Re: Glass

Subject: Re: Glass
From: Louise Z. Brooks (invertedforest@angelfire.com)
Date: Wed Mar 01 2000 - 22:09:52 EST

That's rubbish. Who on earth inspired more hagiography in this century and in fact all centuries than the soldier? The current generation might find the focus on all that sacrifice, the constant round of memorials and reminders and thanksgivings not to our liking, but we cannot deny that whole swathes of men were cut down in the most ridiculously unjust way in history and that is as worthy as hell of hagiography.

The part I find rather repulsive (or at least contradictory) is that Walt, whose death is equally or more tragic than Seymour's (depending on whether or not you believe suicide, unmitigated by mental illness, to be an inherently selfish act), gets pushed to the side by his family. Why isn't Buddy writing tomes trying to understand Walt? Answer me this - how could any mother truly play favourites? That's plain revolting. All you other mothers here back me up! By what stretch of the imagination is Seymour kind, by the way?

Perhaps the reason why I still prefer The Catcher in the Rye to the Glass stories is that the former celebrates the common man and the latter the divine. As I said, we can assume that Holden lived humbly for a cause, and we know that Seymour, as far as Buddy is concerned, died nobly for one, whether or not he knows what it is. 

---
Louise Z. Brooks
"Invention my dear friends is 93% perspiration, 6% electricity, 4% evaporation and 2% butterscotch ripple." - Willy Wonka

On Wed, 1 Mar 2000 16:38:00    citycabn wrote:
>Louise:
>
>
>>Perhaps Walt is a more useful character to think about than we have
>realised, then. Because in a way, he's >as much a mirror image of Seymour as
>Buddy is, but in a completely different way. Does anyone else find it
>>slightly disturbing that an apparently nice and - yes, normal young man
>dies in such a ridiculously tragic way >yet it's the poet with the foot
>fixation that becomes the family saint? Why???
>
>
>What do we have here:  two of Bessie's sons are dead, one by suicide (her
>favorite, her most intricately calibrated, her kindest son) and one killed
>in WWII (her only truly lighthearted son).
>
>Lighthearted normal young men killed  in the war (non-combat) don't usually
>inspire hagiography.
>Poets, who are star-crossed with Mysticism, and figure in the Glass stories
>as Seymour does, do.
>
>--Bruce
>
>-
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