Subject: Re:Sonny in Varioni
From: Cecilia Baader (cbaader@cubsmvp.com)
Date: Mon May 07 2001 - 18:33:42 GMT
--- "Chris Kubica @Home" <ckubica@home.com> wrote:
> Does anyone have anything to say about similarities between Sonny in
> the Varioni Brothers and the other Sonny that we all know so well. It's
> just that now that we see Sonny Glass as the most JDS-like character, I
> wonder if it holds true in this early story also.
You know, I can see what you mean. I just reread the story, and it
feels like an earlier incarnation of the Buddy/Seymour relationship.
Sonny Varioni carries a bit more guilt, but he's involved in the same
kind of task as is Buddy: finding a way to keep his brother alive.
It's interesting. Here we have a musician brother (Sonny) trying to
keep alive the words of a writer brother (Joe) rather than a writer
brother (Buddy) trying to keep alive the words of a poet brother (Seymour):
"... He's not very well and he's working day and night typing up the
manuscript of a very lovely, wild and possibly great novel. It was
written and thrown into a trunk by Joe Varioni." (I can't cite
this properly because my copy of the story doesn't have proper
page numbers. It's from _The Saturday Evening Post_, July 17, 1943.)
The writer, Joe Varioni's old flame, gives the following reason as
to why Sonny feels compelled to do it: "... The job of making head
and tail, chapter and book, of this wild colossus is an immeasurably
enervating one, requiring, one would think, youth and health and ego.
Sonny Varioni has none of these. He has a hope for a kind of salvation."
He has a hope for a kind of salvation. Interesting, no? There's so
much here that matches up to the Glass stories, and would answer so
many questions. So Sonny the musician becomes Buddy the writer and
Sonny (JD) Salinger is a writer. Chris, I think you're absolutely
correct here.
Sometimes I think that Salinger wrote and rewrote the same ideas until
he thought he had it right, sometimes changing the names of his
characters, sometimes not. It's why the Glass stories give us so much
trouble, as the Franny in "Franny" doesn't feel like the same Franny
in "Zooey". But I'm feeling a strong connection between Buddy and Sonny.
Is this what you were thinking?
Regards,
Cecilia.
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