Seymour, Muriel, & spending a day of bad weather with Buddy

Tim O'Connor (tim@roughdraft.org)
Sat, 15 Nov 1997 14:41:46 -0500

The appearance on the list of new subscribers, along with a certain
restlessness I've felt recently, drove me this morning to grab a paperback
copy of "Raise High the Roof Beam, Carpenters" and sit in the coldest room
here, with the heaviest blanket on top of me, and read the story straight
through without as much as a pause.  (Reading without interruption is a
luxury I don't usually have.)

We often spend energy and time on this list discussing motives and meanings
and the intentions of the author, but today my craving was purely to hurl
myself into a story I haven't read straight through for many years.
Usually I read in spurts, between other tasks.  The first time I read this
particular story, I did so without interruption.  And now I have done that
again, and I notice the difference in my reaction.  I'm struck, and
touched, by the kind of perfect details you see only after you've read a
story many times, after you learn enough about it to forget the obvious
features and to see the gentle touches.

Let's see if I can say anything sensible without too much quoting of the
original text.

(Some of this reaction is possibly due to the weather, which, at this
moment in New York City, is cold and clammy and the color of old aluminum.
I came away from it feeling very sad -- the way some people might feel when
a dearly welcome visitor has just left the premises -- and with a few
passages echoing in my head.)

I thought it startling to be reminded that Buddy has gone in -- twice, no
less -- and read Seymour's diary.  That intrusiveness had slipped my
conscious mind before I re-read the story.  Perhaps we all are on one or
the other end of that action, and we know how unpleasant it can turn for
the writer or the reader.

Like many people who post messages here, I have puzzled over the connection
between Seymour and Muriel, about how they got married and stayed married;
I found myself disturbed this time, reading the diary entries.  At times we
find ourselves falling into certain patterns, going against all common
sense and willpower.  So, reading the story again, knowing what I know now
(about Seymour, about myself, about how things work, or fail to work), I
imagine that at least part of the puzzle makes sense.  Seymour repeatedly
refers to Muriel as a baby, or a child, or a childlike adult.  It's very
clear to me that it is an equation that cannot stand on its own for long.
A marriage that endures is usually a partnership.

The Muriel who wants to "play house permanently" is the woman who "wants to
get out of her mother's house, whether she knows it or not," and that
squares with what I've seen of the Muriel in "A Perfect Day for
Bananafish."  It seems entirely plausible that our idealistic bridegroom
(no matter how sensitive he may be) eventually finds his tolerance for it
worn down after a lengthy period of appreciating the "child" he has
married.  At some point, there's a time when the spouse wants to be with an
equal, not someone who is, emotionally, a child.

Seeing these details, and imagining what the intervening years might have
been like for Seymour, makes it possible to understand -- or appreciate, as
terrible as this may sound -- why he does to himself what he does at the
end of "A Perfect Day ...."  It is one thing to embark upon marriage with a
feeling of "How I worship her simplicity, her terrible honesty," and
Muriel's involuntary reaction to the sight of kittens in booties on a movie
screen.  It is another to live with that person every day, especially
having grown up in the Glass hothouse.  Even a saint named Seymour cannot
be faulted for reaching the limits of his tolerance.

The two passages that seemed otherworldly today (and, as I've said, I'm
entirely willing to concede that the weather here has put me in this frame
of mind) are Buddy, coming back to the living room after most of his
"guests" have departed, speaking to the little man with the silk hat,
nearly in poetry:

	Don't you
	have a home to go to?
	Who looks after you?
	The pigeons
	in the park?

And finally there is the exquisitely ambiguous line in Seymour's diary,
which puts a seal on the day's events:

	How terrible it is
	when you say
	I love you
	and the person
	at the other end
	shouts back "What?"

I was also startled at the undercurrent of Charlotte, toward the end of the
story.  Even Buddy, in relating the tale, sounds alarmed at her name.  What
emotional tangle happened between the children, such that even so many
years later, her name brings Buddy to a halt?  The way he speaks about her,
to the little old deaf-mute, conveys a sense that there was some
entanglement with Charlotte that Seymour carried with him even as late as
his wedding day, and while Buddy understands it the way a brother
understands a brother, he's not forthcoming with the details with us.  So,
Charlotte becomes another of those departed spirits -- a houseguest in her
own way -- and leaves behind some tinge of regret in Buddy and Seymour.

Buddy awakes from his booze-induced nap to find even the little old man
gone.  I don't think there's ever been a time when I've said goodbye to a
houseguest I really cared about and *not* felt that deep pang of
loneliness.  Buddy's entrance to the room to find the cigar stub left
behind is about as sad as an old aluminum-colored sky.

Perhaps this is what happens after you spend too much time under a blanket
with the Glasses.  It is impossible to dismiss the feeling of sadness and
regret and of loss, in one way or another.  Charlotte has a different name
now, family members are scattered around the world, Seymour has just eloped
(without his diary and bag?!?), Boo-Boo left behind her jacket and the hint
of a beau in a snapshot, the war is still on, and we leave Buddy, as usual,
alone and in contemplation in a desolate apartment.

Of all the ideas I've had about why Salinger quit publishing his work,
nothing seems as stark and obvious as how damned depressing it must be to
find oneself inhabiting the person of Buddy Glass.

--tim o'connor