Re: The Inverted Forest

  earlier, your 'lunatic' referred
>to premediated murder and playing the piano and not
>cavorting with his leggy wife.

Still, it's not logical. He marries this beautiful wife but doesn't have
sex. We all know Salinger prefers the familial , the "pure and
uncomplicated" type of love, but the suggestion he refuses her, prefering
instead to play the piano the bulk of his vacation is obscene.

>
>yes, the stories represent a 'religious quest' for
>salinger. and seymour does represent everything
>salinger respects: especially the poet and the
>god-seeker.
>
>i don't see how you can disqualify everything buddy
>says about seymour (that he buddy is misleading us as
>to seymour's true nature)

Because of the inconsistencies in Buddy's descriptions, along with other
indications, I do disqualify what he says about Seymour. Those diary entries
in RHTRBC are the only real Seymour articles, not tainted by a Wise Child
alumnus. So if his brother was such an unprolific letter writer, why did he
appear to write two lengthy, descriptive pieces? At one point Seymour says
he was going to write a long letter to the Chair of the English Department
too. More importantly, if he was such an integral part of the family, the
only true seer, why didn't he acknowledge his own weaknesses instead of
"taking the short way home."
He recognized them in Hapworth at that tender age, but instead of doing
something, if reincarnation is even applicable here, to ameliorate his
misteps in this life,he lives according to his 'chosen' plan?
That's someone who leaves people feeling both inwardly and outwardly bitter
for years, AND who does not leave anything beautiful afterwards.
That is, if you don't count a pint of pus an aspect of beauty.

if salinger himself states
>that buddy is his collaborator and alter-ego. when
>buddy breaks into that litany in 's:ai', that seymour
>was a great many things to a great many people, but
>surely he was all real things to his brothers and
>sisters: our blue-striped unicorn, our portable
>conscience, our ring-ding enlightened man, our one
>full poet, etc., i ACTUALLY believe that's salinger
>speaking through buddy; that buddy's credo re the
>death of the artist, whether the coroner pronounces it
>by consumption, loneliness or suicide, the artist is
>truly being done in by the blinding shapes and colors
>of his own sacred human conscience; all this is an
>attempt to outweigh critical interpretation of the
>suicide, and the impression that since seymour
>committed suicide he can't be all of these things
>salinger respects.
>
>kim
>

Just look how the Glass family collapses after Seymour's suicide. This is a
family Buddy or Salinger has an enormous emotional investment in. Seymour
leaves detritus for them to sift through. Not surprisingly, none of them can
come to terms with it. Franny breaks down and wants to speak to her dead
brother. Les just wants his memories of Joe Jackson, forget about his
disturbed dead son. Zooey is increasingly irate at every person with a heart
beat. Walter, well who knows he is dead too. Waker prays for solace. Bessie
implodes, burns out. And Buddy. He lives in the shadow of his genius
brother. Goes to the same college. Doesn't get a degree though. Because he
cant keep up with Seymour. Then Seymour offs himself. So Buddy finds it
easier to live in seclusion, rarely visit his family, almost never return to
the city, and teach a pathetic course while he looks foward to the good old
days for the rest of his esoteric life. The lot of them are not worthy of
respect, from Salinger or anyone
else with else with good taste. That and a belief that people like the
aforementioned family of savants should contribute something to humanity
besides recycled Zen-Christian mish-mash.

-ADS

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Received on Wed Mar 19 18:02:41 2003