hap's worth

MA --

I think I agree with you that Salinger, if he has written a lot of
poetry (and it seems he probably has, according to our resident
professional 20th cent. lit historian, Kim :) ), that there's no way he
could publish it as Seymour's after the build up he's given it in his
fiction.

I'd also agree that Seymour was showing off in Hapworth, but he's
showing off the way a genius HS kid would, or a sharp undergraduate.
His vocabulary and diction is too far beyond a 7 year old's to be
credible, as well as his reading list. Salinger may as well have
written a comic book superhero.

In fact, I think he did. His superpowers come from study of the Vedas
and Enlightenment, though.

Jim

> i think that the build up of seymour in prior stories is completely lived up to and more in
> hapworth. while you certainly were no genius at 7, nor was i, i can fully grasp the
> language as being that of a 7 year old genius. it's totally immature, the words and
> language. it's immature seymour who's showing off, the way a seven year old would. i
> hardly think seymour would write a letter such as this one when he was 28. power in the
> hands of a child can get unweildy and make splashes all over the place. what's very weird
> to me is that salinger created a character from the ground up, age 7 to suicide, and wrote
> about his character through the brother character he brought up from age 5 to flatulent 40.
> very strange that on the book and in the new yorker these stories are credited to salinger.
> buddy wrote it. buddy glass.
>

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Received on Fri Jun 27 21:33:18 2003