Re: the happy man


Subject: Re: the happy man
Hotspur8@aol.com
Date: Mon Mar 10 1997 - 01:45:11 GMT


In a message dated 97-03-09 17:29:11 EST, you write:

<< has
 anyone else ever felt like seymour did when he threw the rock at charlotte
 in RHTRBC? I did today (or at least think i did), and it was really cool.
 you know, where she was being too beautiful so he threw a rock at her head?
>>

i read that differently--
 
"Would you like to know how Charlotte got those nine stitches?" I asked
suddenly, in a tone of voice that sounded perfectly normal to me. "We were up
at the Lake. Seymour had written to Charlotte, inviting her to come up and
visit us, and her mother finally let her. What happened was, she sat down in
the middle of our driveway one morning to pet Boo Boo’s cat, and Seymour
threw a stone at her. He was twelve. That’s all there was to it. He threw
it at her because she looked so beautiful sitting there in the middle of the
driveway with Boo Boo’s cat. Everybody knew that for God’s sake—me,
Charlotte, Boo Boo, Waker, Walt, the whole family." I stared at the pewter
ashtray on the coffee table. "Charlotte never said a word to him about it.
Not a word."

                                                --"Raise High the Roof Beam, Carpenters"

i saw this 'rock throwing incident' as a result of Seymour being 'too happy'.
 you know? like he was so 'happy' inside he didn't know how to deal with this
overwhelming, swelling feeling inside-- does that make sense?.. because when
i read bananafish, and he shoots himself, i've always seen that as his being
too happy-- like when buddy reads what seymour had writen in his journal...

In the bathroom, I stood for several minutes over the laundry hamper,
debating whether I should or shouldn’t take out Seymour’s diary and look at
it again. I don’t remember any more what arguments I advanced on the
subject, either pro or con, but I did finally open the hamper and pick out
the diary. I sat down with it, on the side of the bathtub again, and riffled
the pages till I came to the very last entry Seymour had made:
        "One of the men just called the flight line again. If the ceiling keeps
lifting, apparently we can get off before morning. Oppenheim says not to
hold our breaths. I phoned Muriel to tell her. It was very strange. She
answered the phone and kept saying hello. My voice wouldn’t work. She very
nearly hung up. If only I could calm down a little. Oppenheim is going to
hit the sack till the flight line calls us back. I should, too, but I’m too
keyed up. I really called to ask her, to beg her for the last time to just
go off alone with me and get married. I’m too keyed up to be with people. I
feel as though I’m about to be born. Sacred, sacred day. The connection was
so bad, and I couldn’t talk at all during most of the call. How terrible it
is when you say I love you and the person at the other end shouts back
‘What?’ I’ve been reading a miscellany of Vedanta all day. Marriage
partners are to serve each other. Elevate, help, teach, strengthen each
other, but above all, serve. Raise their children honorably, lovingly, and
with detachment. A child is a guest in the house, to be loved and
respected—never possessed, since he belongs to God. How wonderful, how sane,
how beautifully difficult, and therefore true. The joy of responsibility for
the first time in my life. Oppenheim is already in the sack. I should be,
too, but I can’t. Someone must sit up with the happy man."
        I read the entry through just once, then closed the diary and brought it
back to the bedroom with me. I dropped it into Seymour’s canvas bag, on the
window seat. Then I fell, more or less deliberately, on the nearer of the
two beds. I was asleep—or, possibly, out cold—before I landed, or so it
seemed.’ "

                                                --"Raise High the Roof Beam, Carpenters"

..the way he's so 'happy'-- he doesn't quite know what to say.. his speech
function seems to break down when he speaks to muriel about his feelings..
he's just got so much going on in that his head of his that you'd expect him
to do the "expected" action or intention but instead he does the opposite
like throw a stone, want to elope, or shooting himself.. i don't know. i've
just always seen seymour as the type that doesn't know how to deal with his
intense emotion almost because it's 'too pure' if that's possible-- ?

"Look," she said, in the spurious patient tone of voice that a teacher might
take with a child who is not only retarded but whose nose is forever running
unattractively. "I don’t know how much you know about people. But what man
in his right mind, the night before he’s supposed to get married, keeps his
fiancee up all night blabbing to her about how he’s too happy to get married
and that she’ll have to postpone the wedding till he feels steadier or he
won’t be able to come to it? Then, when his fiancee explains to him like a
child that everything’s been arranged and planned out for months, and that
her father’s gone to incredible expense and trouble and all to have a
reception and everything like that, and that her relatives and friends are
coming from all over the country--then, after she explains all that, he says
to her he’s terribly sorry but he can’t get married till he feels less happy
or some crazy thing! Use your head, now, if you don’t mind. Does that sound
like somebody normal? Does that sound like somebody in their right mind?"
 Her voice was now shrill. "Or does that sound like somebody that should be
stuck in some booby hatch?" She looked at me very severely, and when I
didn’t immediately speak up in either defense or surrender, she sat heavily
back in her seat, and said to her husband, "Get me another cigarette, please.
 This thing’s gonna burn me." She handed him her burning stub, and he
extinguished it for her.

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