Re: The Inverted Forest

--- James Rovira <jrovira@drew.edu> wrote:
> heh...I think Eliot and Rilke were on Ford's list
> too. Also Yeats. I
> think Yeats was his first.

jim, good point re eliot and rilke!

 
>
>
> But look at the Seymour of B-fish -- just that
> story, not everything
> that accumulated afterwards. He gets along great
> with the kids on the
> beach, but gets irrationally defensive on the
> elevator (who gives a
> flyin' flip if she was looking at his feet or not?
> Don't people
> naturally look down in elevators to avoid eye
> contact?). The adults in
> his life -- Muriel and his mother -- seem to treat
> him like someone to
> be Handled. Muriel isn't nearly as paranoid as her
> mother about
> Seymour's mental health, but there's a history
> there, something
> dangerous involving cars. There's not a single
> example of positive
> relational habits between Seymour and any adult in
> B-Fish, but Seymour
> does get along great with kids.

i definitely agree with your interpretation of the
'bananafish' seymour. i really didn't make it clear
in my earlier post that my description of seymour was
the glass saga seymour.

which gets us back to there being two seymours. (and
buddy's admittance of not getting the real seymour on
paper in 'bananafish'.)

> Saying
> the Seymour of
> B-fish is pretty sane, well, except for the fact
> that he killed himself
> with his wife in the room is a pretty big Caveat :).
>

i meant the glass saga seymour in that remark. sorry.
i agree that the bananfish seymour comes across as
very damaged.

i still haven't come to a satisfying explanation of
seymour's suicide in light of the later glass stories.

it's almost perverse of salinger to resurrect the
bananafish seymour for the main character of the later
stories. given the characteristics he is given. it
would have been so much easier to create a new
character, even a suicide if that's what he wanted.

sometimes i think that clerical error which rebels
against the author, in this case, was the choice of
starting out with the bananafish seymour.

kim

>
> Kim Johnson wrote:
>
> >now that i think of it, in 'bananafish' we don't
> know
> >seymour is a poet. we know he reads poetry (in
> >german) and that he's read eliot. it's a story of
> a
> >damaged, sensitive world war 2 vet. isn't 'forest'
> >pre-ww2?
> >
> >there we seem to be dealing with some artistic
> >pathology (if that's the right word) for an
> >unexplainable, late-blooming poetic genius. and
> its
> >demise.
> >
> >i realize many people view seymour as you describe
> >above, but i personally don't see the retreat from
> >adults and excessive preference for his family and
> >children. he seems to have been a functioning
> >professor and an okay soldier (until the mysterious
> >'bananafish' end). granted, much of the time we
> see
> >him only through the eyes of buddy, and as a child,
> >and so we don't get to view him much with other
> >adults.
> >
> >i see seymour as eminently sane (this said on the
> >anniversary of his death). the suicide per se
> doesn't
> >bother me as much as muriel being there.
> >
> >
> >
> >
>
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Received on Tue Mar 18 18:47:29 2003