Re: and the winner is ...

Dang, Kim, you outta be working toward getting your own Salinger book
published.

Jim

Kim Johnson wrote:

> RESPONSES EMBEDDED WITHIN
>
> Kevin Carter <kevvsan@attbi.com> wrote:
>
>
>
>
>
> First, of all, his analysis of Seymour's life doesn't seem
> satisfactory.
> Much of what I've thought about Seymour, as a sort of
> bodhisattva figure,
> seemed to be negated by Alsen's perspective.
>
>
>
> right. (i strongly disagree with alsen's take on seymour.)
> alsen sees seymour as a failed spiritual seeker. in his new
> book, 'a reader's guide to j.d. salinger', he states that he
> sees no contradiction between the 'seymour' character in
> 'bananafish' and the other stories. that the 'bananafish'
> seymour is simply a logical characterization of the
> end-result of seymour's decline over the last six years of
> his life.
>
> if you look closely at alsen's chronology of seymour's life
> (there is one in 'composite novel' and an expanded one in
> 'reader's guide') you find him creating a fictive
> chronology. one that fits his theory of seymour as case
> study of attempting to live the spiritual life, hitting a
> dead end, and falling apart. for example, alsen says that in
> 1941 seymour starts drinking quite a bit (this because s.
> says he'd need more than one drink to talk about the
> charlotte incident with a shrink). alsen says that s.
> attempted suicide in '41 (the diary remark re scars on
> wrists--though no date is given, alsen simply assumes
> (misreads?) that it happened right before s. met muriel).
> alsen categorically states that s. spent the last three
> years of his life in an army psychiatric hospital (and that
> buddy visited him there!). this is concoted from the
> statement in 'bananafish' that it was a crime to let seymour
> out of the hospital and buddy's remark in 'seymour--an
> intro' which reads as follows:
>
> "Since early in 1948, I've been sitting--my family thinks
> literally--on a loose-leaf notebook inhabited by a hundred
> and eighty-four short poems that my brother wrote during the
> last three years of his life, both in and out of the Army,
> but mostly in, well in."
>
> alsen interprets "during the last three years of his life,
> both in and out of the Army, but mostly in, well in" as
> meaning being locked up, i.e., "well in". this is quite a
> stretch. granted, we don't know much about the last years of
> seymour's life. but the two things we *do* know about the
> last three years alsen either omits and disputes buddy.
>
> alsen omits the crucial fact that during the last three
> years of seymour's life seymour wrote the 184 poems that
> will rank him with the 3 or 4 nearly indispensable american
> poets we've had. there is no mention of writing these poems
> in either the chronology or text of alsen's two books. so
> IF alsen's interpretation is correct, then seymour wrote all
> of the poems while locked in a looney bin (and instead of
> writing gibberish as holderlin did after *his* breakdown,
> seymour pens these exquisite 184 poems). (this is cheap,
> but i might mention that in the chronology alsen has s.
> writing the keats poem at age 11; it was actually 8.) the
> other item i referred to above--alsen overruling buddy's
> knowledge of facts re seymour's life--is the date of the
> suicide. alsen goes to great lengths to show the date of
> the suicide was friday, march 19th. he comes up with a
> friday from internal evidence in 'bananafish'. &nb sp;and,
> after consulting a perpetual calendar, he finds march 18th
> (buddy's clearly stated date of the suicide (from his letter
> to zooey)) is a thursday, he incredibly decides to declare
> the date of the suicide as Friday, March 19th, 1948. apart
> from the audacity to do this, alsen fails to recall that
> 'bananafish' was published in january 1948; so it's fairly
> absurd for him to contest the date of the suicide (since
> march is after january; and especially since salinger
> himself re-dates the suicide to march 18th after *he*
> knowingly published 'bananafish' in january.)
>
>
>
>
>
> Also, I'm wondering what people thought about Buddy's claim
> that Seymour
> wrote the "Hapworth" letter. I had always seen this as
> either Salinger's
> striking back at the critics with his portrayal of an
> unrealistically
> precocious youth in response to their claims about his work
> or, simply, a
> portrayal of just how gifted young Seymour was. Perhaps the
> thought had
> loomed at the back of my mind that Buddy could have drafted
> the letter, but
> I wasn't prepared to take his claim at face value without
> additional
> analysis.
>
> i take buddy at his word that the letter was written by
> seymour, at age 7. (though i wholeheartedly wish salinger
> had NOT published the letter: it defies suspension of
> disbelief, it is artistically a mess, and i don't care for
> much of the characterization of seymour.) alsen in
> 'composite novel' builds some of the structure of his
> interpretation upon his belief that it is NOT seymour's
> letter, but the letter of the 46-year-old buddy
> impersonating seymour. i disagree. period.
>
> i might add: i did like many of jim's comments in his email
> which followed kevin's.
>
> and to end this way-too-long reply, i hope daniel's muse is
> back and soon posting.
>
> kim
>
>
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Received on Sun Mar 16 14:57:33 2003