Re: The Inverted Forest

Oh, I think the parallels between Seymour/Ford may go beyond both of
them being poets. There was a kindness about Ford that attracted him to
C. that's somewhat Seymourish, and C. was a woman not too dissimilar
from Seymour's Muriel. Both were emotionally disturbed. I suspect
Seymour preferred the presence of children and his family to generic
adult society, as did Ford. I think the nature of their disturbance was
somewhat different, though.

Ford did criticize Bunny's poems -- you do get the feeling that they're
not good by Ford's standards. That doesn't mean they're not good at
all, though. I got the impression from the story that Ford started
spending increasingly more time with Bunny until they decided to run off
together, which came as a surprise to C. although she did know he'd been
spending time with another woman.

It wasn't clear to me what Ford's work habits were with his wife. He
did seem to regularly sequester himself off to "work," but I suspect I'm
forgetting some details. At the end of the story he's working in his
new place with Bunny, and tells his wife when she visits (to try to take
him back) that Bunny criticizes his work for not being "meaty" enough.
 That was probably the saddest part of the story to me -- his creativity
was being ripped off by this woman. His wife had nothing but adoration
for his poetry, and now he's subject to critique from an inferior talent
that lives with him day in, day out. I still had the feeling he was
stuck with Bunny -- no going back -- because she had more and deeper
hooks into Ford, being more of a kindred spirit, but that this isn't
necessarily a positive thing.

Jim

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Received on Tue Mar 18 14:19:48 2003